You’re doing everything you can to maintain a profitable business, but what about the steps you take every day that lose you money?

These losses could happen slowly at first, building over months and years, until finally, your business is crippled. Some operators chalk it up to being in the restaurant business, but savvy owners know that tightening up a few screws here and there can keep the financials in order and keep their checkbooks in the black.

Is your pizzeria falling for any of the following five money-draining traps?

1. You’re Not Using a Scale. This goes for weighing the product shipments you receive all the way down to the ingredients your cooks put on the pizzas. You could be getting shorted on shipments and giving away product (as well as not being consistent). Try weighing things for a month and track the difference it makes in costs.

2. You Don’t Take a Daily Inventory. One of the best ways to track your food costs is to take a look at your top 10 food items each day or week. Count how many you have on hand at the beginning and end of the day and then compare that number to how many were sold during the day. If there’s too big of a difference in the numbers, it could be a problem with waste or theft–something that you can then effectively investigate.

3. Your Staff is On a Repeating Work Schedule. In the pizzeria, there’s no reason to have a full (paid) staff standing around if you know it’s going to be a slow day. Prepare a weekly schedule based on what you think customer traffic will be.

4. Your Dishes and Flatware are Going in the Trash. The restaurant industry loses millions of dollars each month just on dishes that accidentally go in the trash. No one wants to dig around in the garbage for a lost fork, so consider using a bus tray as a garbage or one of the new devices out there like the FlatwareSaver to stop tossing out your dishes.

5. You’re Overspending on Your Utilities. When was the last time you checked with the utility companies on how much you were paying for your company phone, Internet, gas, electric, water, etc.? Chances are, you’re paying more than you need to. Are you keeping ovens, burners, A/C, and more on when they aren’t needed? Run a utility check that could save you thousands per year.

This list is just the tip of the iceberg. The good news is, proactively monitoring–and correcting–inaccuracies will help protect you from any further losses.

–Liz Barrett
Author, Pizza: A Slice of American History
Editor at Large, PMQ Pizza Magazine