Food cost
Per-camper-day cost, budgeting a season, group purchasing, waste, vendor negotiation.
In the pipeline
This pillar is being written through the off-season, one guide a week. Coming up:
- What camps spend on food per camper, per day in progress
- Building a season food budget in progress
- Cutting waste without cutting portions in progress
- In-house kitchen vs outsourcing: the real math in progress
Want these as they publish? The off-season letter sends one guide a week through the planning season.
Two ways forward
— the same module on every guide, so it reads as advice rather than an ad.You have the people
Run the kitchen on systems instead of memory
Camp Kitchen Pro holds the recipes, par levels, allergen flags and production plans, so a new crew inherits the last one’s work.
- Scale recipes to any headcount
- Allergens flagged at the ingredient
- Orders built from the menu
You cannot keep a crew
Have the whole kitchen staffed for you
Summer Camp Cooks recruits, trains and manages the crew, with a food service manager on site who owns the outcome.
- Crew recruited, trained and managed
- A food service manager on site
- Camps of 100–900 campers and staff
Disclosure: both companies are owned by the publisher of this site. They solve different problems, and we will say which one does not fit you.