Restaurant BI dashboards: what to show

A restaurant BI dashboard is useful when it answers the questions an operator asks every morning. This guide covers what to put on it and how to set one up.

What should a restaurant dashboard answer?

Start from decisions, not charts. A good dashboard tells an operations head which outlet needs attention today, which channel is earning, where money is leaking and which dishes to push. Each number on it should link to an action someone can take.

What outlet view do you need?

Show each outlet’s revenue, order count and average order value for yesterday, this week and the same period last week. Rank outlets so that the weakest and strongest are visible at once. Add rejection rate for aggregator orders and, for dine-in, table turns. Compare like with like, meaning the same weekday.

What channel view do you need?

Split revenue by dine-in, takeaway, direct orders, Swiggy and Zomato. Show net revenue per order after commission, not just gross order value. A channel that looks big can earn little once commission and discounts are taken off.

How do you see discount leakage?

Discounts are easy to lose track of. Show total discount value by outlet, by channel and by offer, and the share of orders that used a discount. Include discounts funded by the restaurant and those funded by the platform separately. Look for offers that raise order count but lower margin, and for outlets that discount far more than the others.

What item mix view helps?

Show best sellers, slow movers and items with a high margin but few orders. Join sales with recipe cost so you see contribution margin per dish and not only popularity. This is the base for deciding what to feature, reprice or remove. Recipe-level inventory in Restrologic POS deducts stock for every order, which makes this data dependable.

How do you set one up?

1. List the decisions the dashboard must support and who makes them.
2. Choose the few metrics for each decision and write down exactly how each is calculated.
3. Connect the POS, the aggregator reports and, if you can, purchase and accounting data.
4. Build one daily page first. Add depth only for questions people actually ask.
5. Show the last-updated time, and make it work on a phone, since managers look at it during service.

Where does Reckoner fit?

Once the data is in one place, people want to ask follow-up questions without waiting for an analyst. Reckoner lets you ask questions of your business data in plain English and get answers with charts.

How does Restrologic help?

Our restaurant analytics and BI service connects your POS and aggregator feeds and builds these views for you. To discuss your outlets, contact us.