What is YoY (Year-over-Year) in the Restaurant Industry?

YoY, or year-over-year, is a way of measuring restaurant performance against performance in the same time period of the prior year.

Restaurants use it to assess trends, business growth, or decline.

In the restaurant world, sales, profits, labor cost, guest count, and inventory are often measured on a YoY basis. A restaurant may compare its sales performance from the month of March 2026 to sales from March 2025 in order to analyze trends and changes in the business.

YoY comparison is key for the restaurants in the US as it eliminates the seasonal and short-term volatility from the business's performance. Comparing the data from the same period of consecutive years allows accounting for holidays, seasonal patterns, or any fluctuations in customer behavior.

Restaurants use the data of YoY comparison to measure the success of various factors like marketing campaigns, prices, number of employees, and the general business growth. The same metrics help the multi-site operators and investors in comparing the performance of stores.

If restaurants are not looking at a YoY comparison, then they could be making short-sighted decisions and not seeing the bigger picture with their sales and operations.

Some examples of YoY metrics would be total sales growth, ticket average, online sales growth, labor cost, or same-store sales.