November 10th, 2023

Kitchen KPIs – How to Measure the Performance of Your Restaurant Kitchen

Kitchen intuition is not enough – even the most skilled chefs need to know if they’re hitting the mark, and performance numbers tell the truth. Whether tracking how much you spend on food, the cost of kitchen wages, the most popular items or how fast you serve meals, accurate Restaurant Kitchen KPIs show how well the back of house is running.

We’ve gathered almost 30 KPIs that can show performance from every angle, but don’t feel overwhelmed. Keep an eye on what matters most by focusing on just two or three main KPIs, like food cost percentage, menu item profitability, and kitchen labour percentage. Then, every now and then, look at some of the other figures as a spot check – they can sometimes show surprising results. Or delegate some of this checking to team members, eg the kitchen hands watch chemical and tea towel costs, and the sous chef watches customer reviews.

Here’s the Foodie Coaches list of important kitchen KPIs, ready to share with managers, owners, accountants and the kitchen…

Restaurant Food Costs

Food Cost Percentage: This can be measured quickly by adding up weekly food purchases and measuring them against your food sales. This is based on the assumption that you are not holding very much stock (as it’s perishable, you need to sell it or throw it out!). A calculation using opening and closing stock (from a stocktake) and purchases will be the most accurate.

Total Food Costs: How much was your weekly food bill? Sometimes a useful figure to show staff who think you are made of money!

Food Costs Per Head: It can be useful to see every week how much it costs to feed an average customer. This should remain the same if your menu and sales style are consistent. If it starts to go up, you will have to find out what’s happening!

Value of Food in Stock: How much food stock are you holding? It should be less than a week’s use, but it can slip out if you store frozen seafood or cryovac meat. This is why it’s so important to do very regular stocktaking.

Food Stock Turnover: A venue in an urban area with 6-day-per-week deliveries shouldn’t need to hold more than 3 days of stock. Otherwise, it’s like leaving cash on the storeroom shelves.

Waste Percentage: Track the amount of food that is discarded or not sold. This KPI can reveal issues with portion sizes, staff errors, or menu items that may not be popular. Reducing waste can directly improve your food cost percentage. This can be difficult to track and is more easily done visually with a waste tray on the bench – relying on staff to record waste is hard to enforce.

Restaurant Menu Performance

Menu Item Profitability: This measures the profit margin of individual menu items. It can help decide which items to promote or remove from the menu based on their profitability.

Main Selling Items: check the weekly sales from your POS or dockets. Did you know what the best sellers were?

Best and Worst Selling Items: this will show items that can be removed from the menu, and customers will not notice. Most menus are too large!

Sales of Desserts, Starters and Add-ons: these can make a significant difference to Average Customer Spend and profit margins if they are low-cost to make. Measuring them as a ‘strike rate’ is easy for staff to understand eg from 100 guests, we only sold 15 desserts 👎🏻. Or for every 100 orders of pasta, we sold 60 side salads 👍. Keep the kitchen involved in the sales side of the equation, even if they’re not taking orders directly.

Modifier Sales: these are add-ons and extras suggested with menu items on an ordering app. Customers are much less inhibited when ordering ‘privately’ on an app, so it’s a great opportunity to sell more.

Customer Feedback on Food Quality: Collect and analyse customer feedback. This can include taste, presentation, and portion size, directly indicating kitchen performance.

Restaurant Labour Performance and KPIs

Kitchen Labour Percentage: it’s only fair to measure kitchen productivity by comparing kitchen labour against food sales, not total sales (other factors may influence alcohol and beverage sales).

Revenue per Employee: This productivity metric divides the total revenue by the number of employees. It helps assess how effectively the staff contributes to generating revenue, showing your team’s overall productivity.

Employee Turnover Rate: Tracking this KPI can help you understand your staff’s job satisfaction and retention and show the effectiveness of your hiring processes and workplace culture.

Cross-Training Levels: The percentage of kitchen staff trained to perform multiple roles. Cross-training can improve flexibility in scheduling and cover in case of unexpected staff shortages, impacting overall kitchen productivity. Readiness to take over shift leadership as a temporary head chef would be an important number here.

Staff Satisfaction Score: Gather feedback from kitchen staff regarding their job satisfaction. High satisfaction scores correlate with better performance, lower turnover, and a more positive working environment.

Training Costs: Record and analyse the investment in staff training. Effective training can improve efficiency, reduce waste, and enhance food quality, but it’s important to balance this with the cost and ensure it’s yielding a good return on investment.

Using a Kitchen Display System to Measure KPIs and Productivity

Kitchen Display Systems can give you accurate, real-time data and analytics. It’s worth investigating how this system can increase guest satisfaction, boost productivity and lower costs. Many existing POS systems have a KDS system that can be added, and If you have multiple venues, this lets you benchmark one against the other for friendly competition and real improvements.

Order Accuracy: KDS can reduce errors by clearly displaying order details for the kitchen staff, improving errors and customer complaints.

Speed of Service: By displaying orders as they come in and tracking the time it takes for each to be prepared, a KDS can help kitchens improve their average preparation times and identify bottlenecks.

Throughput: KDS can monitor how many dishes are being produced within a certain time period. This helps understand and optimise the kitchen’s capacity and staff productivity. Especially useful to analyse peak periods.

Order Turnaround Time: This system can help you track when an order is placed to when it’s served.

Menu Item Performance: A KDS can track the frequency and preparation times of individual menu items. It can also provide data that helps assess menu item profitability and popularity. Recipe costing is usually handled well, this looks at the other dimension.

Staff Efficiency: With a KDS, you can track the performance of individual kitchen staff members. You can also see the number of items prepared, and match this against labour hours to measure efficiency.

Other Restaurant Kitchen KPIs

Kitchen Linen Costs: the cost of uniforms, aprons and tea towels can be a shock! How many tea towels are you using each day? (thought about laundering them yourself?)

Kitchen Cleaning & Chemical Costs: the dishwashing, floorwashing, and sanitation supplies can be surprisingly expensive. Sometimes covered by monthly contracts, which can also be pricey.

Repair and Maintenance Costs: repairs on kitchen equipment can be very expensive. Track these separately in your bookkeeping and even by individual items to see if something is ready for replacement.

Health and Safety Incidents: How often the kitchen has failed or been close to failing health inspections or internal audits. The number of times and days staff have been off work because of injury or work accidents.

Check the other useful blog posts on the Foodie Coaches website…

Want to get some 1 on 1 help with your business? Talk to one of our coaches

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

TURN INTENTIONS INTO ACTION

Get a free 15-minute consultation and recommended solutions with one of our coaches.