Swift changes in business trends, changing customer needs and arising preferences that overwhelm businesses and restaurants.

How to remain competitive?

How to respond to these changes and needs?

How to identify your next steps considering new circumstances?

The game is getting more difficult, and you are required to understand different aspects to survive the current hospitality sector era.

What do you need to do in this case?

You need a detailed analysis of all the operations to evaluate and measure your performance and progress and identify possible opportunities. You need to gather your performance related data from various resources to have a clearer bigger picture on your positioning in the market.

With the competition getting fiercer, it’s crucial to analyze your metrics and operational reports.

There are many POS software providers but the best of them can give you the detailed analytics in a simplified way for you to clearly know your strengths and weaknesses.

How to track data with your software to realize profit and growth?

Financial data

Financial data tests the validity and effectiveness of your options and decisions.

You just started a new happy hour event. You chose your days and the menu items that will be subject to discount during the happy hour.

How to test the righteous of your decision?

Obviously, you need to check your data for number related to sales during the happy hours and compare it to previous sales during the same period in a different year or different months.

In addition to sales figures, other numbers like your expenses, the average cost per item, cash flow projections and cost of raw material should be reviewed to assess your profits.

Sales reports should include of your different selling channels separately and combined including third party integrations to analyze your sales patterns.

Inventory data

When you don’t have a clear vision of your inventory data, you won’t be able to make any further decision about pricing your menu items or even about menu engineering that should work based on the profitability of the items.

A manual tracking of your inventory is hectic and doesn’t offer you easy access of your data while giving you detailed analysis of your inventory.

You need to check for food cost and menu prices and total food cost.

Customer data

The sales figures and financial numbers aren’t the only aspect that you need to look at when checking your data.

Customer data is an essential part to bring your customers closer to you while analyzing possible reasons of losing any of them.

Collecting information about their dish preferences, their birthdays, their frequency of visits and the average check size are all important issues to identify to set loyalty programs that appeal to them. This data is not numeric but it’s crucial for your growth and sustainability.

Data incorporation into management

Data affects your strategies and future decisions in marketing and management levels.

What you should do is allow your data to influence your management style in a way that improves your operations.

Scheduling shifts: data you’ve collected on KPIs are essential to make further decisions especially when scheduling your staff for peak and slow times.

When you’re under scheduled for a certain shift, you can compare your employee schedules for other shifts and accordingly alter their schedules to meet your requirements.

Manage order tickets: POS software gives you live and real-time data on your order tickets improving communication between different employees and adjusting order tickets to avoid errors or overlapping.

Should you need more staff for a certain time? Is your menu too big and needs to contain less items? Does your staff need more training on communication?

Table turnover

It is this easy, empty tables mean lost revenues at your restaurant.

You might be thinking to yourself, which data help you fill in your tables and how?

Your reservation software can give you insights on your table occupancy.

Well, why are these tables empty?

Was it a reservation but customers didn’t show up? If yes, then you might consider charging a fee on reservations.

If not, then you must dig in deeper to find out why customers are not interested in visiting your restaurant in the first place so you might consider

How do this data and predictive analytics help you?

Forecast trends: a simple comparison of your historical data shows you a shift in consumer preferences and how it affects your positioning in the market, so you plan for a different strategy that wins in the future.

Improve order accuracy: monitoring your numbers helps you estimating the menu items mostly ordered during a certain period or even better helps you shift your customer’s attention toward a certain platter of high profitability.

 Minimize food waste and avoid shortage: accuracy of quantities when preparing menu items is crucial to avoid shortage or waste. Drill into past and present inventory levels and order the most accurate quantity needed that serves your customers.

Refer to this article For more insights on how reporting helps with your business growth.

Being a restaurateur requires lots of skills but to facilitate your decision-making process, resort to handy data in your POS software.