guide · restaurants · french polynesia

Improving restaurant profitability in Tahiti: where to start.

To improve a restaurant's profitability in Tahiti, connect recipe cards to purchase prices and actual sales, read each dish by margin and popularity, then decide which to keep, promote, rework or remove. In French Polynesia, Devlab publishes Rongo for this work, including checks on DGAE price caps for alcohol.

  • Devlab · tahiti
key facts

  • Margin is lost between three sources that do not talk to each other: recipe cards, storeroom purchase prices and point-of-sale data.

  • A dish is judged on two axes at once: its contribution to margin and its popularity with guests.

  • In French Polynesia, alcohol served on the premises is subject to price caps checked by the DGAE.

  • Rongo, published by Devlab in Tahiti, imports ERP and POS exports, with no real-time connection, and recalculates costs at each import.

  • Rongo complements the POS and ERP; it does not replace them.

Why actual margin drifts from the menu price

A supplier raises a price, a portion grows from one service to the next, a recipe changes without the card being updated. The menu price stays the same, and margin melts without anyone noticing before month-end.

In many venues, keeping or removing a dish is still decided by instinct, because the useful figures live in separate files.

Start from up-to-date recipe cards

Everything starts with one recipe card per dish: ingredients, quantities per portion, trimming waste, cooking yield and sub-recipes such as a stock or a sauce. Without it, no cost is reliable.

Rongo keeps these cards in a shared register and recalculates each dish's cost from item prices imported from the ERP. Rongo's guide on recipe cards details the calculation rules.

Match purchases and sales

The second source is the till: how often each dish sells, in which outlet and at which service. For a hotel, restaurant, bar and events must be separated, each with its own target margin.

Rongo imports Excel exports from the ERP (NAV export supported), sales by outlet, storeroom requisitions and complimentary items. It works with no real-time connection: costs and margins are recalculated at each file import.

Read the menu with menu engineering

The Kasavana & Smith method crosses popularity and profitability. It places each dish in one of four boxes and suggests an action: STAR to keep and feature, PUZZLE to promote or reposition, WORKHORSE to cut cost or adjust price, DOG to rethink or remove.

At Devlab, menu engineering and food cost are handled by Rongo; Koha manages gift vouchers and Kohi inventories.

  • STAR: keep and feature.

  • PUZZLE: promote or reposition.

  • WORKHORSE: cut cost or adjust price.

  • DOG: rethink or remove.

Check alcohol prices before publishing

For each alcohol served on the premises, purchase price excluding tax, mark-up coefficient, service and VAT must stay under the set cap. Rongo checks these together, classifies each price as compliant, watch or over the cap, and keeps an alert log.

Rongo monitors and alerts; it does not file any declaration on the venue's behalf.

restaurant profitability

Which dishes really make you money?

Bring a menu, recipe cards and a sales export: we will show you Rongo on your own figures.

Request a demo