Importance of food cost in restaurant Industry

I need to give a lecture to the students about food cost and beverage cost and how we can maintain it.
I will appreciate your comments

I can only speak professionally about food cost. The industry standard is 33%. Even running a fine-dining restaurant I chiseled mine down to 31%. And that was buying only top of the line ingredients....Angus beef, fresh hand-picked crabmeat, Maine lobsters, Andy Boy romaine, fresh wild mushrooms and on and on. The only thing I bought frozen was shrimp (no choice) but again, Ocean Garden brand from the Gulf. None of those farm raised tiger shrimp from Vietnam.

So how do you maintain a low food cost when buying such spendy ingredients? You throw NOTHING away. And you work a lot of hours to make sure that nothing gets thrown away. I cut all the fish and all the meat myself. On a Friday, at least 100 lbs. of fish and 200 lbs. of meat. Beef trimmings went into Boeuf Bourguignonne as a lunch special (we always ran out). Fish trimmings went into fish 'n chips or a fish chowder. Pepper ends got saved for other soups.

The last day of every month you do a complete inventory. Count all those ketchup bottles in the dining room, all the Tabasco behind the bar. Weigh all the meat and fish. All the spices. Count the pastries and breads and butter and cheese and all the produce. It's a major pain in the arse but it's the only way to get an accurate food cost.

Yep, accurate portioning and inventory counting are the best ways to maintain a decent handle on food costs.
Buy the best scales possible and use them for every dish.
Measure drinks, no "eye-ball" guesses. Teach your servers how to do a good beer pull so you don't lose money to foam.
Count your highest cost items every day i.e. cheese for pizza. (Although, I did a complete count every day, most people aren't that uptight about it)
Maintain the optimal temperatures in your steam tables, coolers, and freezers to avoid waste due to spoilage.
Make your employee meal policy crystal clear up front, so you don't lose money to internal theft. Count employee food into your planned food cost.
Use in season items whenever possible because freshest is usually cheapest for produce.
Know your vendors and ask them if anything is going on special. Make them partners so you will both succeed.

Hope these ideas help

I made a somewhat lengthy post regarding this topic on the following thread ...
http://www.roadfood.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=11912
the post is about halfway down the page.
Good luck with the lecture.
Sonny