Our Preparation Tactics

We've been preparing to open a food service business for nearly 5 years.  During that time, we learned as much as we could about restaurant operations and we used our home kitchen as a practice space for running a restaurant business.  We invested in a restaurant to gain deeper insight into restaurant operations and budget systems.  We discussed how the lessons learned from our professional work lives could be helpful in operating a restaurant.  (These discussions made our dining experiences much more pleasurable). 

We were always trying to learn about and emulate our favorite restaurants (though not all restaurants we like have been successful).  When we dined at restaurants, we would ask each other about what we thought made the restaurant work, or not work.  We discussed and analyzed the decor, service, food, work-flow processes, leadership, marketing, and overall ambiance of the restaurants we visited.

At home, the first issue we dealt with was wastage.  About 20 percent of what we purchased would end up unused and discarded.  Most restaurants that waste that much don't survive.  We determined the wastage was due to our lack of discipline and poor planning when grocery shopping.  That is, we would purchase what we wanted to eat at the time we were shopping instead of what we needed and could reasonably manage for the week.  For instance, we'd purchase oxtails because we thought we wanted oxtail consomme sometime during the week, but we never considered if we would ever have the time or the motivation to make oxtail consomme.  We didn't consider whether a meal we wanted was possible.  We just wanted it, so we bought the *idea* of it.  We felt entitled to what we wanted.  We thought we deserved it, even though we couldn't make it. 

Our concern with wastage also brought attention to our (lack of) food preparation work-flow process.  We had to figure out a system that would make cooking our ideal meal more efficient and thus, more feasible.  We realized that we could reduce waste by preparing, in one sitting, all the food we purchased.  So we'd set aside a time to prepare food -- chop the garnishes, slice the fruits and vegetables, prepare the marinades and dressing, etc. -- and put them in containers, just as done in restaurants.  We discovered that we could save time and increase motivation to cook-in by doing all our prep work once a week instead of spreading the work over the week.  This made cooking much less daunting after a difficult day at work.  We became more motivated to cook-in instead of eating-out when we didn't have to worry about having to prepare this or that.  Cooking on a daily basis became a simple activity instead of a hassle. Not having to worry about the hassle of cooking reduced our wastage down to 5 percent, still too much for most restaurants to be successful.

So we redefined our ideal home-cooked meals.  We began to read food magazines as pornography, offering perfect meals in perfect settings, prepared by perfect chefs.  We decided that while pornography may offer a model of life, we can only use it as inspiration or fantasy and not as a practical way to meet our nutritional needs.  And if we want to experience food pornography, we'll just go to a fancy restaurant that offers food that we, the flawed, can never emulate. At home, we'd make do with our imperfections.  Our goal became to make meals that fulfill our dietary requirements instead of satisfying our desire for the impossible.  We were surprised to find that this approach made our meals more diverse and better tasting.  Thinking of food magazines as pornography helped reduce our wastage down to 2 percent because we stopped trying to be perfect and started to have fun with cooking. 

We also budgeted as restaurants with seasonal menus would.  Instead of purchasing groceries off a list, we would set an absolute amount of what we could spend on food.  This approach forced us to consider ingredients unfamiliar to us when planning and preparing our meals.  We began think in terms of maximizing nutrition per dollar. 

And we continue to work-out.  Now that we have a health centered smoothie shop, we don't just work-out to look good and to increase our productivity, but also to advertise to customers that what we sell -- not just our smoothies but also our approach to healthy living -- works.