Planning the post-Covid menu: rationalisation, multipurposing are key in light of staffing, skills and supply chain shortages

With city-wide lockdowns now consigned to the past and as we emerge from the strictures wrought by Covid, we’re looking out onto an altered foodservice landscape – one beset by staffing and skills shortages and supply chain availability issues. Adaptability has been the key to survival during Covid, and in this post-Covid environment more changes are having to be made to ensure ongoing profitability.

PODCAST: Planning the post-covid menu

To find out more about planning the post-Covid menu we spoke to three highly experienced chefs: Peter Wright, who has extensive experience in largescale event catering; Gary Johnson, national executive chef for major hotel chain ALH Group; and Adam Moore, former corporate chef at NAFDA and Cerebos and a well-known consultant to industry.

Staffing issues driving need for menu solutions

“The capital CBDs are still somewhat dormant, but elsewhere we’re almost back to business as usual, with plenty of consumers eating out again and all the good restaurants booked out Thursday through Saturday,” says chef Peter Wright. “That means the concern around working out how much to order is no longer the issue it was during Covid. But the biggest concern right now is staffing, and everyone’s looking for solutions that will help with preparation.”

Peter says ensuring a good relationship with your suppliers is key here. “Given the ongoing supply chain issues, operators have had to become more flexible – it’s becoming the norm that you’ll order ten ingredients but only get nine. The shortages across the supply chain are affecting everything from support staff to numbers of delivery drivers.  

“Make sure you use everything you buy as that way you’re minimising wastage. I recently attended the World Chefs Congress in Abu Dhabi and they were talking a lot about food wastage around the globe, and that’s something we all need to focus upon.

“What it comes down to is measuring or weighing all food waste, not just back of house but also front of house – which means food that’s been served but is left over when the customer’s finished. Just keeping records on this has been proven to reduce waste by up to 60 or 70 per cent, because you’re able to identify what’s commonly being thrown away and you can then make adjustments to your ordering and menu planning. This is something which needs to be implemented across the board and once that’s the case you realise just how much money can be saved.

“I learned this lesson while catering for the Grand Prix on the Gold Coast - you order it, it’s delivered and then you have to either use it or send it to Foodbank. When you do a job like that year after year, you might have one and a half shipping containers of food left at the end of the first year, the second year you have only one, and by the third you only have half – or you can even get too clever for yourself and start to run out of things!

“Measuring out your ingredients has a big impact on ordering and menu planning. We all want to be able to positively contribute to the global issue of food sustainability, where one-third of all food that’s currently grown is being wasted – your mind boggles when you hear that.

“I’d also recommending creating a ‘shopping list’ or template so you can look at what you ordered last time – using drop down boxes on the computer will help you save time with this.

“When you’re relying on suppliers to help you fill that food prep gap, you also need to choose them wisely and find ones who will really support you. Whether it’s ready-cut or pre-prepared vegetables, through to your pastries or desserts, and now even your sauces and cooked meats – if you’ve got a function or a full house and all of a sudden the supplier can’t fulfil the order, there's got to be an open sharing of communication, because if stuff not's turning up you need an alternative. So between the chef and the supplier there has to be a free information flow as opposed to suppliers who see themselves simply as box carriers. Given the trend is towards b buying in more and more products to cut down on your food prep, it means the supply chain is now far more actively important than back in the days when we were buying in groceries and prepping it all ourselves.”

Peter recommends sounding out prospective suppliers at trade shows and checking their social media feeds, plus word of mouth: “Above all, talk to your colleagues about who they’re using and what’s reliable at the moment. Generally speaking, the industry is in a good place right now: function catering again is picking up, wedding venues are booked out, there's some people saying to me we're only back to 50 per cent capacity but certainly some sectors are fully booked. But basically everyone's struggling with the staff shortage: I know that the convention centres in Brisbane and Melbourne are turning down bookings because they don’t have the staff to facilitate them, and that's across the board. The pub chefs I talk to as well aren’t taking bookings to fill their restaurants, they might take them to 70 or 80 per cent but not 100 per cent, and that’s again because of staffing concerns.”

You need to deliver upon customer expectations

Gary Johnson, National Executive Chef at hotel chain ALH Group, acknowledges that they’ve reduced menu sizes by around 25 per cent, but takes a philosophical approach to lessons learnt from the pandemic. “I suppose one of the things Covid taught us was you’ve got to be very good at delivering upon expectations, especially when it comes to your core menu items.

“In our case our menus became smaller, curated menus and we made sure they were localised so they reflected our core demographic and were pitched directly to our customer base. We also found we had to move the smaller menus around more – quarterly rather than biannually as in the past.

“We now have two small and two big changes every year - little seasonal tweaks so to speak. That was born from supply issues, and also the fact that the floods, rains and bushfires we’ve had have impeded logistics, and even production and growth in the farming communities in many of the areas we service. We’ve therefore had to reflect that in our menus and adapt accordingly.  

“We also found we needed to ensure a balanced menu with what we call ‘clean living’ options. While everybody loves a fried schnitzel, these days a nice vegan roast pumpkin date and ricotta salad is often what customers expect on the pub menu as well.

“Labour has been another variable, and in recognition of that we had to put our hands on our hearts and ask ourselves, what are we going to make inhouse and what are we going to buy in? Thankfully there are so many great suppliers out there today making products to reduce labour and waste, and also help us speed up service times.

“If you’re clever about building curated menus, you'll find you can tick all the boxes and still deliver a great product for your customers from a scratch perspective, as we call it. And of course not only do we go by experience and intuition, we also back that up with data - which is another important element to rely on. We always say intuition is no substitute for deep data analytics.”

Gary echoes Peter’s comments regarding food wastage, which he acknowledges is a “big consideration for us all, not only in packaging but in the yield of the food. These days not only do we go nose to tail with a lot of our animal proteins, we try to maximise yield of all ingredients across the board. It’s remarkable how many things you can repurpose to save on waste – take the outside leaves of lettuce, they’re pretty good in soup! I think chefs have been remembering all those little cost-saving tricks, because as ingredients prices continue to increase we’ve got to be more thoughtful and clever. And you’ll find when you talk to any chef that they hate wastage, because it’s a huge cost as well as an environmental consideration.”

Chefs going hard on price comparison

From his vantage point as a well-known consultant to the foodservice sector, chef Adam Moore sees a number of elements coming together at once right now. “Not only do we have the labour and skills shortage, but prices are going up, so everyone’s looking at how they can do more with less. For the first time in a long time chefs are starting to go with more affordable seasonal produce. For example avocadoes are really cheap right now, so chefs are asking themselves, how can I use them more effectively, how can I introduce them across more dishes on the menu? Hence we’re seeing the rise of avocado fries or breaded avocado grated into a soup.

“Some chefs are swapping out animal proteins for plant-based, or using a combo of both and in this way balancing out the meal cost. They’re also looking at supply websites like Market Boomers and really going hard on price comparison.

 “On another front, the smart chefs are using multiple iterations of the one product. I’ve seen chefs who are foregoing pre-cut meat and instead getting in a whole carcass and using it very effectively. We’re also seeing tighter menus – they’re no longer pages and pages long, but rather focusing on a couple of key items, such as signature dishes, and getting people to order more effectively across that. It’s all about keeping your costs down by limiting your offerings, as opposed to having to reproduce so many different items.

“As I said, less is more. And by doing that they’re able to hero some really cool ingredients like powdered green garlic, black lentils – things you don’t normally see are now being used to hero the dish and tie everything together. For example the widespread use of frozen Akoya oysters, which are a cheaper option but which impart a lot of flavour. You can use these in a soup or bouillabaisse, it’s just a question of making sure you complement them effectively.”

The other point Adam makes is to use multiple suppliers where possible. “Instead of just relying on Bidfoods for my meat, these days I might have a beef supplier, a poultry supplier and a fish supplier, like the old days of the nineties. Someone might be using PFD but two providores at the same time. There are massive price increases on beef and lamb right now and a huge egg shortage, there are virtually no chips in the market – so people are cherrypicking based on what they can and can’t get.

“There are also fewer private label brands on the market, and people even ordering coated chips from one supplier and uncoated from another – you have to be adaptable and know your market. What are your minimum order quantities, and do you order everything from this supplier this week or go to another one? It requires more planning, but I think chefs are recognising they need to devote more time in that space to do just that.”