A few months ago, I was reading a book called The Four Disciplines of Execution by Sean Covey and Chris McChesney which talked about the importance of a scoreboard. They were consulting with a client in Louisiana shortly after Hurricane Katrina.

If you don’t know, the south is big on football, so they told the client that they weren’t going to take them out to a big fancy dinner, but to a football game instead.

It turned out to be a little different because instead of the game being the highlight, the conversations people were having in the stands were the first priority with the game happening in the background with no one really paying attention. See, Katrina had knocked out the scoreboard so people were holding up cards so you knew what the score was, but since the giant scoreboard wasn’t there they lost interest in the game and turned to conversations with each other.

The same thing happens in your restaurant. You and your staff loses interest in the game you’re playing. Your scoreboard should be compiled of things that are important to you. Generally speaking, there’s 6 things that should be on there.

SALES
What are your sales in general? Sales per category?

DIRECT OPERATING EXPENSES
If you aren’t familiar with what direct operating expenses are, check out this video (link to here: https://therestaurantboss.com/cogs-vs-direct-oeprating-expense/)

PER PERSON AVERAGE
This is not the check average, but the per person average.

COST OF GOODS SOLD
What is your food cost? Beverage cost? Liquor, beer and wine costs?

LABOR COST
This one is pretty obvious, what is your labor cost?

PRIME COSTS
This is the cost of goods sold plus your labor cost.

On a daily basis, you should be able to look at your scoreboard and know exactly what’s happening in your restaurant. Your staff at certain levels can have access to the information they need to know as well.

It’s important to remember that the scoreboard is showing you what’s already happened so you’ll also need a system to get you ahead of the game and become more proactive. The best way to do that is to compare it to your budget so as you go through your month you can see if there are areas that need to be worked on whereas if you only look at your scoreboard at the end of the month, it’s like looking at a P&L statement – it’s too late to do anything.

I’ve created BACON for you, software that will help you create all of the things that we’ve talked about here (and more!) If you’d like free access to that, there’s a button below the video on this page.