How Craftable and bartaco Achieved a 50% Reduction in Food Cost Variance

This beloved taco joint achieved a remarkable 50% reduction in food cost variance with Craftable, translating to $30,000+ saved weekly.

About bartaco

Heralding fresh ingredients and the business of fun, bartaco is more of a lifestyle than a restaurant to its fans who keep coming back for the constantly evolving menu – including seasonal secret tacos.

The Challenge 

Prior to Craftable, daily kitchen prep in each of bartaco’s 32 locations was managed by the chefs. They decided both which items to include and how much to prep before opening. This manual process required a significant time investment for the chefs, was highly inaccurate, relied on individual knowledge and experience, and put locations with newer staff at a disadvantage. This resulted in thousands of dollars in food waste each week and a significant variance in actual versus theoretical food COGS.

“As we grew, we ended up with numerous lists of recipes that became very disorganized. Craftable is a hub for everything and provides transparency and clarity for our operators.” -Sam Mendal, Director of Purchasing, bartaco

The Solution

As a Craftable user since 2017, bartaco knows the power Craftable provides in streamlining processes and providing solutions to problems. By working with Craftable to implement the Production Preps module, bartaco reduced waste, increased profits and improved experiences for customers and employees alike. Inefficiency transformed into informative insights as bartaco teams revealed the type and quantity of items to prep. Now, bartaco wastes less product and has the right ingredients ready to go each day, giving them more time to spend dishing out uniquely fresh fun to their customers.

The Impact

At bartaco’s heart, there is a monument to fun, margaritas and guacamole. They pride themselves on using the best, freshest ingredients, the signature scent of just-squeezed lime juice wafting through their doors a testament to their commitment. Maintaining such standards requires precise ordering and strictly scheduled rotation. Lime juice is tossed every six hours and guacamole is made fresh daily, leaving all unused product to accumulate as waste. Nailing production prep has been a game changer for a concept so rooted in fresh ingredients.

The Process

Bartaco runs a tight ship with weekly audits on Craftable where they count not just their purchased goods, but also prep items. These weekly audits allow bartaco’s operators to know exactly what they have in stock, helping to inform their ordering, all achieved using the Craftable platform. Their corporate team is also able to keep a finger on the pulse of each of their 30+ locations – monitoring purchasing, usage and variance all from a single source of truth on Craftable.

“Craftable has made quite the impact. You get to the nitty gritty, which is the information that operators need. Not only does it help us recognize when we’re having a problem, it identifies where our opportunities are and as a team, collaboratively, we come up with ways of improving.” -Sam Mendal, Director of Purchasing, bartaco

Bartaco has trusted Craftable to be their inventory software solution for over six years, but as the Craftable platform has grown beyond inventory, so has bartaco. Their corporate finance team now creates complex sales forecasting models in house, giving their store operators insights to help them plan each week accordingly. By importing these sales forecasts into Craftable’s Production Preps module, Craftable is able to calculate how much of each prep item each location will need. These projections account for not only the sales of the day, but of the shelf life of the prep item.

Bartaco locations take a quick prep item count each morning, and Craftable tells them how much of each prep item to make. By combining the powerful data that’s already on Craftable – recipes, actual sales, and projected sales, the operators are able to spend their time where it’s most impactful.

“Craftable gives our operators more time to focus on training staff members, developing great employees, and enhancing the guest experience. Having these tools allows us to continuously expand and grow while maintaining the sense of culture that makes us who we are.” -Sam Mendal, Director of Purchasing, bartaco