Pop quiz: What did you learn last week from your guest count tracker, the one that compares each day in each unit with their counterpart last year?
When restaurant owners start to think about guest count first – and they see it either holding, eroding, or slowly increasing – it inspires and demands action. It makes you ask what your guests want, where you fall short, and where opportunities exist.
When I show my clients the importance of guest count, they (and I) suddenly start to lock in on how to increase it.
Not on Your P&L
Guest count remains the most important metric we now have, and that’s been a significant mind shift over the past few years.
In this industry, we were all brought up to know our P&Ls backwards and forwards: revenue, prime cost, unit-level profit.
Then this current set of economic conditions and consumer behavior came along and started taunting us, saying, “That’s really funny that you tediously go line by line on your income statement when the key to your success isn’t even there.”
Even AI can’t help you when you ask it the wrong question.
Behind Your Revenue Numbers
No one wants to see their volume going up a little and their guest count going down – a position currently occupied by a lot of restaurant brands that require attention.
Years of inflation mean the unit-level volumes you talk about, or even brag about, don’t have the same meaning they used to.
Your guest count tracker compels action. Every day, it tells you a story about how many people decided on your restaurant, texted their friends, opened their car doors, and then navigated to your parking lot – and how that’s changed over time.
It shows how many people believe your restaurant offers them good value – not in terms of dollars spent but in terms of the value of what they experienced in your dining room.
It inspires my clients to create new offerings, raise their service game, re-examine their brands, or change the make-up of their senior management team.
Focus Your Whole Team
Make your guest count tracker a focal point of your weekly and periodic conversations with operators. At your weekly operations meetings, make guest count the first metric you discuss. Same at your statement review meetings.
The good news? The top-performing brands out there are showing 6% YOY sales increases. So it can be done. For many people, aspects of their business that they haven’t gotten around to handling can open up guest count increases that transform an adequate or good business to a top performer.
