Today’s tip for the restaurant industry

Friday night is when you have your lowest labour cost per guest. Do the math; it’s easy. Take your payroll, and take your guest checks for each day of the week and see how much more you pay in labour cost per guest when business is slow. Now, if you are like many operators, you will have too many people working on the slow days (or you will not send them home early enough).

Fix that problem, and then do this: take the staff hours you saved on the slow days and put them on the busy days to improve your guest service and throughput. The win should be sustained higher sales at the same labour cost, which equals overall lower costs per guest.

Courtesy of Hugh Johnston, CA, CMC. Johnston is  a strategy consultant working with chain restaurant and foodservice leaders to unlock greater value in their business. For more information contact Hugh at 416-662-5670 or visit hughjohnston.com.