How do reporting and analytics play an important role?

Reporting and analytics mean gathering and analyzing. By using the restaurant's data to help measure restaurant performance and improve decision-making. The data that is analyzed usually comes from a restaurant's POS system. It also helps with data related to sales, order information, staff schedules, and inventory.

Most restaurants generate this data on a daily basis, but it is not utilized properly. That is where reporting and analytics can help the restaurant. Rather than trying to guess what is working, you can see the result.

For example, the report shows your best sellers, what hours you get the most traffic, or where you are experiencing decreasing sales. Analytics takes this a step further by enabling you to see the trends and patterns that exist over time.

Restaurant owners can:

• Monitor and track daily and monthly sales figures
• Determine which menu items perform well and those that do not
• Analyze staff performance
• Monitor and control food and operating costs

Many restaurants wrongly track total sales. This provides very little meaningful data. What is needed is more analysis and understanding of 'why' something is occurring.