Menu engineering: four groups, four different actions
Contribution in dollars, not percentages. A $34 dish at 40% beats a $12 dish at 30%. The four groups every menu divides into and what to do with each.
Insights
For the people running the floor.
Page 8 of 9.
Table turn time is your revenue ceiling
1.5 turns on 40 seats is 60 covers; 2 turns is 80. Same rent, same staff. Where the missing fifteen minutes actually goes, and how to get it back.
How much of the room to hold for walk-ins
All reservations means empty tables when people no-show. All walk-ins means no planning. The mix that works, and the cancellation call that costs you twice.
A waitlist that converts a queue into covers
Quote honestly and let people leave. Why under-quoting feels like good news and is not, and the busy-night calls that pull your host off the door.
Comps and voids: the difference that matters
A void removes something never made; a comp removes something you paid to cook. Why aggregate totals hide everything, and the four controls that work.
Delivery commission: is it actually incremental?
A $20 dish contributing $14 in the room contributes about $8 through delivery. How to test whether it is extra orders or the same ones at a worse margin.
The hour before service decides the service
What belongs on a front-of-house and kitchen open, the five-minute brief worth doing daily, and the item almost every checklist is missing.
Schedule to covers, not to days
Four servers across a whole Friday is overstaffed for three hours and right for two. Staggered starts, the ratio to schedule against, and the rules that bite.
Without a count you do not have a food cost
Opening plus purchases minus closing. Skip the count and you are tracking delivery timing. How to make a weekly count survivable, and what it reveals.
Why a restaurant phone needs the register behind it
An appointment is a slot you look up. A table tonight is an answer you compute from the floor, and the floor only exists in the register.
How a restaurant POS actually works, step by step
The chain of events from seating a party to money in the bank, and the five places it usually breaks. Authorisation is not settlement.
Kitchen display or printer: when a screen is worth it
A screen times and routes tickets and cannot jam. Paper survives anything and cannot be bumped by accident. Why most kitchens end up running both.