Each time your staff enters an order and swipes a credit card, your cloud-based POS system creates data. While restaurant data analytics may not tell you much on their own, in aggregate, they reveal a great deal about your business.

So how do you make the most of it?

Only 12% of companies leverage the power of data, although using analytics can increase profits by 8% to 10%. 

Data analytics for restaurants can seem daunting. However, understanding them is crucial to your operational and financial literacy as a restaurateur. A modern POS system will present restaurant owners with metrics like the number of times an extra ingredient was requested. You might miss out on a significant amount of revenue if you only increase or decrease the stock for that ingredient after looking at the data. 

We at jalebi.io have designed our smart platform to help you make sense of all that information. Our platform lets you see your entire operation, vertically anchored with inventory management.

Let’s explore restaurant data analytics a bit further. 

Sources of Data in a Restaurant 

Several types of data streams are important for a restaurant. You don’t need all of them, but they do become more useful with time.

1. POS data

Your point-of-sale system (POS) gathers all your information about sales you’ve made. With a modern, cloud-based POS system, you will be able to gather very granular data. This can be seen as transactional data, tip size, discount added, order type, and more. As a result, you can analyze each and every sale in great detail to optimize your every step.

2. Labour data

The next thing to consider is your staff scheduling system. This relieves the bottleneck of paper schedules as it allows you to schedule shifts, communicate with your team, set up payroll, and more. You will be able to view the amount of labour scheduled for every hour of the day as a result of scheduling this way – a digital timesheet for your entire organization.

3. Inventory data 

By connecting your inventory (stock) system to your point-of-sale (POS) and adding all your recipes, you can keep a check on exactly how much of each ingredient is being used, where it is coming from, and when it needs to be replenished. In addition to keeping track of food waste, inventory data can be used to reduce it.

Using these systems, you’ll be able to see the three most important elements of your business’s operational side. You can generate the most valuable reports for your business if these data sources are fed into an analytics system. 

4. Review data

Customer reviews from all different review sites are a great way to understand how good your service is and where it needs to be improved. Considering the sheer amount of different review platforms, it can be difficult to keep track. It is possible to compare reviews across different sites and see trends by bringing them together.

5. Customer data

Customer data can then be included, such as how many times a customer visits your restaurant, what they order, how large their transactions are, and so on. Depending on your business type, loyalty programs, reservation software, and restaurant apps can be used to accomplish this.

6. Delivery data

When you know your most popular delivery platforms, what menu items are most popular per platform, and how fast your delivery times are, you can determine what to promote or where to offer deals.  

7. Sources of additional data

The above data types are the usual suspects in running a restaurant business. Still, you may also have custom data sources such as footfall, wifi connections, or turn-style data that would allow you to analyze trends. In addition, competitor data such as comparable prices and reviews can help you benchmark your business against others in your niche.

What are Restaurant Analytics 

Restaurants have had access to an exponential increase in data sources, recently. Looking at the State of the Industry report – 2021, there has been an enormous number of restaurant tech companies, in the US, as 78% of the top 226 companies in the sector were founded in the last decade. These can be used as useful data sources as analytical techniques are designed to provide early indications of likely trends.

The power of analytics and business intelligence lies in gaining insights that, when put into action, can positively impact a business’s profitability. We all want to be able to do that in an industry where margins are so thin.

The concept of restaurant analytics is gathering, measuring, and combining multiple data sets to create clear, actionable insights. Putting it simply, they examine enormous amounts of data to find the answers to the big whys in a restaurant. 

Restaurant data analytics go deeper than restaurant reporting, which compares data sets. Your restaurant’s full story is told in a way that has never been done before. 

As a result of restaurant analytics, you gain insight into what drives your restaurant’s profitability and what drains it. The Financial Times reported on the purpose of restaurant analytics and stated the need to identify “growth trends” to sustain the future business. Analytics are designed to speculate on trends early on. 

Restaurant data analytics provide a fair idea of what’s to come. To enjoy more success, you can tweak operations, adjust inventories, train employees, fine-tune menus, and rethink customer interactions based on these findings. By refining your takeaway and home delivery offers, restaurant analytics can help you in these troublesome times.

What You Can Get from Incorporating Restaurant Data Analytics 

According to BCG, in their 2018 digital maturity survey of top restaurant brands, 4 out of 5 brands have access to multiple sources of data, but only one in five has a comprehensive big data strategy in place, an integrated customer master data set available to all members of the organization, or the ability to automatically make business decisions based on predictive analytics for restaurants. 

Now more than ever, you need the power of restaurant data analytics. Here’s why:

1. Smarter menus

You can better understand your menu through menu insights, leading to greater profitability. Without restaurant analytics, you may think your best-selling item is the most profitable, but this may not be the case. 

Through jalebi.io‘s POS’ data, you’ll be able to determine which items are bringing your customers back to the restaurant.

Conversely, you might find some untapped potential in a lower-selling item.It will be possible to tell from your restaurant analytics if one of these items creates a higher-than-average number of return guests. 

You can increase sales of this dish and, most importantly, create more repeat customers by highlighting it on your menu, training servers to promote it, and updating its name or description.Even without a magic 8-ball for predicting restaurant success, the data from your restaurant POS system leaves little room for unnecessary losses or expenses.

2. Sales insights 

If you track key KPIs over time, you can see how your business is doing. You can get an idea of seasonal trends and set realistic targets by comparing your sales with last week, last month, last year, or even two years ago (if last year was a write-off due to a pandemic, for example).

Tracking sales versus targets (or budgets) over time is crucial when talking about targets. Therefore, if you have yearly targets, you can break them down into months and weeks and factor in sales patterns, so the first week of summer wouldn’t have the same target as the third week of November.

Keep an eye on guest count. A drop in this indicates that you need to be aware of other mitigating circumstances (e.g., a closed station or a roadblock). As well as helping you determine the most profitable table layout plan based on reservation data, a group’s average revenue per member can also be extremely useful for predicting future sales.

3. Restaurant location

It is important to consider where a restaurant is located when determining how successful it will be. Those who wish to open a restaurant can use predictive analytics to determine whether a given location is a hot spot for customers and which dining format is most popular among customers in a given city.

In addition, multi-unit restaurant groups should not have to drive to all their locations to find out which location performs best. To see how each location is tracking year to date, restaurant analytics can provide owners with a multi-location summary report. For higher profitability, identify which locations need more staff during busy hours or need to change their operating hours.

A cross-location comparison allows you to compare one location to another on a micro level. It is possible to easily analyze the data and take action when you know your most profitable location, your least profitable location, and everything in between.

4. Server information

Could that “All-Star” server really be your restaurant’s secret weapon?

An analytics platform for restaurant management can help managers understand how effectively their servers upsell certain items.

You can motivate employees by creating a competition based on these data points to drive profitability in your restaurant. Employee gamification can improve morale and profits in exchange for a small reward, such as an extra vacation day or gift card, task servers with selling a specific item (wine, dessert, new app, etc.).

Using the analytics function on your cloud-based POS will allow you to get the most accurate data about a competition such as this.

5. Increase customer engagement

Using data, you can measure your customer engagement and loyalty and increase sales.

Investing in a loyalty program can put you in a better position to engage customers and encourage them to spend more at your restaurant. The data you collect about sales can be used to improve customer service, even without a loyalty program.

To increase customer engagement, here are some ways you can use data.

• Make your customer’s experience more personalized

Knowing your customers allows you to build meaningful relationships by personalizing their experience with your restaurant. Your customers respond to promotional offers and collect rewards based on data gathered from your loyalty program. The more often your customers come back to redeem their offers, the more likely they are to spend. 

Enhancing birthday experience is a good one. Spending a certain amount at your restaurant during their birthday month or on their birthday, can get them a FREE menu item.

• Decide on a floor plan that works for you

When moving dining room tables for a party or event, make sure you move the right ones.

See which areas in your venue do better than others. Keep these sections intact during your special event so they can continue to shine.

• Establish customer expectations

Keeping an eye on your low inventory totals during dinner shifts can help avoid ordering an out-of-stock item.

6. Quality control

You can easily gain important insights into food supply chain cycles as they move around the country using big data. Temperature-sensitive products, such as milk, fruits, and vegetables, must be kept in monitored environments to avoid spoilage or melting. IoT sensors can provide real-time data on the shipped products, indicating which items need to be replaced if damaged. 

The Next Step 

Now that you know how restaurant analytics can boost revenue, it’s time to put it together!

jalebi.io correlates real-time data from all your systems so that you can make better decisions. 

Discover your restaurant’s full story through data by joining our waiting list right now!