Creative cost cutting tips from popular restaurants.

MSNBC and NPR ran a story earlier this month on how restaurants are balancing the issues of giving the customer a great meal and rising food costs.

Some places are managing by decreasing portion size. A representative from the popular chain The Cheesecake Factory, spoke about decreasing the size of the lunch portions, noting that customers often remarked on not wanting to take leftovers back to the office.

Other restaurants are finding less expensive alternative ingredients, such as stocking different cuts of beef, using lower-cost butter blends, and serving less expensive fish. From the MSNBC article:

Chuck E. Cheese restaurants recently began using a "reformulated" pizza cheese at its 490 locations, helping the company cut costs and turn in positive first-quarter earnings. Richard Frank, CEO of parent company CEC Entertainment Inc., said the high-moisture mozzarella blend gives customers a "cheesier product" that spreads better and allows the chain to use less cheese on some pizzas.

The bad news for consumers is that while all of these creative maneuvers are helping, some restaurants are still having to raise prices, but that is no reason to abandon your favorite steakhouse or burger joint altogether. The Daily Gleaner offered up some great tips for restaurant goers in the new economic climate:

• Look for reviews of good budget-friendly establishments to try.
• Skip costly drinks and desserts and share portions.
• Instead of dinner at a fancy restaurant, go there for lunch when items on the menu are less expensive.
• At fast-food restaurants, use coupons and take advantage of free children's meals.
• Get to know what restaurants have specials on which nights.
• Eat a snack a few hours before sharing a dinner can help make the smaller meal more satisfying.

If you're a restaurant owner, what are you doing to help with food costs? If you are a consumer, how have food prices affected your diners out?

The Biofuel Debate

Just about everyone concerned with high food prices have pointed the finger directly at ethanol production. This week, just as the senate passed a bill reducing the tax credit for blenders of ethanol into gasoline by .06 cents a gallon, the USDA and Bush Administration began fighting back against the widely held belief that ethanol is causing more problems than providing solutions.

From the USDA Press Release:

It's true that higher demand for corn for ethanol and soybeans for biodiesel has led to higher prices for those crops over the past couple of years. But we do not have a one on one relationship between higher prices for those commodities and what consumers are paying for foods at the retail level.

You can read their entire report, with various experts weighing in on bio fuel and food prices here.

Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer spoke in a teleconference with reporters on Monday, asking people to call into account other factors in causing food prices to rise so drastically, such as the high cost of oil driving up fertilizer and other farming costs:

With all the recent focus on the impact that bio fuels are having, this fundamental fact seems to get overlooked. The markets, however, keep right on sending us wake-up calls. The price of oil is now holding steady at more than $120 a barrel and giving signs that it might even go higher.

You can find a round up of various news outlets reporting on the teleconference here.