Restaurant forecasting: Unlock (almost) stress-free operations

Successful restaurateurs know that the secret sauce to their business’s success isn’t just the sauce itself, but the planning that goes into it. Restaurant forecasting is the beating heart of a well-run restaurant business. While it may be tempting to go with your gut and rely on intuition when making big calls, savvy restaurateurs know that a data-driven approach is the recipe for success in modern restaurant operations.

Think of restaurant sales forecasting as your restaurant’s crystal ball. Through careful planning and consideration of historical data, inventory management, seating capacity, labor costs, and more, restaurant owners can get a far clearer view of their future sales data than by winging it.

Whether you’re planning your staffing for an upcoming busy weekend or stocking up on the freshest ingredients, mastering forecasting methods will ensure you’re not just following trends—you’re setting them.

So, let’s take a gander into how to forecast sales and discover ways to make better-informed decisions and perform accurate forecasting.

Use cases for restaurant forecasting

Restaurant sales forecasting helps you navigate the ebbs and flows of your industry by examining a mix of historical data and current market pulses. Here are a few ways you can use forecasting to chart a successful path.

Gather historical data

Pull out sales from the past months and years. Pay special attention to peak periods as well as any sales anomalies. Look to highs and lows as unique data points and try to figure out what made those days or periods special. Did sales spike last February? What happened? Was the weather particularly good, did you have a successful marketing blitz, or were you shared on social media by a local influencer?

By understanding your historical data, you’ll get a better feel for the overall ebb and flow of your business over the course of days, months, and years. A solid POS system or front-of-house management system will give you all this data to work with so you can dive into what days are best for you, what days customers spend the most, and even what menu items sell best at what time of the year.

Identify trends and external factors

Sift through the data to identify any recurring patterns. For example, see which menu items sell best in specific periods or during certain days, or when you typically expect the most or least customers. What does good weather and bad weather bring you? Are you seeing a significant bump in customers during certain holidays? Are you near event centers like sports stadiums? Do you notice a drop or increase in sales near tax time?

Analyze past marketing efforts

Take note of the splash your restaurant marketing has on your customers. Do marketing campaigns lead to a spike in sales or do your sales only see a moderate increase? If so, that’s a good time to revisit your marketing strategies. If you notice that a marketing campaign worked well, however, it’s wise to revisit that campaign and figure out just what about it made customers tick so you can repeat previous success in your sales pipeline.

What about new restaurants?

While existing restaurants have a leg up on new restaurants due to real-world metrics to work with, if you’re a new restaurant, don’t worry. You can still make adequate forecasts for sales, though you’ll be doing so more on expectations than historical sales data. You’ll want to take into account your pricing strategies, the number of customers you anticipate, and other factors to get an idea of your overall anticipated sales volume. More on that below.

How to forecast accurate restaurant sales

Whether you’re part of the old guard in your neighborhood or a brand new restaurant, you’ll want to get an idea of how much you can expect to sell in a given period of time. Let’s start with one day.

Try looking at these factors, changing the numbers to match your unique situation:

• Seating capacity: 50
• Average spend-per-person: $30
• Average time spent at restaurant: 1 hour
• Time open: 5-10 p.m.
• Average seating capacity taken: 80%

With ~40 customers per hour (80% of 50) at 1 hour each and $30 per person, you can expect $1,200 sales per hour. With 5 hours open per day, that translates to $6,000 sales per day.

A combination of these factors can give you a broad overview of anticipated sales and a baseline number to work with or aim toward. Compare these numbers to your actual sales and you can see what you need to improve your bottom line. If you’re not getting close to your anticipated or desired sales forecasts, you’ll need to do some decision making to figure out what needs to change.

Benefits of accurate restaurant sales forecasting

Accurate sales projections can have a wide range of benefits for restaurant owners. If you can get your projections down to know what to expect on a given day of the week and get your demand forecasting fairly accurate, your restaurant operations will be much improved. Consider that an accurate forecasting model can:

• Streamline inventory management, ensuring you don’t run out of product or end up throwing away money due to food waste
• Help create workable staff scheduling practices to ensure you’re neither overstaffing nor understaffing
• Predict the seasonality of trends, like increased cocktails sales in the summer or overall lower sales in the winter
• Predict seasonally available foods, helping boost your profit margin by selling what’s fresh and in-season
• Anticipate special events like Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day, among other busy days in the year
• React to market trends specific to your area to anticipate spikes in customer demand both overall and for specific menu items (think chicken wings on football game days, or champagne on Valentine’s Day)

Use restaurant technology that makes forecasting easier

Restaurant technology has come a long way in the last 20 years, making restaurant management an entirely different game than it used to be. While restaurateurs of the past had to navigate pile after pile of paper and compare spreadsheets, the modern restaurant owner has tools at their fingertips that would blow the minds of restaurant staff not too long ago. Restaurant software keeps track of past sales, the number of guests on specific given days, and can help take that past data and make it part of your forecasting process.

We’re talking about Yelp Guest Manager, a front-of-house software that handles reservations, takeout, waitlists, table management, and more. Yelp Guest Manager pairs with a number of top POS systems, helping owners keep track of overall sales to make sense of sales in the future. And talk about forecasting: Yelp helps you reach and seat more guests by giving you access to the largest restaurant consumer network in the US. Your guests can join an online waitlist with up to 96% accuracy, returning at 2x the rate of walk-ins.*

If you’re looking to get a leg up on your past self and the competition, Yelp Guest Manager may be the right tool for you. Imagine seamless front-of-house management and third-party integrations that make the dining experience a breeze for everyone involved.

Want to see if it’s right for you? Curious to take a test drive? Reach out to us for a free demo and we’ll get started. The future can be bright—and transparent, too—as long as you know where you’re headed. Restaurant forecasting can be much more predictable than weather forecasting, and more profitable, too.