Al DeCaprio lightly taps the rim of a brimming bowl of pasta. He knows what to look for in the fettucine curling amid the creamy Alfredo sauce.

Unlike diners at his restaurants, DeCaprio sees beyond the Parmesan cheese, the butter and the olive oil in the classic Italian dish. With 40 years of restaurant experience, he can dissect the cost down to the garlic crushed into the sauce, evaluate the likely popularity of the dish and calculate how many minutes it takes two cooks to plate it.

In good times or bad, DeCaprio said, it's the only way to run a restaurant. Especially now.

"Making money is an art; it's not an accident," he said.

DeCaprio is president of Gold River-based Strings Restaurant Group, a chain of 29 mid-priced Italian restaurants that's been around for 22 years. A look at his efforts, including spending a day in the kitchen and a restaurant on Madison Avenue, reveals the strategy that a business like Strings employs to stay above water as the industry nearly drowns in hard economic times.

Strings has been here before. The chain was in bankruptcy protection for two years until it emerged in 1999. When the current recession hit, several franchisees were forced to close. That pushed the company to sharpen the way it screens potential franchisees.

By literally watching pennies and constantly taking the consumer's pulse, DeCaprio is confident he can keep the restaurants out of the red.

As the economic downturn leaves more restaurant tables empty, owners of California's 62,000 dining and drinking establishments are toiling overtime to get customers in the door. Many are offering deals – coupons, two-for-one specials – and pushing low-priced meals. Most are shaving operational costs – cutting lunch hours or curtailing late-night dining, for example – as a way to control expenses and widen profit margins, which for some could be pennies on the plate.

"This is one of the most difficult times our industry has faced," said Jot Condie, president and CEO of the California Restaurant Association.

Even the most optimistic forecast doesn't predict an uptick in consumer discretionary spending until the end of the year. That directly affects dining out, Condie said.

In the meantime, restaurants will largely be reconstructing menus to offer value and trimming costs.

"That's what will keep a lot of them marginally profitable," Condie said.

Yet controlling or reducing costs to the point where customers notice – a runnier sauce, slower service, no bread – is a fatal risk, analysts say.

"It's a fine line to be drawn," said Ron Santibanez, a restaurant consultant in Riverside. "You cannot control yourself to profitability. You have to do it with sales."

DeCaprio's key to profitability is found far from the corporate boardroom. Nearly every day, he can be found at a restaurant, busing tables, pouring ice teas, smiling to customers as they clean their plates or grumble over the marinara sauce.

"A lot of people think that owning a restaurant is glamorous. The restaurant business is just hard work," said DeCaprio, 58. "The customer is a moving target. In this economy, they are much more sensitive."

It's not a pricey menu that boosts profits. It's the ability to manage and plan, he said.

"You can't build a church for Easter Sunday. Everyone goes then, right?" he said.

DeCaprio spends time at each store once or twice a month. He's at the company's four corporate-owned stores more often, including the one on Madison Avenue, one of Strings' oldest.

He's here to make sure the staff understands expectations and adapts to new menus, but it's a two-way street. DeCaprio will often ask waitresses to pick up forks and sample prospective dishes for the moderately priced menu, mostly in the $10 to $15 range for full meals.

"You may learn as much from them as they do from us," he said.

DeCaprio and friends founded the chain with the first Strings on Sunrise Boulevard in 1987. Even with hands-on knowledge culled from time waiting tables and behind the bar, DeCaprio acknowledges that it took the disciplined financial mind of Paul Ip, who joined the business in 1993, to turn the business into a real business.

Call The Bee's M.S. Enkoji, (916) 321-1106.