With spring comes warmer weather, longer days, and outdoor dining. As restaurants gear up for the seasonal rush, it’s a great opportunity to get organized and maximize revenue potential. Ensuring that the back of house is as polished as the front will make for happy customers and operators.
Understand Your Numbers
Historically, restaurants run on a mixture of reports–from the back of a napkin, spreadsheets, software and point of sale. Do your best to gather a baseline that includes cost of goods, cost of staff and sales that you can use to improve upon. Once you know what numbers you’re working with, you have the right ingredients to put together a plan of attack.
Stay in Check
In an industry centered around customers and guest experiences, it’s easy to lose focus on tightening spring operations. Schedules and checklists are a great way to ensure critical tasks are completed when they need to be. Even the most tenured restaurant teams can benefit greatly from comprehensive checklists to make sure that daily, weekly and monthly goals are achieved.
Planning Ahead
Use your historical data as a benchmark for how to plan ahead. Check the numbers from last year. As seasons change, customers’ purchasing and eating habits change too. What were the most popular items? Did guests sit on the patio? Did happy hour pick up because the days are longer? By looking back to plan ahead, you can better understand what to prep and order, ensuring you’re ready to provide an excellent (and profitable!) customer experience.
Staffing Smartly
Restaurants should plan at least 90 days ahead to ensure proper staffing, especially on high-traffic days like Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, and the 4th of July. Consider what spring and summer help looks like, who is leaving at the change of seasons, who wants more hours and who is graduating or returning home to work.
Alongside food, labor is one of the highest costs for hospitality businesses. To manage labor more efficiently, compare the sales per hour to the labor spent per hour. For example, if a restaurant secures $500 worth of sales in one hour and has five staff members on schedule for that hour, then the sales per labor hour are 100. Luckily, today’s latest technology integrations can help determine these numbers by providing real-time analytics and data needed for operators to make key decisions to improve their bottom lines.
Inventory Optimization
Now is a great time to organize storage areas and get rid of dusty products going unused in inventory. Start by running a product mix review to determine which offerings are slow sellers and swap them for new, exciting options. Make sure that any changes made are reflected in inventory and par levels so you’re getting the most up-to-date results.
Use Data Digging to Your Advantage
Spring cleaning doesn’t stop when spring is over. You’ve worked hard on staying organized and making changes to improve your business. Now look at the numbers to identify trends and popular menu items and identify areas that can still be enhanced. By analyzing sales data, restaurants can pinpoint which menu items are most popular vs lost leaders and those that are stars with high gross profit.
Change is important, but remember to base any changes on actual numbers and data in order to produce the best results. Ultimately, these updates should expand margins, increase bottom lines, create better guest experiences, and attract new customers.
Monitoring the results of these strategies and adjusting as necessary will be crucial to a successful season. Taking the proper steps, from changing ingredients to reorganizing inventory, and considering transitioning from pen and paper to modernized platforms, will lay the foundation for a shift toward profit you can follow for the whole year.
With spring comes warmer weather, longer days, and outdoor dining. As restaurants gear up for the seasonal rush, it’s a great opportunity to get organized and maximize revenue potential. Ensuring that the back of house is as polished as the front will make for happy customers and operators.
About Phil Probert, VP of Craftable
Phil Probert is the Vice President of Craftable, a cutting-edge technology company that empowers restaurants, bars, hotels, and hospitality businesses, both big and small. With its leading profit management and operations platform, Craftable is revolutionizing the industry by integrating its easy-to-navigate system with key business functions like invoicing, food and beverage costs, sales, inventory, waste, theft, enterprise reporting, labor, and more. The platform also provides comprehensive and personalized insights into day-to-day operations, helping clients optimize their potential and save on costs.
