How Can You Determine Realistic Production Goals for Your Restaurant?

Running a restaurant is a fast-paced and rewarding experience. It’s such a thrill to run your own business and this field of work especially allows you to serve customers the way you want. Whether you’ve just started out or you’ve been in business for a while, it’s important to set realistic production goals for your restaurant. After all, these goals will determine your profits and success.

What's the Demand?

There are many ways to determine your restaurant’s demand. We recommend you start by examining the sales trends you’ve been experiencing. You may find there are days of the week that are more popular than others. Typically weekends will be busier than weeknights, but what’s outside of the usual weekend crowd? If you see a spike in traffic on Wednesdays at 3pm or for lunch on Mondays, think about whether you have been running promotions or special items on those days. This can help you determine some of your most popular dishes and discounts. Capitalize on that research by creating a realistic production goal.

How Much Food Can Your Restaurant Make?

How long is your customer waiting from the moment they order to the moment they receive their food? Your restaurant’s rate of production needs to match the customer’s demand. In the manufacturing industry, this is called takt time . Takt time in manufacturing is the average time between the start of production of one unit to the start of production of the next unit, when production is set to match the rate of customer demand. 

For this post, we’ll consider takt time as the turnaround time for each table. To determine accurate wait times for your hungry guests, find the average amount of time that occurs between the start of production for one table and the start of the next table. Your takt time needs to be up to speed with your customer demand to run an efficient restaurant. If you calculate takt time and find that customers are waiting longer than usual, that may indicate that you need to add staff or improve overall efficiency in your kitchen.

Even if you have the fastest kitchen around, you can’t effectively reduce your customer’s wait time without also minimizing mistakes. With quality point of sale (POS) software, you can create a seamless production line between your front-of-house and kitchen staff. Intuitive, easy-to-use software (like Total Touch®) can provide your employees with a clear reference for their tasks and even help them increase productivity and minimize mistakes. When you have systems set in place to document your efficiency, you will gain a better understanding of how much you can produce.

What Can You Afford?

Regardless of the type of food you’re serving, you have to think about the costs associated with each meal. If you’re running a special that will require you to invest in higher quality cuts of meat or a specialized product that you don’t use often, you should especially think about the costs. To avoid overbuying, try marketing these special meals as “exclusive” or “limited time only”, and just serve them until the ingredients run out. Thoughtfully marketing these special meals can increase demand and help you maintain profitability.

It’s important to set realistic production goals for your restaurant. If you need help managing these goals, contact us today!