Skift Take
Streamlining menu offerings is a smart way to reduce the cost of food overall, but it also leaves a business vulnerable to major shifts in ingredient pricing.
Editor's Note: In September we announced that Skift was expanding into food and drink with the addition of the Chefs+Tech newsletter.
We see this as a natural expansion of the Skift umbrella, bringing the big-picture view on the future of dining out, being fanatically focused on the guest experience, and at the intersection of marketing and tech.
Bonus: We now publish C+T twice weekly.
The Problem with Signature Ingredients
Streamlining the number of ingredients used to create restaurant dishes helps to reduce both supply costs and food waste. But when an ingredient’s cost or availability changes dramatically, a business and its bottom line can quickly feel the effects. Chipotle, for example, uses just 51 ingredients in all of its product offerings, including the popular and critical-to-Chipotle avocado. As Bloomberg reports, “a confluence of factors drove the wholesale cost of Hass avocados from Mexico, the biggest supplier to the U.S., to more than double this year.” We’re not only eating more avocados than we have in the past (thanks, avocado toast!), but recent weather conditions caused less-than-ideal growing conditions. Similarly, remember the lime shortage of 2014? Chipotle was hit with that one, too — but so were other restau
