How to Minimize Costs Through Effective Facility Management

The day-to-day running of a restaurant or any other facility can become costly, if you do not pay special attention to the costs.

A restaurant has many operating needs, especially as it is a people-centric business. Therefore, the automation of many services might not be possible, since you handle people with different needs all the time.

However, as a restaurant manager, you have to find out what you can do to lower the day-to-day running costs.

By proactive planning, outsourcing some jobs, optimizing the available spaces, staying on top of your equipment health, and many more, proper restaurant facility management can reduce costs a great deal.

Here are a few tips that can help you to lower the costs of running a facility:

Identify the biggest costs

You cannot save on a facility’s running costs if you do not know what they are. Therefore, you need to do a cost-benefit analysis of the biggest costs. You want to know what they are, how much they really cost, and the value that they bring to your establishment.

If you are running a restaurant, and you realize that the chiller and HVAC costs are big, you need to break down those costs. You need to know things such as: were the costs on maintenance, or emergency repairs? Once you identify where these huge costs came from, you can then decide whether to keep that item, or replace it.

Another thing you need to ask yourself is whether these costs were anticipated, meaning whether they were budgeted for. If they were not planned for, did they come up as emergencies, or is there some sort of inefficiency in your business?

If the cost was a one-off emergency repair, you might consider regular maintenance checks to prevent such an occurrence in the future.

Once you have identified the biggest costs, talk to professionals like Grand Natural to see whether the costs were warranted. Professionals might recommend a replacement rather than repair, or an overhaul, especially when it comes to equipment.

Go with new technologies, always

This is something that many facility managers do not remember, yet it is a real cost saver. Again, let us use the case examples of running a restaurant facility.

If you have one of those old chillers, they could be consuming a lot of electricity. The same applies to the HVAC system and the cooking appliances. Old technologies are energy guzzlers, while the modern ones with Energy Star rating save money.

You could ask a company that sells and installs these appliances to do the math for you. While the buying cost will be high, you will get long-term cost saving benefits from the cost saving benefits.

Investing in new technologies for the facility is a cost saving opportunity that comes with many benefits. Newer technologies may present the opportunity of reducing man power. They can come with more automation as compared to older appliances and gadgets.

If it does not help you to directly cut manpower, it can lower the man-hours.

Regular facility maintenance helps to save money

Regular maintenance is one of the good facility management practices. It applies to almost everything that you have in the facility, and it prevents the occurrence of huge repair costs.

Planned maintenance will reveal the parts that are worn out, or almost worn out, and so they can be replaced in good time. Doing this prevents total failure of the system or appliance in question.

Routine maintenance also helps to identify fails that could otherwise turn hazardous even to the employees if not attended to. This helps to lower the risks of personal injury at the workplace.

In some cases, regular maintenance can prevent the onset of diseases, resulting in less time loss. For instance, HVAC maintenance can prevent problems such as sick building syndrome. Your employees won’t fall sick often, so they will not miss work too often.

You will avoid downtimes and the loss of business if you can prevent huge fails of machinery and equipment. Planning for such checks also helps you to anticipate problems, and create solutions for them. For example, if your in-house server fails, how can customers access your website to place their orders? A backup would suffice.

Some maintenance checks immediately improve the performance of your facility. For instance, constant checks on your IT department identifies better ways to store and access data, better use of the available internet infrastructure, and so on.

Don’t be reactive – be proactive

Perhaps this can be tied to regular facility maintenance, which we have discussed in detail above. When you are in charge of managing a facility, always remember that something could go wrong at any moment. In fact, many equipment failures happen at the most inopportune moments, when least expected.

Even the most regular checks might not reveal some of these possible failures. Therefore, the best thing is to proactively map out the possible problems, and take measures against them in advance.

One of the ways to be proactive when managing a facility is to pre-qualify contractors. And not just one contractor, but you can pre-qualify a few of them, say, two for each type of need. That way, in case one contractor is not available, you can call the other one.

Knowing where certain supplies will come from in advance can help you cut costs, as opposed to buying in the last minute. You have enough time to shop around, push for discounts and other advantages.

Outsource

According to statistics, in 2023, 65% of businesses in the USA outsourced at least one task. This is a popular trend because it helps an organization to get specialist labor affordably.

Besides, you cannot do everything for your business in-house, and some jobs require specialized tools and equipment. For instance, for a restaurant, you should outsource tasks like grease trap emptying, and cleaning.

Outsourcing IT puts you at a place where you can get expert knowledge at a lower cost. You can also enjoy more advanced technologies at a fraction of the real price. It is similar to the saying that you do not need to buy a cow if you can get the milk for free.

Conclusion

The most important thing when looking for ways to cut costs with proper facility management is to ensure that you don’t affect the quality.

When you take a proactive approach, you will prevent major breakdowns to your equipment. This also ensures a reduction in the downtime and loss of business. You can identify, and arrest problems before they escalate, and this saves money on repairs.