Fast Casual Executive Summit

How to keep profits high under pressure

Struggling with high restaurant costs? A panel at the Fast Casual Executive Summit will offer tips on how to maintain profitability.

Photo: Networld Media Group

June 2, 2025 by Bradley Cooper — Editor, ATM Marketplace & Food Truck Operator

The economy has been in turmoil for a long time, and that has most certainly impacted restaurants. From inflation to the potential impact of tariffs, restaurants need ways to maintain healthy profit margins.

A panel held at the Fast Casual Executive Summit in Austin, Texas, from Oct. 5 to 7 will take this topic head on and provide key insights into ways to maintain healthy profitability.

The panelists will include Yasmin Curtis, founder and CEO of Two Fish Foods, Andrew Pudalov, founder and CEO of Rush Bowls, Troy Hooper, CEO of Hot Palette Holdings and Doug Wilmart, CEO of Beans & Brews Coffeehouse.

The costs are of course familiar to restauranteurs such as:

• Labor and demand for higher wages.
• Continuing inflation.
• Supply chain woes.
• Outbreaks such as the November 2024 avian flu.
• Maintenance.
• Upgrades.

These costs brings with them challenges not just for the restaurants themselves but for the customer experience, who may feel tightly squeezed by these price increases.

However, there is hope as the panel will look at several key ways to address these costs ranging from:

• Identifying the biggest expenses.
• Developing strategies to reduce costs.
• Menu optimization.
• Entering the negotiation room with suppliers.
• Properly managing the customer experience by informing customers of price increases.

Some prices weigh more heavily on operators mind's than others. When asked what he believed the biggest cost keeping him up at night, Hooper identified labor.

"There seems to be no strategy or structure to the randomness of rising minimum wages," Hooper said in an email interview. "I believe in a living wage for all, but $4-$5 hikes in months, and now the threat of a $9 single jump, is a pill too big to swallow in short intervals for restaurants and their customers."

Despite these fears, Hooper said he was "excited to share that restaurants have much more power to negotiate their supply chain costs and quality of ingredients than they think."

Hooper also gave some practical tips on how restaurants can successfully manage the supply chain and mitigate costs.

• "Understand you have negotiating power."
• "Ask what you peers are seeing and getting."
• "Tell distributors you are going to do an annual review and request for proposal. Investigate premium products that you can get for the same or less cost than current."
• "Control your own rebate scheme."
• "Use rebates to flatten out costs to achieve national pricing."
• "Become your own importer and sell PB products to your distributor instead of asking for slotting."

Click here to register for the Fast Casual Executive Summit. Use the code AMCEDIT20 to save 20% off checkout. The first round of early bird pricing ends on June 13.

About Bradley Cooper

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Bradley Cooper is the editor of ATM Marketplace and Food Truck Operator. He was previously the editor of Digital Signage Today. His background is in information technology, advertising, and writing.

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