Essential Restaurant Industry Benchmarks You Need to Know

Running a successful restaurant involves more than just serving delicious food. 

It requires understanding and managing key metrics that drive efficiency and profitability. 

Keeping track of restaurant industry benchmarks is an integral part of helping you identify areas for improvement and enhance your overall performance. 

In this guide, we will look at the essential benchmarks every restaurant should monitor and how Opsyte’s tools can help you stay on top of them.

Keeping Labour Costs Under Control

Labour costs rank among the largest expenses in the restaurant business. For table service restaurants, labour costs often fall between 30% and 40% of total sales. Keeping these costs under control is crucial for maintaining and improving the average profit margin for restaurants.

• How Opsyte can Help: Opsyte’s time and attendance, scheduling, and payroll tools simplify managing these expenses. Making scheduling far easier with forecasting and templates, and accurately tracking clock-ins and clock-outs ensures efficient staff utilisation and prevents overspending. With real-time data and detailed reports, managers can quickly spot inefficiencies and make necessary adjustments.

Mastering Prime Cost

Prime cost combines labour and food costs, representing a significant portion of your expenses. Keeping prime costs below 60% is ideal for sustaining profitability. High prime costs can quickly eat into your profits, making it essential to monitor this metric closely.

• How Opsyte can Help: Opsyte’s labour management and financial reporting tools provide detailed insights into your prime costs. These tools help you monitor expenses, identify cost-saving opportunities, and optimise spending to improve your bottom line. By tracking prime costs, you can ensure that both your labour and food costs remain within acceptable ranges, contributing to a healthier profit margin.

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Maximising Daily Sales and Optimising Profit Margins

Daily sales and profit margins are critical indicators of financial health. Tracking these metrics allows you to gauge performance and make informed decisions. 

A healthy profit margin is something like a guarantee for long-term sustainability. Understanding your daily sales helps you see patterns, predict busy periods, and plan resources accordingly.

• How Opsyte can Help: Opsyte’s restaurant analytics and daily snapshot reporting offer detailed insights into your sales and profit margins. These tools help you track performance and make necessary adjustments to stay profitable. 

Regular monitoring of these metrics allows you to make strategic decisions, such as adjusting menu prices or launching promotions, to boost sales and maintain a strong average restaurant profit percentage.

Perfecting Table Turnover Rate for Higher Profits

Table turnover rate measures how often a table is occupied during a shift. Higher turnover rates generally mean more customers served and increased revenue. Efficiently managing table turnover ensures that you are making the most out of your seating capacity, especially during peak hours.

• How Opsyte can Help: Opsyte’s scheduling and time management tools help optimise staff efficiency.
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• With staff having a better work-life balance thanks to efficient scheduling, they are all set to deliver better service ensuring quick table turnover without compromising service quality.
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• By effectively managing staff shifts and ensuring adequate coverage, you can handle high customer volumes smoothly, improving your table turnover rate and overall revenue.

RELATED: How to Increase Restaurant Gross Profit Margins with These Proven Strategies

Reducing Employee Turnover Rate

High employee turnover is a major issue in the hospitality industry, with 51% of restauranteurs naming staffing as a top challenge. High turnover can lead to increased hiring and training costs, affecting service quality. 

Monitoring and managing turnover rates is crucial for maintaining a stable workforce. A lower turnover rate means experienced staff, which often translates to better service and customer satisfaction.

• How Opsyte can Help: Opsyte’s HR and staff management tools streamline onboarding and improve retention. These tools streamline onboarding and allow staff to manage their schedules, time off, and personal data, leading to higher job satisfaction and lower turnover rates. 

Elevating Average Bill Size

Average bill size, or the average amount spent by a customer per visit, directly impacts your revenue. Increasing this metric can significantly boost overall sales. Encouraging customers to spend more per visit through upselling and promotions can have a substantial impact on your bottom line.

• How Opsyte can Help: Opsyte’s analytics and reporting tools help you monitor average bill size and identify opportunities to upsell or introduce new menu items that encourage higher spending. By understanding customer preferences and spending patterns, you can tailor your menu and marketing efforts to increase the average check size, driving higher revenues.

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Optimising Operational Efficiency

Operational efficiency affects your restaurant's profitability. Optimising processes to reduce waste, improve service speed, and enhance overall performance is essential. Efficient operations lead to lower costs and higher customer satisfaction.

• How Opsyte can Help: Opsyte’s automated data entry, invoice processing, and comprehensive reporting tools streamline these processes, helping you achieve and maintain high levels of efficiency. Automating routine tasks frees up time for staff to focus on providing excellent service, further improving operational efficiency and customer experience.

Serving Success: Key Benchmarks to Elevate Your Restaurant

Understanding and monitoring key restaurant industry benchmarks is part of the recipe for success. 

From labour costs and prime costs to daily sales, table turnover rates, and employee turnover, each benchmark provides valuable insights into your restaurant's performance.

Opsyte’s suite of management tools helps you stay on top of these benchmarks, offering comprehensive solutions for scheduling, time and attendance, payroll, financial reporting, and more. 

By leveraging Opsyte’s technology, you can reduce operational effort, save financial wastage, and focus on delivering excellent service to your customers.

Opsyte stands ready to support your restaurant in achieving these goals, providing the technology and data-driven insights necessary to thrive in the competitive hospitality industry. 

Make the most of what Opsyte offers, and take your restaurant to the next level.

Book a demo with Opsyte today and see how our tools can transform your restaurant’s efficiency and profitability.