The food beverage industry can be extremely demanding if not highly competitive. Hence, it is important for managers and staff to remove guesswork from their vocabularies and instead utilize a dashboard app or two that will be able to assist them in running the business effectively, efficiently, and profitably.
Aside from standard excel dashboards, there are other reporting tools that focus on various metrics and KPIs that ensure that restaurants know what their strong and weak points are, where they are doing great service and earnings wise, and where they need to take more action and implement better controls.
Especially now that we live in a data-driven environment where access to real-time information is easier than ever, there is no reason for restaurants not to use excel dashboards to monitor their daily operations. There are distinct areas that need to be focused on and here they are:
- Kitchen
- Food Cost
By comparing weekly food sales with purchases, your dashboard app will tell you whether you’re profiting from daily kitchen operations or not. Even spoiled food and other wastage are computed to determine the overall cost.
In the food beverage industry, there are certain percentages for food costs that are acceptable and those which are simply unjustifiable.
- Kitchen Labor
It is also important for managers to know whether they have too many staff working in the kitchen at said hours of the day or not.
With the help of a dashboard, they can properly allocate the available manpower to maximize resources and minimize payroll expenditures.
- Food Stock
Maintaining the right inventory levels will help reduce wastage due to spoiling. It will also ensure that customers are able to order what they want, when they want to.
A dashboard can be used to monitor food stocks in real time informing kitchen staff when they need to reorder or stop ordering certain ingredients.
- Staff
- Wage Cost
The right reporting tools can help managers determine overall labor costs by assessing wages as a percentage of sales and monitoring daily logged manpower hours for the entire restaurant staff.
With this information, managers can balance overheads and schedule shifts properly ensuring that the establishment is never over or understaffed.
- Sick Days and Absenteeism
Excel dashboards can also be programmed to monitor staff attendance ensuring that staff don’t exceed the allowable sick days and that absenteeism is controlled.
It will also provide managers with real-time information on who’s in and who won’t be working per day allowing them to make immediate shift changes and the like.
- Turnover Rate
Turnover rates should also be measured where average lengths of employment are recorded and assessed month on month. It will give the managers an idea on if their employment practices need to be evaluated.
- Bar and Cellar
- Sales Per Head
To make the most of beverage stocks, it is important that the establishment knows what their patrons like to drink when they come visit. From juices to sodas to alcohol, all these can be monitored using a dashboard.
- Gross Profit
Especially for alcohol, every bottle comes at a certain cost which can be lower if the establishment buys in bulk. These costs should be assessed by managers to determine the right order quantities that will help them realize larger profit margins per sale.
- Inventory
In line with monitoring what customers are ordering, executive dashboards can also be programmed to help managers control inventory levels as beverages have expiration dates too and wastage is not something that is welcome in the food beverage industry.
- Carrying Cost
The thing about beverages, especially wine, is that they come with carrying costs or storage costs that need to be considered as well. Especially if special rooms and cellars need to be built to house these stores in, the related costs of keeping them in the restaurant needs to be deducted from overall profits.
- Finance
And of course, finances also need to be paid attention to. With the use of a simple dashboard app, managers can monitor daily sales and expenditures, wastage costs and other miscellaneous expenses, overhead payments, and so on.
With information provided at a glance, and in real time, managers can immediately tell whether the business is doing well or is in need of corrective action.