Pivot Hospitality Solutions
Making the Margins
The Restaurant CFO
What did you keep?
Drop in one period of numbers and this reads your health back to you. Where you have a target, it grades you against yours. Where you do not, it falls back to the published industry median and tells you it did, because a median is somebody else's restaurant. Then it tells you what each grade means and what might be moving it.
Setup
One period. A month is easiest. A week is sharper.
The tolerance band is yours. Anything inside this percentage of the target counts as Watch instead of Off track. Five percent means a thirty two percent target stays yellow up to thirty three and a half, then turns red. Change it to whatever you and your GM actually agreed on.
Money in and money out
Net sales means after discounts and comps, before sales tax. Leave anything blank that you do not have and that line will not be graded.
Operations
This is where the finance side stops guessing. Without guests and hours, a cost percentage cannot tell you whether the problem is price, volume, or scheduling.
Last period, for the trend
Two periods is a mood. But direction still matters, and a line moving the wrong way two periods running is the one you pick up.
Your targets
Anything you fill in here overrides the published median, and the map will say so. A target you set beats a national figure every time, because the national figure has never seen your lease, your menu or your neighborhood.
Your health map
Fill in what you have. Your map builds as you type.
Nothing graded yet
Start with net sales and any one cost line
Fill in what you have on the left. You do not need every field. The more you give it, the more lines it can grade.
Your figures never leave your browser. The email is so Jessica can send you the readout and nothing you did not ask for.
What the grades mean
- On track
- At or better than the target being used. It does not mean the target is right. If every line came back green on the first try, the targets are too loose.
- Watch
- Past the target but still inside the tolerance band you set. One period here is noise. Two in a row is the line you pick up.
- Off track
- Past the target by more than the band. Something changed, or the target was never realistic. Both are worth knowing which.
- Not graded
- Calculated and shown, but there is no target and no published figure to hold it against. Blank is an honest answer.
What it is costing you
You just found the leaks. Finding which one is real is the other half.
Every line above lists what might be moving it. Narrowing that list to the one thing actually costing you money takes the invoices, the schedule and the menu mix side by side. That is what a First Look is: ninety minutes on your real numbers with an operator who has worked every station in the building.
Book a First Look Just send me the weekly stuffBreak even, contribution margin, what is left after prime and occupancy, and days of cash are arithmetic on the numbers you entered. They use no benchmark at all. Contribution margin treats food, alcohol and hourly wages as variable and management salaries, payroll burden, occupancy and everything else as fixed. That is an approximation.