At a time when restaurant finances are getting squeezed from many directions, do you know which budgetary battles are most important to fight? In other words, when you’re managing such expenses as labor, ingredients, rent and third-party delivery, does your balance sheet give you clear answers about how much each of those expenses is impacting your bottom line? It needs to, since your gut instinct may not be correct. Case in point: The results of a recent study by New School Center for New York City Affairs and the National Employment Law Project found that restaurants in New York City were more negatively impacted by rising occupancy costs and the fees charged by third-party delivery services than they were adversely affected by the near-doubling of the minimum wage paid to hourly employees in the past five years, Restaurant Business Online reports. The Fight for $15 wage battles of recent years had many operators concerned they would need to boost menu prices beyond what guests were willing to pay – and minimum wage escalation isn’t an insignificant expense for operators to be sure. But while New York isn’t like every market, the rising minimum wage in the city has had a smaller-than-expected impact in a diversity of regions, whether in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn or the Bronx. As the minimum wage has been ascending in geographical regions across the country for years, you may be able to protect your bottom line by focusing on negotiating more favorable terms with a third-party delivery company, adjusting your business model so you can occupy a smaller or different footprint, or getting a stronger handle on hidden back-of-house costs.

How much science is behind your menu? In other words, to what extent do you review your restaurant’s sales, inventory, scheduling, loyalty program and other areas of your operation where you collect data to better understand how these predictive analytics work together? Doing so can help you predict what will sell, so you have sufficient inventory on hand and won’t lose sales opportunities. It will also help you put your ordering on autopilot by considering both the historical and day-to-day sales of your business when you order supplies. By having a better handle on what you will need, you can plan your food preparation tasks accordingly so you minimize your waste. Best of all, being able to predict the cravings of your guests goes far in bringing them back.

​Between rising labor costs and falling traffic, there is no shortage of factors squeezing restaurant profits right now. Raising prices to meet margins is one option, but how much are your guests willing to pay before they take their business elsewhere? And what if sales shortfalls are simply due to shifting trends — or your competitor across the street offering a similar product for less? If you use data analytics to manage your food costs, you can uncover helpful information about your inventory. Since your inventory likely eats up 25 to 35 percent of your operating budget, it’s a good place to find lurking costs that can be minimized so you can better manage your spending. To identify opportunities, look at your supply chain and product mix. Do you know how many times your product changes hands and how prices shift with each transition? If you’re looking for help with this and much more, ask about Team Four’s Palette program. We can assess your supply chain, purchases and product mix and then recommend action steps that will help you lower food costs without sacrificing your quality standards. That might involve substituting quality products that still reduce food costs, or identifying trend changes, purchases that aren’t in line with your product specifications, or pricing that doesn’t reflect current trends. Learn more at www.palettefoodservice.com

Mining your data will take you far in predicting your sales and labor needs, but it may not cover all your bases. Factors that are a little less predictable — like a Nor’easter, for example — can catch you unprepared. In addition to monitoring the weather, Upserve advises you to keep tabs on a number of other factors that can send your business on a wild ride if you don’t prepare. At a time when delivery is on the rise, watch for promotions from third-party providers and prepare for a potential spike in delivery business when they offer discounts. Also keep an eye on local events that might bump up your foot traffic and bring in guests from out of town who wouldn’t normally be filling your dining area. Economic factors like fuel prices can have an impact, too, perhaps causing a dip in your dining room business if not business overall.

Prepare to be shocked: The restaurant industry is known for its unusually thin profit margins (Toast suggests they range from 0 to 15 percent, with most restaurants falling between 3 and 5 percent). Okay, that probably sounds pretty familiar, but as with most other areas of your operation, your data can help you uncover surprising areas of waste and make best use of the profits you do have by tracking your profit and loss, as well as your projected and actual cash flow and cost. FSR Magazine advises collecting information on such costs as your rent and utilities, wages, revenues within a set time period, cost of raw materials, number of items sold and the average cost per item, total food cost, cash flow projections and profit. Reports from your POS can provide the most detailed information here, but also look to your credit card processor to identify trends, as well as records from third-party delivery providers.

If you’re among the many restaurants transitioning to delivery service, your POS can help you reap rewards from the data you collect from each order — but make sure you track your progress in a way that helps you respond to patterns as opposed to one-off customer complaints. For example, Modern Restaurant Management advises you to turn to your POS to assess your results as a whole: Do you have one delivery driver who is consistently late? A line worker who often misses including requested condiments in orders? Or do your soup containers leak, generating regular complaints from customers? Which items are your most profitable and which are rarely ordered at all? Reviewing your POS for patterns tied to your food, personnel, packaging and service can help you see where adjustments are needed.

The better consumer data you have, the more you strengthen your capabilities to personalize service, forecast guest demand and labor needs, and ensure the accuracy of guest orders. But as you look to use data to provide superior service and make your guests’ experiences more customized, be careful to not step across the line into invading your guests’ privacy. Consumers know you want their data — and they may not be so comfortable about it — so be prepared to defend how you manage it. If any of your guests were to ask you about how you collect and use their personal information, could you respond to them in a way that demonstrates you’re being careful and thoughtful? The California Privacy Act of 2018, which goes into effect in 2020, is designed to serve as a bill of rights for consumers whose data have been collected by businesses. It will enable consumers to request an accounting of what personal information of theirs a business has collected, how the business gathered and is using that information, and who can access it. Consumers can have their data deleted upon request and can demand that a business not sell any of the information it has collected. While this particular legislation will apply to just California, note that it may serve as a blueprint for other states — and encourage consumers everywhere to take steps to protect their data. To pre-empt that, partner with your suppliers and other vendors to set standards for data protection and encourage collaboration now. For some help in assessing your needs and how to protect the data you collect, consult the National Restaurant Association’s two guides on cybersecurity and data protection, Cybersecurity 101 and Cybersecurity 201

After the holidays, many restaurants see a dip in business. Motivating your best guests to come back will be especially important to keeping business on track. But when you think of your best guests, does a specific person come to mind — or just a list of traits? Creating a set of guest personas can help you understand who you’re trying to attract and fine-tune your marketing so you encourage them to return. According to The Rail, it’s important to combine both qualitative and quantitative data in your research. Studying your Google analytics data may tell you the age and sex of your average website visitor, for example, but may be less specific about their food preferences. For qualitative information, interview and survey your guests — canvass your mailing list and offering a discount or other promotion for their participation — and ask what they care about. Try to elicit quotes from them to understand what influences them. Your final guest personas — and you can have several categories of them depending on the diversity of guests you serve — can be given a name, vocation and other personal information but shouldn’t necessarily be specific individuals you know in real life. Instead, they should be composites of people who encompass the range of qualities you see in your guest community.

Businesses of all sizes crave customer data, and restaurants are no exception. Eater reports that a new coffee shop in Providence, R.I. started an experiment whereby patrons (many of them college students) are given a free cup of coffee in exchange for providing details such as their name, birthday, phone number, email address, major and professional interests. While such data collection could be a dystopian sign of things to come, restaurant operators have an advantage in that a consumer sharing information is readily doing so in order to access promotions (unlike a person searching online for a clothing item and subsequently getting barraged with banner ads featuring that item). But as consumers guard their data more closely, make sure you are careful about how you and your vendors are using it — i.e. don’t surrender it to third-party delivery partners who might sell it to competitors — and make sure you have a technology crisis management plan in place so that if and when a breach occurs, you can demonstrate you have taken steps to protect your guests’ information.