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updated: 2026-05-19
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t_keyword: Restaurant Analytics
category: R
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date_published: 2026-04-14
date_modified: 2026-05-19
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  t_meta_title: Key Restaurant Analytics Metrics You Should Track
  t_meta_description: Learn how restaurant analytics tracks KPIs like sales, cover count, and food cost to improve decisions and profitability.
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    v_date_published: 2026-04-14
    v_date_modified: 2026-05-19
  author:
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    t_author: Priyanka Bhadani
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    t_author_description: Jin is a content coordinator and SEO strategist for the Hubworks marketing team. When she's not busy writing and conducting research, she enjoys reading, binging Netflix, and exploring the outdoors with her rescue dog.
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  content:
    heading:
      t_title: What is Restaurant Analytics?
      t_description: The fact of running a restaurant POS system is that there are dozens of decisions made every day.
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      t_text: <p>The fact of running a <a href="https://plumpos.com/">restaurant POS system</a> is that there are dozens of decisions made every day. Analytics provides the data with which to make them. Here are the terms that you will most frequently come across.</p><p><strong>Cover Count:</strong> This is simply the number of guests served during that day. It measures how busy you actually were. Not how busy you felt like you were.</p><p><strong>Table Turn Time:</strong> This measures how long customers spend at the table. The longer they spend, the fewer customers are served at that table over a given period. But rush it too much, and you lose the experience.</p><p><strong>Average check:</strong> Total revenue is divided by the number of covers. This tells you what each customer is truly spending. It helps with <a href="https://plumpos.com/menu-engineering.html">menu engineering</a> and upsell opportunities.</p><p><strong>Food cost percentage:</strong> Compare the cost of food ingredients to the sales price. The majority of operators aim for below 30%.</p><p><strong>Labor cost percentage:</strong> Measure the <a href="https://plumpos.com/glossary/payroll-processing.html">payroll</a> against revenue. This is a huge expense in this business. Tracking this weekly will prevent surprises on your monthly P&L.</p><p><strong>Repeat visit rate:</strong> Measure how often customers return. This is one of the best indicators of whether or not your food and service are truly working.</p>Combining these metrics while looking at these tells the actual story behind each service.
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