There is much talk about data, how to collect and analyze it, what tech to use, and what it means. It can be confusing and overwhelming; however, you must know your data. Some data is more critical than others, and each data metric deserves the appropriate review. Let’s focus on just one you should see every morning and why.
As an owner/general manager, you must have a 50,000-foot view of your restaurant. Start with this slice of data every day.
Total Daily Revenue
- Food Sales – This includes all food sales inside the restaurant.
- Beer Sales – This includes all beer, alcoholic and non-alcoholic.
- Wine sales – This includes all wine.
- Third-party sales – This includes Doordash, Ubereats, Grubhub, etc. orders.
- Catering sales – This would be all the food you deliver.
These numbers are great to know, but they can’t help you if you don’t have something to compare them to, and I recommend the following:
- Month-to-date average (MTD)
- Year-to-date average (YTD)
- Inception to date average (ITD)
It might take a little bit to collect this data initially, but once it’s set up, it’s simple to maintain and review daily.
Here is a sample of what your daily report should look like:
| Time | Food | Beer | Wine | Liquor | 3rd party | Catering | Total |
| Today | |||||||
| MTD | |||||||
| YTD | |||||||
| ITD |
Simple right? Quick look, then carry on with your day. But what if something is way off? Not only can you see a weird one-day number, but you can also see trends. Maybe your beer sales are way down three days in a row, and you know you just hired a new bartender. All your sales are stable, except the food is lower several days in a row: Why? What if your 3rd party sales have been steady, and then suddenly, they are zero? These three simple, yet realistic situations create an opportunity to see things as close to real-time as possible and investigate them. Each might have easy fixes to get your revenue back on track quickly.
You will have some up and down days, but once you are in month two of the year, you should never have a day below your ITD average and rarely have a day below your YTD average. If you do, it requires some time to investigate what’s happening, especially if you have a few below-average days.
While plenty of other KPIs should be reviewed by yourself and your team weekly and monthly, this revenue KPI gives you the single best high-level view of your daily performance.
Analyzing data is important. If you need help, contact me. If I can’t help you, I can direct you to somebody who can. You’re not in this alone. Besides, how hard can it be?
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