Restaurant reporting: Why it matters

Reviewing restaurant reports provides a data-driven overview of the business’s performance, enabling informed decisions, which can significantly impact profitability and operational efficiency.

Financial health

Reports, including sales reports, profit-and-loss statements, and cost of goods sold (COGS), can provide a clear picture of your restaurant’s financial health.

Inventory management

Some reports, like inventory reports, allow you to track stock levels, top items used, and waste. All this data can help you reduce food waste and optimize purchasing.

Labor management

Labor reports help you track employee hours, payroll, training, and productivity in your restaurant.

Menu optimization

Menu-related reports offer analyses to track popular dishes or beverages. They’re designed to help you improve profitability by identifying your most-sold dishes and those that should be revised or removed.

Customer insights

One of the main benefits of restaurant reporting is getting insights into customer behavior. Customer insights can also include feedback through post dine-in guest surveys.

Operational efficiency

These reports can identify areas of inefficiency in a dining concept’s operations, such as slow service, high waste, or excessive costs.

Top 7 restaurant reports to review for excelling performance

1. Daily sales report

By far the most important restaurant report is the daily sales report. It gives you an overview of your daily performance and covers various sales metrics in your restaurant.

The daily sales report shows you:

  • Total sales: A straightforward indicator that quickly shows whether you’ve had a strong or weak sales day.
  • Sales by category: A restaurant’s daily sales report breaks down sales data into specific item types, offering deeper insights into guest preferences and purchasing patterns.

2. Top clients report

This is one of the most important restaurant reports that you can get through Servme’s restaurant reservation management system.

The top clients report in Servme is specifically designed to help you understand and nurture your most valuable guests.

The report provides the following insights and more:

  • Guest ranking: Clearly ranks your guests based on their total spend within a selected date range.
  • Total spend: Tracks the overall amount each guest has spent at your restaurant.
  • Average spend per visit: Shows how much each guest typically spends on every visit.
  • Guest tags: Includes valuable tags such as “Returning Guest,” “New Guest,” and specific guest preferences or allergies.
  • No-show tracking: Provides visibility into guests’ reliability.

3. Top-selling items

Another important restaurant report to regularly review is the top-selling items report. As its name suggests, it shows you your most in-demand dishes, beverages, desserts, etc.

4. New vs returning report

This report looks at your guests, new guests versus your returning guests.

Returning customers, or loyal customers, offer a larger opportunity to increase restaurant sales. Research indicates that a 5% increase in customer loyalty can boost profitability by 25% to 95% over time.

5. Feedback report

Another report you can generate through Servme is the feedback report. It shows you all the guest feedback provided through guest surveys.

6. Payment report

The payment report is a Servme-specific restaurant report. It provides a comprehensive view of all payment transactions processed by your restaurant.

Servme’s restaurant payment report covers several detailed fields, including:

  • Card information: Displays the last 4 digits of the guest’s card.
  • Transaction ID: Provides a unique identifier for each transaction.
  • Reservation date and time: Shows the date and time of the reservation associated with the payment.
  • Package information: Highlights specific packages or offers purchased.
  • Transaction status: Indicates the outcome of each payment transaction.

7. Manager’s report

The Manager’s Report is a unique report offered through Servme.

Highly customizable and comprehensive, the Manager Report consolidates operational and guest insights. It helps managers monitor daily operations, optimize and improve guest experiences, and assess marketing effectiveness.

8. Summary report

The new summary report from Servme helps you analyze performance over a custom date range. It offers insights into reservations, revenue, and guest spend for deeper decision-making.

Generate restaurant reports with Servme

Managing your restaurant on a daily basis isn’t easy. That’s why reviewing restaurant reports can help, not only manage these operations, but also understand which operations need more focus, support, or even training.

Servme’s reservation management system supports dining concepts in managing various operations, from getting and increasing online reservations, to managing shifts and cover flow, to collecting reservation deposits and reducing no-shows and cancellations.

Discover how Servme can help your restaurant, from reservations to building relationships with guests to marketing to reporting. Learn more here.