Front of House KPIs – How to Measure the Performance of Your Restaurant Sales and Service
It needs more than guesswork – performance numbers tell the truth. Whether tracking the Average Customer Spend (ACS), the cost of wages, the most popular menu items or the sentiment in online reviews – they all combine to give a ‘health check’ of your front-of-house (FOH), bar and events.
We’ve gathered more than 20 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 the ACS, number of customers, and labour costs. Other figures should be used for a spot check and can sometimes show surprising results. Or delegate some of this checking to team members, eg the bar manager and supervisors.
Here’s our Foodie Coaches list of important front-of-house KPIs, ready to share with managers, owners, accountants and at team meetings.
Front of House – Restaurant and Cafe
1. Total Sales Per Head – your total sales divided by the number of customers. How does it compare to last week and last month? It may vary between different times of the day.
2. Number of Customers – simple! A good measure of popularity.
3. Food, Dessert, and Beverage Sales per Head – Divided into key areas of choice – main course and starters, desserts, non-alcoholic beverages, alcohol and perhaps side orders (eg bread and salads) and other product sales. The perfect indicator is how much your menu appeals to your customers (do you have all the choices they want eg the right dessert selection?), and how well your staff are selling. This KPI can be a good basis for a bonus system.
4. Seating Efficiency – how well your tables are being turned over while still offering high-quality customer service. Usually, many small things combine to have a large impact – cooking time, seating, service and clearing. The size of tables relative to the average group size will also make a difference.
5. Linen Costs – uniforms, aprons etc and often shared with the kitchen.
6. Front of House Labour % – how many hours worked in this section? Compare against sales to measure productivity.
7. Front of House Labour Hours – how many hours worked in this section? Compare against sales to measure productivity – Sales per Labour Hour.
8. Most and Least Profitable Hours – based on sales and labour costs, and a quick guide for making roster changes if wages are too high.
9. Throughput Efficiency – particularly for rapid service in a cafe. How many sales can be made per hour in the peak periods? A good indicator of the value of updating equipment like milk dispensers, dispensing grinders and tampers.
10. Customer Satisfaction and Reviews – measured in different ways, primarily by Google Reviews.
11. Visits by Top 100 or 200 Customers – they provide a huge proportion of a restaurant’s sales! If you have a well-developed booking system, this probably allows you to track regular customers and their spending habits.
12. Advance Bookings – in the current week and month and coming up. Also in peak times eg Christmas and Valentine’s Day. If these numbers are below
13. Function Inquiries – number of inquiries about large bookings and functions, especially if you have undertaken a campaign to promote them.
14. Sales Inquiry Conversion Rate – the number of inquiries that turn into actual sales. If 50 people asked for information about your function packages and this resulted in 10 firm bookings, this would be a conversion rate of 1/5 or 20%. You’d also want to look at why so few people were ‘converted’ – the quality of the promotional material, skill of the sales staff, pricing or make-up of your function menus and facilities?
15. Merchandise Sales – food products, t-shirts, caps and other products sold in addition to the usual food & beverage.
16. Sale of Gift Cards – sold and promoted in-house and also online. These can be a significant source of revenue.
1. Average Customer Spend – useful to have this measured separately for alcoholic beverages and non-alcohol (juices, mineral waters, soft drinks and coffee).
2. Gross Profit on Sales – the difference between what you sold and what it cost you. The sales mix can heavily influence this.
3. Average Profit % on Sales – useful to see if your sales are holding steady, although the actual Gross Profit (real money) will ultimately matter the most.
4. Stock Value – how much cash is locked up in the value of your cellar? Tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars can be tied up in cellar stock before you realise it!
5. Stock Turnover – how fast is your cellar stock selling? If you carry wine stock worth $50,000 and the value (not sales) of what you sell each week is only $10,000, it’s taking 5 weeks to turn over your stock.
6. Carrying Cost of Stock – what is the cost of financing this $50,000 of stock?
7. Sales vs Stocktake Discrepancies – alcohol means security problems, and keeping an eye on ‘shrinkage’, staff drinks and stealing is a constant problem.
It needs more than guesswork – performance numbers tell the truth. Whether tracking the Average Customer Spend (ACS), the cost of wages, the most popular menu items or the sentiment in online reviews – they all combine to give a ‘health check’ of your front-of-house (FOH), bar and events.
We’ve gathered more than 20 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 the ACS, number of customers, and labour costs. Other figures should be used for a spot check and can sometimes show surprising results. Or delegate some of this checking to team members, eg the bar manager and supervisors.
Here’s our Foodie Coaches list of important front-of-house KPIs, ready to share with managers, owners, accountants and at team meetings.
Front of House – Restaurant and Cafe
1. Total Sales Per Head – your total sales divided by the number of customers. How does it compare to last week and last month? It may vary between different times of the day.
2. Number of Customers – simple! A good measure of popularity.
3. Food, Dessert, and Beverage Sales per Head – Divided into key areas of choice – main course and starters, desserts, non-alcoholic beverages, alcohol and perhaps side orders (eg bread and salads) and other product sales. The perfect indicator is how much your menu appeals to your customers (do you have all the choices they want eg the right dessert selection?), and how well your staff are selling. This KPI can be a good basis for a bonus system.
4. Seating Efficiency – how well your tables are being turned over while still offering high-quality customer service. Usually, many small things combine to have a large impact – cooking time, seating, service and clearing. The size of tables relative to the average group size will also make a difference.
5. Linen Costs – uniforms, aprons etc and often shared with the kitchen.
6. Front of House Labour % – how many hours worked in this section? Compare against sales to measure productivity.
7. Front of House Labour Hours – how many hours worked in this section? Compare against sales to measure productivity – Sales per Labour Hour.
8. Most and Least Profitable Hours – based on sales and labour costs, and a quick guide for making roster changes if wages are too high.
9. Throughput Efficiency – particularly for rapid service in a cafe. How many sales can be made per hour in the peak periods? A good indicator of the value of updating equipment like milk dispensers, dispensing grinders and tampers.
10. Customer Satisfaction and Reviews – measured in different ways, primarily by Google Reviews.
11. Visits by Top 100 or 200 Customers – they provide a huge proportion of a restaurant’s sales! If you have a well-developed booking system, this probably allows you to track regular customers and their spending habits.
12. Advance Bookings – in the current week and month and coming up. Also in peak times eg Christmas and Valentine’s Day. If these numbers are below
13. Function Inquiries – number of inquiries about large bookings and functions, especially if you have undertaken a campaign to promote them.
14. Sales Inquiry Conversion Rate – the number of inquiries that turn into actual sales. If 50 people asked for information about your function packages and this resulted in 10 firm bookings, this would be a conversion rate of 1/5 or 20%. You’d also want to look at why so few people were ‘converted’ – the quality of the promotional material, skill of the sales staff, pricing or make-up of your function menus and facilities?
15. Merchandise Sales – food products, t-shirts, caps and other products sold in addition to the usual food & beverage.
16. Sale of Gift Cards – sold and promoted in-house and also online. These can be a significant source of revenue.
See also Kitchen KPIs – How to Measure the Performance of Your Restaurant Kitchen
Bar and Cellar
1. Average Customer Spend – useful to have this measured separately for alcoholic beverages and non-alcohol (juices, mineral waters, soft drinks and coffee).
2. Gross Profit on Sales – the difference between what you sold and what it cost you. The sales mix can heavily influence this.
3. Average Profit % on Sales – useful to see if your sales are holding steady, although the actual Gross Profit (real money) will ultimately matter the most.
4. Stock Value – how much cash is locked up in the value of your cellar? Tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars can be tied up in cellar stock before you realise it!
5. Stock Turnover – how fast is your cellar stock selling? If you carry wine stock worth $50,000 and the value (not sales) of what you sell each week is only $10,000, it’s taking 5 weeks to turn over your stock.
6. Carrying Cost of Stock – what is the cost of financing this $50,000 of stock?
7. Sales vs Stocktake Discrepancies – alcohol means security problems, and keeping an eye on ‘shrinkage’, staff drinks and stealing is a constant problem.
See also How to Measure and Dramatically Improve Your Bar Profits
Check the other useful blog posts on the Foodie Coaches website…
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