Let me guess—you’re drowning in restaurant reports.
Trust me, I’ve been there.
Every software system throws dozens of dashboards at you. Your POS has endless data. Your inventory system generates weekly summaries. Your labor platform sends daily breakdowns.
And honestly, most of it is useless noise created by people who’ve never worked a dinner rush (an important litmus test in my opinion).
After years of running restaurants and getting buried in numbers that didn’t actually help me make decisions, I learned something game-changing from industry expert Bill Lindsey: the right restaurant reports act as canaries in a coal mine—they tell you exactly where to focus your attention.
Here are the three that actually matter.
Yeah, I interviewed the Bill Lindsey for the insights in this post. If you want to hear it directly from Bill, check out the video.
Why Most Restaurant Reports Are Useless
Here’s the brutal truth about why operators waste so much time on restaurant reports that don’t actually help them run their business.
As Bill Lindsey puts it: “You’re trying to get business advice from somebody that’s never bussed a table.”
You need to be clear about what you need from your reporting. For example, the numbers you need from your POS are really simple: your sales, what your sales are comprised of, and time punches. You don’t need a dreamscape “dashboard” that you only use 20% of (max) and that makes you feel like you’re missing something.
The real problem isn’t that you—it’s that you’re looking at the wrong restaurant reports entirely. Bill calls this “feeding the delusion of success.” Just like people consume news that reinforces their existing beliefs, restaurant operators often gravitate toward reports that make them feel good rather than reports that reveal actionable problems.
The solution? Start with your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) first.
As Bill says, “My first question is, your KPIs should drive which restaurant reports you actually need to look at, not the other way around.”
Restaurant Report #1: Sales Per Labor Hour
If you’re going to track only one restaurant report, make it this one.
“Number one KPI is sales per labor hour. If you’re not tracking sales per labor hour, then you really are missing the boat. It’s a great way to understand how efficiently you’re running your restaurant,” Bill explains.
This metric measures exactly what it sounds like: how much revenue each labor hour generates.
But here’s where most operators get it wrong—they look at it as one big number instead of breaking it down by department.
Bill recommends getting granular: “Segregate the front of the house, back of the house, bar, etc.” And sometimes you need to get even more specific.
He also mentions, “By the way, with bar, you need to know how many people sat at the bar compared to how many drinks were served in the restaurant.”
If you want to start tracking this metric today, the calculation is simple:
- Front of House: Total sales ÷ front of house labor hours
- Back of House: Total sales ÷ back of house labor hours
- Bar: Bar sales ÷ bar labor hours (but track bar seats vs. restaurant drink service separately)
Once you’ve done that, congrats, you have a baseline! Now track it daily and watch the trends. Are you trending up, down, stable, a mix?
Don’t worry about comparing to industry standards yet—focus on beating your own numbers first.
The goal isn’t perfection; it’s improvement and awareness of how efficiently you’re converting labor hours into revenue.
Restaurant Report #2: Cover Counts
Bill is a huge fan of tracking cover counts.
“I’m big on cover counts. Maybe because a big portion of my restaurant career was in gaming in Las Vegas, where we didn’t charge much for the food, but we served a ton of people. So we were always tracking the number of guests,” Bill explains.
But cover counts aren’t just about knowing how busy you were—they’re about planning and optimization.
This is where Bill took it up a notch.
He used to generate “a report at the end of every shift that gave me the number of guests in 15-minute increments. Hourly is ok for fine dining, but if you’re doing a fast casual type concept, you really want to see in smaller time increments.”
Why? Because the front of the house labor will basically have to be there to take the order and the back of the house labor has to be there to complete the order and make sure that it’s delivered.
So you can plan that into your staffing, but you can also plan it into sales training.
Notice the connection back to our first restaurant report? Cover counts directly impact your sales per labor hour calculations, but they also reveal opportunities for revenue growth through better service and upselling.
Your cover count restaurant report should answer:
- How many guests came through?
- When did they come?
- What did we do to maximize the profit opportunity each guest represented?
Restaurant Report #3: Flow Through Analysis
This restaurant report might be the most eye-opening one you’ll ever calculate.
Essentially, flow through analysis measures how well you’re maximizing the profit potential of every seat and every guest that walks through your door.
The core concept is that when you’re already covering your fixed costs (labor, rent, etc.), each additional customer generates profit at a much higher margin because you only need to cover the variable costs.
So flow through analysis looks at:
- Your baseline revenue across locations
- Which locations generate higher profits relative to their revenue
- How efficiently each location converts incremental guests into bottom-line profit
Here’s the logic that will change how you think about every empty seat:
“If you have a table for four and there are three people seated at that table, what is the potential profit if you set that table for a fourth person?
Think about that math.
“Assuming you’re somewhere in the vicinity of a 30% cost of goods sold, that fourth seat has a yield of potentially 70% profit straight to the bottom line that you can use to offset these costs,” Bill offers.
This means you need to really consider both the number of tables you have in your space, how many people can sit there (2 top, 4 top, 6 top, etc.), and the ratio of your yielding strategy between them.
And this matters a lot.
In jest, Bill mentions, “Anytime I go into a restaurant, and I see a lot of two deuce parties on Four Tops, it just offends me. It’s like a light that’s burnt out. It catches me immediately.”
Ultimately, your flow through restaurant report reveals which managers truly understand how to maximize profit from every guest opportunity.
The Supporting Restaurant Reports (When KPIs Signal Problems)
Here’s where those three core restaurant reports earn their keep—they tell you when to dig deeper.
“The KPIs are the canaries,” Bill explains. “Rather than looking at the reports and trying to figure out how to run your business, look at the KPIs, and they’ll tell you which reports you need to focus on to improve your business.”
So when your sales per labor hour starts trending the wrong direction, that’s when you pull your detailed labor reports: forecast versus schedule versus actual. Is the problem in your scheduling? Are you consistently over or under on labor? The KPI points you to the specific restaurant report that has your answer.
Similarly, when food costs start impacting your flow through, you need two specific reports working together: commodity cost alerts and target cost variance. Set percentage thresholds on key ingredients—if avocado costs jump 5% and you’re running a Mexican concept, you get an alert. Then your target cost variance report shows you which specific menu items are now eating into your profits and need price or recipe adjustments.
The beauty is you’re not drowning in data. Your KPIs act as early warning systems that direct you to exactly which detailed restaurant reports deserve your attention.
The lesson: start with 2-3 KPIs maximum, not 15 different restaurant reports. This will keep you and your team aligned on what we need to do.
That peace of mind—knowing your business through a few critical numbers rather than drowning in endless data—is worth more than any complex dashboard.
Stop Drowning in Data, Start Driving Results
The restaurant industry loves to overwhelm you with data, but the most successful operators focus on what actually moves the needle.
If you’re not sure which metrics make the most sense for your restaurant concept, or you need help setting up systems to track these numbers properly, connect with a restaurant-specialized accountant via The Restaurant CPAs. Our accounting alliance understands the industry and can help you identify the right reports for your specific business.
Get in touch today!
