It’s the question every business owner asks, how can I grow profit? Achieving profitability is no easy task, if anything it has never been harder than in 2022. However, it is still possible to grow profit margins beyond your current levels in dire trading times like today.
Here are 5 Ways Food and Beverage Businesses Can Grow Profit Margins in 2022.
Upselling Techniques in Restaurants to Boost Profit Margins
Upselling is one of the most effective ways to grow your food and beverage profit margin. When done correctly, it can significantly increase revenue without raising costs. In the competitive restaurant industry, even a small rise in average order value can make a noticeable impact on your bottom line.
Train your team to identify opportunities for natural upselling by suggesting premium add-ons, sides, or desserts that enhance the dining experience. For instance, recommending a specialty drink can raise restaurant food profit effortlessly.
Use digital menus, displays, and an online ordering platform to highlight top-selling and high-margin items. This automation helps promote profitable choices directly to customers.
Create bundle deals or limited-time offers to boost urgency and encourage repeat business. These methods simplify decision-making and grow food and beverage industry revenue. With skilled staff and smart ordering tools, your business can sustainably improve food and beverage profit while keeping customers satisfied.
How to Increase Food and Beverage Revenue in 2025
As 2025 approaches, the average profit margin for food and beverage businesses continues to narrow due to rising costs and shifting customer behaviour. However, growth remains achievable through automation and smart strategies that enhance efficiency and reduce waste.
Various automation tools can help improve accuracy and streamline daily operations. These systems can:
- Streamline order management for faster and error-free processing
- Control stock levels to reduce waste and avoid shortages
- Automate invoicing to save time and minimise manual errors
- Analyse customer data to forecast demand, optimise pricing, and identify profitable trends
In the Australian market, where profit margins vary greatly by industry, efficiency is key to maintaining competitiveness. Embracing digital transformation through online ordering and automation can help food and beverage businesses steadily grow revenue and strengthen long-term profitability.
1. Evaluate Your Suppliers
The price that you source your products for will play a huge role in determining whether your business is profitable or not. It’s not rocket science, the cheaper that you can source products for, the larger your profit margin will be. This tip may seem obvious, but many businesses forget to consistently evaluate their current product prices.
To increase profit margins, you need to frequently evaluate your suppliers and the prices that they are giving you. If possible, depending on your agreement, try to negotiate a better price. See what other suppliers may be offering and look at new ways that you can source cheaper, quality products. Lower prices equal greater profitability.
2. Forecast Ordering
One of the biggest reasons why so many Food & Beverage businesses fail is because they cannot effectively manage their stock. Having strong stock management is a key factor in achieving profitability in the Food & Beverage Industry.
To increase profitability your business needs to reduce waste and having products expire before they are sold, to do so you need to forecast your ordering strategically. Go back into your businesses sales and reporting figures, try to identify any trends, what times of the year you receive the most orders and most importantly what products are popular.
Once you identify any trends or patterns only order the necessary products and product amounts needed to cater for your demand. This way you will reduce having to either discount products or have products expire before they are sold! Strong stock management will reduce your businesses liabilities and increase profitability.
3. Review Your Pricing
To achieve profitability your business needs to have the right pricing strategy. If your products are priced too high or on the flip side too low, you will struggle to achieve profitability. This is where point number one becomes so important, coming up the best price to sell your products for will come down to how cheap you can source your products for.
It is important that your business continues to review your current price point. You need to watch industry standard pricing and adapt to the current market. It is important to pick the right price point that works for both your business and more importantly the customer. If your business has a strong price point linked with a low source cost, your profit margins will grow monthly.
Related Article: How Food & Beverage Businesses Can Increase Average Order Value.
4. Up Sell
Upselling is an important part of running a Food & Beverage business. The more products your business can sell to customers, the more revenue you will generate and ultimately the more profit you will gain.
To grow profit margins your business needs to have a strong upselling process. Your aim should be to get customers to spend as much as they can when they are at your business. To do so you need to give customers something of value. Upselling will always be one of the best ways to drive greater revenue for your business and will help scale profitability if done correctly.
Related Article: Best Up Selling Strategies for B2B Food and Beverage Businesses.
5. Expand Your Offering
The Food & Beverage Industry is a very diverse industry. If you feel like your business has hit the peak in terms of profitability you may need expand your product offering to capture more of the audience.
For example, if your business is reliant on only supplying dairy products, why not think about branching out into juices and other beverages? Expanding your offering gives you the ability to scale your operations and target more customers.
Expansion is not for every business. Before your business considers expanding it is important that you conduct relevant research, understand the risks vs rewards and you consult with all relevant stakeholders to make the best decision.
Related Article: 5 Opportunities for Food & Beverage Businesses in 2022.
Final Word,
Achieving profitability in the Food & Beverage Industry is no easy task. To grow profitability, you need to continue to work on and implement new strategies that leverage profit growth in the years to come. The 5 tips mentioned above are a few good ways Food and Beverage businesses can increase profit margins in 2022.
We hope you enjoyed reading this article. To read more articles like this, please visit the EasyVend latest news page here.
About EasyVend,
For food and beverage businesses, EasyVend supports and automates every part of your business, freeing you up to grow your sales simply, unlike other ERP systems.
EasyVend features include Stock Management, Online Ordering, Invoicing, Receipting, Automatic Credit Card Payments, Xero Accounting Integration, Route Management, Business reporting and more.
To learn more about EasyVend and what sets us apart call us today on 1300 473 744 or submit the form below.
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FAQs
What is the profit margin for food and beverages?
The average profit margin for food and beverage businesses typically ranges from 10% to 15%. However, this can vary depending on business type, location, and cost structure. Efficient operations with automation and strategic upselling can help increase profitability beyond the industry average.
Is a 30% profit margin too high?
A 30% profit margin is considered excellent in the food and beverage sector, though uncommon. Businesses achieving this usually have tight cost control and strong supplier relationships. Streamlined systems and consistent upselling play a major role in sustaining such margins.
What is the profit margin for Starbucks?
Starbucks maintains a global operating profit margin of around 15% to 20%, depending on market conditions. The company achieves this through strong brand positioning, product diversification, and advanced upselling techniques in restaurants, all of which smaller businesses can adapt to their scale.