Comparing venues fairly when they differ

At the monthly meeting, the owner puts the four venues' figures on the screen. The café served the most covers; the restaurant took the most money per guest; the bar had the highest drinks share; the newest venue trailed on almost everything. Each manager leaves the meeting with a different feeling: the café's manager proud, the bar's indifferent, the new venue's demoralised. None of those feelings is based on how well each venue was actually run.

Comparing venues is one of the most useful things a group can do and one of the easiest to get wrong. Set side by side on raw figures, a café and a restaurant tell you only that they are different kinds of business. Compared on the right measures, the same four venues show which is improving, which is slipping and which manager is doing the best job with the venue they have.

This guide covers the three measures that travel between different venues, the four comparisons that are simply unfair, and how to set venues side by side so the comparison helps rather than misleads. Every venue and figure in it is an example.

A group compares its venues to learn. Which venue has found a better way of doing something the others could copy? Which is slipping before the accounts show it? Where should the owner spend their time this month?

Done well, comparison spreads good practice and catches problems early. Done badly, it rewards the managers of easy venues, punishes those running hard ones and teaches everyone that the numbers are a game about the building rather than the work.

Raw figures mislead because venues differ in ways that have nothing to do with how they are run. A café open from seven serves far more covers than a dinner restaurant open from six. A wine bar takes more on drinks than a family restaurant. A venue in a busy city centre takes more than one in a quiet suburb, however good its team.

Comparing their totals, their covers or their spend per head measures those differences, not the managers. The result is a ranking that would look the same whoever was running each venue.

Before comparing venues, list what makes each one different: the kind of venue and its menu, its size and number of seats, its opening hours and days, its location and the guests it serves, its rent and the age of its building, and how long it has been open.

Each difference changes what its figures should look like. The comparison is fair only once those differences are allowed for, either by choosing measures that are not affected by them or by comparing only venues that share them.

The first measure that travels is each venue's growth against its own matching weeks last year. A café growing by six per cent and a restaurant growing by two can be compared directly, because each is measured against itself, with its own size, location and kind of trade already built in.

Use matching weeks rather than dates, and allow for each venue's own closures, festivals and changes. Our guide to year on year comparison that is actually fair covers how.

The second measure that travels is cost as a share of sales: food and drink cost, labour cost and the two together, prime cost. Each venue has its own healthy level, but a share that rises month after month is a warning at any kind of venue.

Compare each venue's cost shares with its own target and its own past, rather than with each other directly. A bar with a high drinks share will often run a lower food cost than a café, and that is the nature of its trade, not better management.

The third measure that travels is what guests do after their visit: the share who come back within a few months, and how they rate their visit when asked. Every kind of venue depends on guests returning, and every kind of venue can be judged on whether they do.

A café whose guests return weekly and a restaurant whose guests return monthly can each be compared with their own past. A falling return rate, or falling feedback ratings, is often the earliest sign that something is going wrong at a venue, well before the sales show it.

The first unfair comparison is covers. A café, a restaurant and a bar serve very different numbers of guests by design: quick breakfasts and lunches, long dinners, drinks with snacks. Ranking them on covers tells you only which kind of venue serves the most people.

Use covers within each venue, against its own past and its own plan. Between venues, compare the change in covers, not the number.

The second unfair comparison is spend per head. A restaurant serving three-course dinners will always beat a café serving coffee and sandwiches, however well the café is run. Spend per head reflects the menu and the occasion, not the manager.

Within a venue, spend per head is an excellent measure: rising or falling against its own past says a great deal. Between different venues, it says almost nothing.

The third unfair comparison is revenue per seat across different kinds of venue. A busy café with quick turns and a fine dining room with one long sitting earn very differently per seat, for good reasons, and a bar with stools and standing room is different again.

Revenue per seat is a useful way of comparing venues of the same kind, and of measuring how hard each room works over time. Our guide to revenue per seat: the number landlords understand covers how to work it out.

The fourth unfair comparison is a new venue against an established one. A venue in its first year is still building its regulars, its reputation and its team. Its figures will lag behind a venue that has been trading for years, and comparing them only tells the new venue's manager they are losing a race they could not win.

Compare a new venue with its own budget and its own month-by-month progress. Once it has a full year behind it, it can join the comparisons with the others.

Where a group has venues of the same kind, such as two bistros in similar areas, more comparisons become fair. Covers, spend per head, revenue per seat and ticket times can all be set side by side, as long as the venues really are similar.

Even then, check the differences: a bistro with a terrace, one with a car park nearby, one with an older kitchen. Small differences can explain large gaps, and should be noted before any conclusions are drawn.

Where venues differ in size, measures per seat, per cover or per hour allow for it. A large venue's total sales will always be higher; its sales per seat, compared with a smaller venue of the same kind, show which room works harder.

Adjusting for size does not remove the other differences, such as location or format. It removes one, which is a start.

Venues with different opening hours should be compared per hour open, or per service. A venue open for lunch and dinner seven days a week will take more than one open for dinner five days a week, without being better run.

Compare like services where you can: dinner against dinner, weekend lunch against weekend lunch. The comparison is fairer when the hours behind it match.

Where venues share a service, compare that service rather than the whole day. Two venues that both serve weekday lunch can be compared on their lunches, even if one also does breakfast and the other late-night drinks. Like services, measured on the same days, remove much of the difference in format.

Weekend dinner against weekend dinner, weekday lunch against weekday lunch: each comparison is narrower, and fairer, than comparing two venues' whole weeks.

Location shapes what a venue can achieve. A venue on a busy high street with offices nearby has more passing trade than one on a quiet residential road, and a venue near a station is busy at different hours from one near a park.

Note each venue's location in the comparison, and set its targets with it in mind. A venue in a quieter location that is growing steadily may be doing better work than a busy one that is standing still.

The fairest comparison of all is each venue against its own plan: the budget and targets set at the start of the year, built from its own past and its own kind of trade. A venue that beats its plan has done well, whatever its size or format; one that misses it needs attention.

Plans make every venue comparable on the same footing: how far each one is ahead of or behind what it set out to do.

Restaurant benchmarks, industry averages for costs, spend and sales, can add context to comparisons between venues, as benchmarking does in any industry. But they are built from many different venues, in different places, measured in different ways, and the definitions behind them are rarely clear.

Use them as background: if every venue in the group is far from a benchmark, it may be worth understanding why. Do not use them to judge one venue against another, because the benchmark may fit neither.

Comparing venues fairly depends on consolidated reporting done properly: the same definitions of sales and covers at every venue, the same dates, currencies converted consistently and new or closed venues handled separately. Without that groundwork, even the measures that travel can mislead.

Our guide to consolidated reporting across four venues covers how to put the group's figures together on one footing.

The common reporting mistakes all appear in venue comparisons: different definitions at different venues, mismatched weeks, figures averaged across venues that behave differently and conclusions drawn from a single month.

An average across the group can mislead too. If the group's spend per head falls, it may be because a café's share of the group's guests has grown, not because any venue's spend per head has fallen. Our guide to six reporting mistakes that lead to bad decisions covers these traps.

Venues in the same group can have different seasons. A venue near the sea or a tourist area may be busiest in summer, while a city centre venue near offices may be quiet in August and busy in the festive weeks. Comparing them month by month sets a busy season against a quiet one.

Compare each venue with its own same month last year, and read the group's monthly figures knowing whose busy season it is. A venue's quiet month is not a failure if it is quiet every year.

Share the comparison with the managers, in the same form the owner sees it. Managers who can see the measures that travel for every venue understand how they are judged and can learn from each other.

Hidden comparisons breed suspicion. A manager who suspects they are being judged on figures they cannot see, or on raw totals they cannot influence, is far less likely to trust the process than one who sees exactly what the owner sees.

Compare venues monthly, on a rolling view of the last few months, rather than week by week. A single week's figures are too noisy, and a venue that has one bad week can look like a problem when it is not.

Look for trends across several months: a venue whose return rate has fallen for three months running, or whose labour share has crept up all quarter. Trends are worth acting on; single months usually are not.

The point of comparing venues is the conversation it starts, not the ranking it produces. Put the measures that travel in front of the managers and ask each to explain their venue's line: what moved, why and what they are doing about it.

A manager who can explain why their venue's figures moved is learning from them. A manager who only knows their place in a ranking is learning to manage the ranking.

Comparison is most valuable when it spreads good practice. If one venue's return rate is rising while others hold steady, find out what it is doing differently: a new welcome, a better follow-up, a regulars' evening. If it can be copied, share it.

Make sharing part of the monthly meeting. A five-minute slot where one manager explains something that worked does more for the group than an hour spent comparing figures.

Sometimes the fair comparison shows a venue genuinely behind: falling against its own past, costs rising, guests returning less. That deserves attention, support and a plan, rather than a public ranking.

Work through it with the manager: what has changed, what they need and what the plan is. A venue that is struggling for reasons the manager cannot control, such as a new competitor or roadworks outside, needs a different response from one that is struggling because standards have slipped.

Some venues should not be compared with the others at all: a central kitchen that supplies the rest, a seasonal kiosk, a venue being refurbished, a site run as an experiment. Their figures follow different rules.

Report them separately, against their own plans, and leave them out of the group's comparisons. Including them distorts the picture for everyone else.

A small venue's figures move more from month to month than a large one's, simply because it has fewer guests. A return rate based on a few hundred guests can swing by several points on a handful of people, while the same rate at a large venue barely moves.

Allow for it when comparing. A small venue's sudden drop may be noise; look at three months before deciding it is a trend, and keep the size of each venue's sample beside its figures.

The purpose of comparing venues is often, in the end, to judge how well each is managed. That is only fair when the comparison removes what the manager cannot change: the building, the location, the rent, the format and the age of the venue.

What remains, growth against the venue's own past, costs against its targets and how guests respond, is largely what the manager influences. Judge managers on that, and they will trust the comparison.

An invented group runs a café, two bistros and a cocktail bar. On raw figures, the café leads on covers, the bar on drinks share and one bistro on spend per head. The owner switches to the three measures that travel: growth against each venue's matching weeks last year, prime cost share against each venue's target and the share of guests who return.

The new view shows the café growing fastest, the bar's prime cost on target and one bistro's return rate falling for three months. The two bistros, being similar, are also compared directly, and the struggling one is found to have lost its experienced head server. A new hire and a regulars' evening follow, and the return rate recovers over the next quarter.

servearound's network dashboard shows revenue, covers, spend per cover and the no-show rate for all venues or one, each against the period just before, and money from venues trading in different currencies is added up in the network's own currency at the rate for each transaction's own date. The detailed reports are one venue at a time, so comparing venues means running each venue's report for the same dates. Table analytics give revenue per seat for every table, guest analytics show the return rate by the week guests were first seen, and the Feedback tab shows every venue's ratings with a venue picker.

There is no comparison with last year in any report and no industry benchmark, so growth against each venue's own past is run as two date ranges, and food, drink and labour costs come from your own records. See Analytics.

Only on measures that travel: growth against their own past, cost shares against their own targets and what guests do next.

Because different kinds of venue serve different numbers of guests by design.

Within a venue, yes. Between different kinds of venue, it mostly reflects the menu.

With its own budget until it has a full year of trading.

When venues are genuinely similar, such as two bistros in similar areas.

As background, not to judge one venue against another.

Monthly, looking at trends over several months.

To start a conversation and spread what works, not to produce a ranking.

Comparing venues on raw figures measures their differences, not their management. Three measures travel between very different venues: growth against each venue's own past, costs as a share of sales against its own targets and what guests do next, measured by return rates and feedback. Four comparisons are simply unfair: covers, spend per head, revenue per seat across formats and new venues against established ones.

Build comparisons on proper consolidated reporting, adjust for size and hours, compare similar venues more closely and treat restaurant benchmarks as background. Avoid the reporting mistakes that creep into group figures, look at trends over months and use the comparison to start conversations and spread good practice, so comparing venues helps every manager rather than ranking them.