80% of the ingredients were organic and friendly, and the green restaurant worked hard for six years, but turned into a win instead of a profit.

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The 6-year-old rice vegetable restaurant, with 80-90% organic and friendly ingredients and 95% domestic ingredients, won the first place in the evaluation by the British Sustainable Food and Beverage Association in June this year, which can be regarded as a model student of green restaurants in China. However, because of the high price of ingredients, operators have been losing money for six years. Operators have learned a painful lesson from reviewing the consumption rate of food materials and developing new menus and services. This year, it finally turned into a profit. How to reduce costs without mistreating farmers, employees and consumers? Let's take a look at the way of sipping rice.

The new R & D hand makes pickled cucumber pizza, and the dough uses Taiwan wheat (Photography _ Lin Yijun) investors to change operators and introduce the management style of the company.

The Kumi vegetable Restaurant, located near Taipei 228 Memorial Park, has been open since November 2013. it uses organic and friendly ingredients, and spices such as non-modified soy sauce, Fairtrade pepper and curry powder. there are no chemical additives, except for a small number of olive oil and spaghetti from abroad, the rest are through contracts to support domestic crops.

The current CEO, Wang Shuzhen, a former medical examiner with rich management experience, used to be one of the investors in the restaurant. Since taking over as CEO in 2017, she has made continuous progress on the previous basis. Part of the company's management style has been applied to the restaurant. Farmers and colleagues are not used to it at first. She said with a smile: "when I come here, everyone says I am so strict."

In the past, the concept of green food and beverage was not yet popular, and it was not easy to run a rice and vegetable restaurant. After Wang Shu-Chen turned from an investor to an operator, she found that running a rice was much more difficult than before. "I once wanted to give it up. But thinking about the significance of rice to green catering and organic agriculture, I decided to stick with it." So she made adjustments to Tami's mode of operation.

Wang Shuzhen (Photo _ Lin Yijun), CEO of Ka Mi vegetable Restaurant, reviewed that the transportation of food materials was seriously consumed, and improper management also caused waste.

Talking about the difficulties in the operation of the green restaurant, Wang Shuzhen detailed: the fixed expenditure on rent, personnel, hardware and so on is amazing, the moving line in the store is not good, the cost of food is high and the consumption is serious. "We have all encountered problems in normal restaurants, but in the past our ingredients were too expensive and not delicious enough." She smiled bitterly.

In general, the average cost of food in the catering industry is about 30% of the price of each dish, while the cost of rice ingredients in the past is much higher. Wang Shu-Chen explains that restaurants purchase directly with farmers, and the agricultural products in the store come from various counties and cities in the country, but the consumption of food materials is serious. Nearly 15-20% of the purchased ingredients cannot be used.

The cause of wear and tear mainly comes from transportation. in order to save transport space, farmers pack different soft and hard agricultural products in the same box, and the food is damaged in the process of transportation, thus shortening the preservation time. In addition, improper management of ingredients also leads to waste. "sometimes there are uncooked dishes in the refrigerator at home, as well as in restaurants," says Wang Shuzhen. "

Visit partners to find treasure and communicate with each other.

The selection of ingredients for sipping rice must conform to the "three nots": no pesticides, no herbicides, no ripening agents. The first step in improvement is to start with the ingredients. Wang Shu-Chen finds out the higher expenditure items from the accounts and visits the places of origin one by one. "these farmers and manufacturers are our regular staff, but some of them have never come to eat rice once." After going to the origin, there are a lot of unexpected gains.

"in the past, we all bought A products, but when we went to the origin, we found that there were B products that were more suitable for cooking." In addition to ingredients, Wang Shu-Chen also communicates with farmers about the transportation and interaction of ingredients. Even the same box should be separated from hard and soft, taking pictures before shipment, and immediately after receiving it in the store, it will be cut open to confirm the situation. If the distribution is damaged, there will be no way to claim compensation.

There are more things to confirm in communication, but it takes less time. Wang Shu-Chen changes to regular and quantitative purchases in the management of agricultural products. For example, farmers ship a certain number of kilograms of rice at two o'clock every Tuesday afternoon, unless there are special circumstances. Will make adjustments.

White radish and potato with different appearance (photography _ Lin Yijun) have a utilization rate of 100%. They are reluctant to eat and come up with new tricks.

Although she laid down the rules, Wang Shu-Chen also gave farmers flexibility. "Food materials that are ugly, too big and too small can be sent as long as they are not broken." For the special products with lower prices, the processing of ingredients is more time-consuming, but she also pulls the utilization of ingredients to the highest.

When I went into the kitchen, my work partner was dealing with the corn bamboo shoots and beet roots that had just been delivered, peeling off the outer leaves and corn whiskers, cutting off the skins and putting them in a pot. "these will then be used to cook stock, and the taste will be better." Wang Shu-Chen explained that if the food is sold in the store, if it is close to the appreciation period, the food will also be used. at present, the consumption and waste of the food in the store is close to zero.

Regular and quantitative purchase of agricultural products, sipping rice and vegetable restaurants, in order to speed up the removal and use of ingredients to cut off the corners, irregularly hold handmade courses to let more people understand the ingredients and applications, while developing other products, such as papaya pound cake, dragon fruit cheesecake, etc., become season-limited products.