Sticking with the restaurant business he knows so well, Andre LeBlanc has formed a subsidiary of FoodTender that helps eateries assess the true cost of the meals they prepare and ensure they are profitable.
The Food Profit Group, which is based in Moncton, has produced an online food management tool that can help a chef assess the true cost of each ingredient in every dish.
That allows chefs to better understand how much it costs to serve each dish.
LeBlanc was one of the co-founders of FoodTender, a Propel ICT accelerator graduate that helps restaurants order food more efficiently from suppliers.
As he and his co-founder Andre Pellerin (who has since moved on to another business) worked with restaurants, they learned that a big problem that plagues restaurateurs is calculating how much each serving costs.
They set up the Food Profit Group as a subsidiary of FoodTender, and it is now testing the new product with about 60 restaurants in Atlantic Canada, Ontario and Maine.
“Food Profit is a sales and marketing tool which is totally focused on providing the true theoretical food cost to a restaurant,” said LeBlanc, who began his career as a chef. “We solved a big problem by taking the manual labour away in figuring out the food costs.”
It’s well known that food costs have risen in recent years, placing an acute financial burden on the owners and chefs of restaurants. What makes things difficult for chefs is that they have trouble assessing the cost of, say, a teaspoon of lemon rinds, or two cloves of garlic.Bacon is sold by the kilogram, so what does it cost by the slice?
The Food Profit software helps to gain insight into the true costs of food, and it uses artificial intelligence so calculations gain in accuracy as the system receives more data.
With the ability to scan in invoices, it also helps the restaurant with such chores as invoice processing, and planning a profitable recipe.
The goal is to reduce the time given to menial jobs in the kitchen and improve the operation’s profits.
“The true magic of the system is that once the recipe is in there, the restaurant should know what they make off it,” said David Jonah, a consultant working closely with LeBlanc on the launch of the new unit.
“We give them the true cost of manufacturing the recipe.”
The early tests of the product have shown that the profits improve three to eight per cent because of the system, said LeBlanc.
FoodTender, which acts as an online marketplace between restaurants and food wholesalers, is still in operation, and LeBlanc said it is doing well. In the past, the company has received funding from the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation and BDC Capital.
But the main focus of the business now is the Food Profit Group.
“What we’re doing is teaching restaurants to buy, price and grow right,” he said. “It’s a complete back-of-the- house kind of solution.”
