Seeing Your Restaurant from the Inside Out:
How Operational Analysis Can Help Your Restaurant Grow
Running a restaurant takes a lot of hard work and determination. You need to know what type of restaurant menu is working for your restaurant. You have to work at keeping a budget and setting prices for your menu.
You need to consider your employees and be able to coordinate schedules. All of this comes up in operational analysis.
An operational analysis can give you a good overview of the current status of your restaurant and how it fares with similar restaurants in the area. You can then see what areas you need to tweak to run more efficiently.
The Small Potato Approach
Figure out your goals
Because restaurant standards change over time as new trends and concepts to improve operations are introduced, you definitely want to get a good objective analysis of where your restaurant will be in five years.
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Decide what menu choices are working for you
What food choices your customers’ prefer will have a driving force on what you serve in your restaurant.
Count the cost
A good operational analysis can help you see where your money is going. Are you spending more on ingredients than you are getting in? How effectively is your staff being used during peak times?
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Location and hours
Operational analysis should take into consideration your restaurant’s location and hours.
Professional staff and chefs
Your staff’s effectiveness in conveying good customer service is a key ingredient in operational and restaurant industry analysis.
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Swot Analysis
Once you have this information, you will be able then to do a restaurant SWOT analysis. Your restaurant SWOT analysis should include:
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Strengths
What makes your restaurant stand out from similar restaurants in the area? Is it the location, service or the food?
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Weaknesses
Every restaurant has at least one weakness. It could be the customer service reviews or location visibilty that deters customers from stepping into your restaurant.
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Opportunities
There are some good opportunities to be had in the restaurant industry.
They can be anything from perfectly filling a niche to proving a concept or menu that is unique to your location.
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Threats
One of the biggest threats is competition for location and food and beverage o. offerings. You may want to rethink setting your restaurant in a certain area or you may thrive within the competition.
It doesn’t matter if you only own one restaurant or have a multiple outlet restaurant chain; you need an operational analysis to help you see where your business is now and going in the future. At Small Potato LTD our consultants can help you find ways to make your restaurant business more profitable.
We can assured that you will make or save more than the cost of this service. Contact us to schedule an operational analysis now.