Expanding my cafe's menu, need suggestions Chefit

Hello! I am a relatively inexperienced restaurant manager and I'm working on a new expanded menu for my small cafe and I could use some help from those who are more food-minded than I am.

Restaurant details:

• Very very small location. Saving space is one of, if not the highest priority when considering new dishes/ingredients

• Our only real cooking equipment a high-speed oven to heat/toast our food, similar to Subway; plus a steamwell for soups. We have no freezer on location, all of our frozen goods are kept in prep kitchen. We do have multiple refrigerators.

• We're a sister-restaurant to a larger full size bar & grill, and we do almost all of our prep at that location. We have access to their ovens, their grill, their flat top, their deep fryers, their slicers, their smoker, and their freezer and refrigerator space; so nothing is really off the table.

• We do mainly sandwiches, wraps, and salads. Our #1 profit item is our Chef Salad. Chicken Bacon Ranch wrap is up there as well. Sandwich-wise, ham and cheese & BLTs are our best (BLTs because they are one of the cheapest options) and the BBQ pulled pork/chicken is up there too.

• We do daily lunch specials throughout the week (m-f lunch is where the money is) and these specials consists of the bulk of our sales. Meatloaf sandwiches, potato soup, 8" personal pizza, burgers, philly cheesesteak are the normal specials. I chose these because they would be difficult/impossible to have always (except maybe meatloaf), but its no issue to bring a special up daily and sell it through lunch.

• We're located in a facility which means that our customer base is basically always the same, and we compete with the cafeteria.

• We premake our salads (among other stuff) and have them in a grab-and-go cooler. We only have a chef, garden veggie, and caesar. I personally think we need to add a new salad. We used to have a spinach salad but it wasn't a great seller and had 2 orphaned ingredients with it. Definitely willing to explore spinach salads again, perhaps with different ingredients.

• We don't have any fruit. I think a fruit salad or fruit cups would be a decent idea, I just worry that they may go bad before I can sell it all.

Our ingredients

• Our meats: Ham, Turkey, roast beef, pulled pork, pulled chicken, grilled chicken, bacon, pepperoni, chicken salad, tuna salad, bologna.
• Our veggies: Romaine lettuce, tomatoes, onion, banana peppers, pickles, cucumber
• Our cheeses: American, swiss, pepperjack, shredded mix, mozzarella, Parmesan
• Our breads: White, whole wheat, hamburger bun, croissant, hoagie.
• Other: Scrambled egg patty, boiled eggs, breakfast sausage

TLDR;

I'm mostly looking for suggestions regarding new types of salads or sandwiches/wraps I could sell while adding as few ingredients as possible to save space/waste. I would like more options for our regulars to try (and maybe attract a few more regulars in the process)

Submitted October 08, 2017 at 01:02AM by Londonn http://ift.tt/2xqdeje Chefit