How to Manage Your Restaurant's Critical Numbers and Avoid Financial Loose Ends

When looking to open your restaurant, most people will emphasize the importance of three things: location, location, location. Once you have opened, everyone will tell you that the three things you need to master to succeed are numbers, numbers, numbers.

It is hard enough to operate well in today's competitive restaurant market considering the time commitment, quality control, customer service standards and labor management. It becomes much more difficult to succeed if you cannot "tie" your numbers together in a way that helps you plan effectively, manage costs more efficiently and increase profits.

And what numbers are we talking about when there are so many to track? There are annual plans, sales forecasts, operating budgets, daily sales records, inventories, cost of sales, controllable expenses, occupancy costs, shareholder value, sales-to-investment ratios and more.

So what numbers do we need to track regularly and consistently? Why are they so important? What do they tell us? When do we need to know them? And how do we use them to increase sales and maximize profits?