Plenty of venue owners only find out how the business is really going when their accountant calls — months after the quarter ended, long after anything could be done about it. You don’t need a finance degree to stay ahead of that. You need five numbers, pulled from your POS, checked once a week. Fifteen minutes, same time every week, ideally Monday morning with a coffee.
1. Gross profit percentage
What’s left from every dollar of sales after you’ve paid for the ingredients or the keg. If you sold $10,000 and the stock behind those sales cost $3,200, your GP is 68%.
As a rough guide, food typically runs 65–75%, coffee higher, and bar sales vary widely by product mix. The exact benchmark matters less than the trend: if your GP slips two points and your menu hasn’t changed, something has — a supplier price rise you didn’t catch, over-portioning, or stock walking out the back door.
2. Wages as a percentage of sales
Labour is most venues’ biggest controllable cost. Divide total wages (including super) by total sales for the week. Many venues aim somewhere around 28–35%, but the right number depends on your format — a counter-service café runs leaner than a bistro with table service.
The weekly habit that pays off: compare wage percentage against your roster before the week starts. If a quiet week is forecast and the roster hasn’t changed, you’re choosing a bad number in advance.
3. Average spend per transaction
Total sales divided by number of transactions. It’s the cheapest growth lever you have: lifting average spend from $14 to $15.50 across 800 weekly transactions adds over $60,000 a year — with no extra customers, no extra marketing.
It moves with small things: whether staff offer a pastry with the coffee, whether the specials board is actually filled in, whether desserts get mentioned. When it dips, it’s usually a training conversation, not a mystery.
4. Top and bottom sellers
Your POS knows exactly what sold. Look at the top ten and bottom ten items each week. The top ten tells you what to never run out of and what to build specials around. The bottom ten is a list of candidates to cut — every slow item ties up stock, prep time, and menu space that a better seller could use.
5. Waste and variance
The gap between what you should have used (based on what you sold) and what actually left the storeroom. If you sold 100 schnitzels but 115 portions of chicken are gone, seven kilos of margin vanished — to over-portioning, spoilage, staff meals, or theft. You can’t manage it if you’re not measuring it, and this is the number most venues never look at. Tracking inventory and recipes in your system is what makes it visible.
The habit beats the spreadsheet. Same five numbers, same morning, every week, written down next to last week’s. Within a month you’ll know your venue’s normal — and you’ll spot trouble in days instead of finding it in your quarterly accounts.
This is exactly what our quarterly business reviews build on: your POS captures the data all quarter, then we sit down together and turn it into decisions — what to reprice, what to cut, where the margin is leaking. The weekly numbers keep you on course; the quarterly review sets the direction.
Ask the provider for a reference from a comparable venue — similar size, similar town. Ten minutes on the phone with another owner who’s been through setup, training, and their first support call is worth more than any brochure.
Want these numbers without the homework?
We set up your POS to capture them automatically, then review them with you every quarter.
