The twelve numbers every venue owner should know weekly.
A seven-page operating guide. What to measure, how to calculate it, what good looks like, and what to do when a number is off. Written by operators who run their own rooms, not by a software company selling you a dashboard.
What is inside
Twelve metrics in four groups. Every one has the formula, the target range we hold our own venues to, and the specific action to take when it moves the wrong way.
- Prime cost as a percentage of sales
- Food cost, actual versus theoretical
- Beverage cost by category
- Labor as a percentage of sales, by daypart
- Sales per labor hour
- Average check, or per-cap
- Covers by daypart against last year
- Menu contribution margin
- Waste as a percentage of sales, by reason
- Forward booking pace
- Cost per booked event
- Review velocity and rating trend
A one-page weekly scorecard with a target column, a this-week column, and a last-week column. Fill it in Monday morning in about ten minutes.
Independent operators running roughly one to fifteen million dollars in revenue: single restaurants, bars, entertainment venues, and event businesses. If you already run a weekly numbers meeting with a written scorecard, you will not learn much. If you look at sales and the bank balance and call that reporting, this guide is the fastest fix available to you.
Where should we send it?
The download link appears on this page the moment you submit, and a copy lands in your inbox.
Here it is.
A copy is on its way to your inbox as well. If it does not arrive in a few minutes, check your spam folder or email info@hhsoha.com.
Download the PDF Try the prime cost calculatorThree numbers beaten to death is worth more than twelve tracked badly.
Nobody implements twelve metrics at once and sustains it. The guide says so on page two, and it is the part most owners skip.
Pick the first three. Track them for four weeks until the number is boring. Add the next three. An owner who reliably knows three numbers beats an owner who theoretically tracks twelve, every time, because the reliable one can tell whether this week was better than last week without opening a spreadsheet.
The reason we published this instead of keeping it internal is simple. The gap between operators who run a weekly numbers meeting and operators who do not is the single largest predictor of whether a good room survives a bad year. That gap is not a software problem. It is a habit problem, and habits are free.
- Same day, same way. Consistency beats precision. A slightly wrong number measured identically every week still shows you the trend, which is the part that matters.
- Write the target down first. A number with no target is trivia. Set it before you look at the actual, or you will rationalize whatever you find.
- Two bad weeks is an agenda item. Not a shrug. Assign it to a person with a date.
Want the math done for you?
The calculator turns your prime cost into dollars, then into what those dollars are worth if you ever sell. Takes about thirty seconds and asks for three numbers.