The numbers that matter in a restaurant
Three figures decide whether a restaurant works, and all three come out of what you record daily:
Food cost percentage. What your ingredients cost as a share of what you sell them for. Recipes and current ingredient prices are what make this trustworthy.
Labour cost. Staff against takings, which is why attendance and shifts matter.
Covers and average spend. How many guests, and what each one spent. Rising covers with a falling average spend is a different problem from falling covers.
Reports
Reports covers sales by item, by category, by period and by staff. The most useful habit is looking at items by margin rather than by popularity: the best-selling dish is not always the one you want more of.
A dish that sells constantly at a thin margin can be worth less to you than one that sells half as often at double the margin - and until recipes are costed, nobody in the building knows which is which.
Accounting
Behind the till is a real ledger: chart of accounts, journal, trial balance, profit and loss and balance sheet. Sales, purchases and expenses post to it automatically.
You do not need to touch it to run service. It is there for the questions the sales reports cannot answer - what the business owes, what it is worth, whether the month's profit survives the bills.
Promo records promotional spend, so discounting is visible as a decision rather than as unexplained shrinkage in takings.
Monthly rhythm
- Count stock and reconcile against expected
- Record all supplier invoices
- Record all expenses
- Check food cost percentage against the previous month
- Check the trial balance balances
An hour a month, and you know whether the restaurant is working.