Sales by category: food, drink and the gap

Two restaurants take the same amount on a Friday night. In one, most of the money comes from food: generous mains, few bottles of wine, tap water on most tables. In the other, nearly half comes from drinks: aperitifs, wine with the meal, a digestif at the end. On the sales report they look alike. In the accounts at the end of the month they look nothing alike, because drinks usually carry a far better margin than food.

Sales by category shows that difference. It splits the takings into food, drinks and whatever other categories the venue uses, by day and by service, and it shows the gap between food and drink that the total hides. For many venues, it is the single most useful view of the menu after the dish-by-dish figures.

This guide covers how to split sales into categories, how to read the food to drink balance by service, what shapes it and the levers that move it, without pushing guests into spending more than they want. Every venue and figure in it is an example.

Sales by category groups everything sold into a few categories, such as starters, mains, desserts, sides, soft drinks, beer, wine and spirits, and shows how much each took and what share of the total it made up.

It sits between the total, which says too little, and the dish-by-dish report, which says too much for a quick read. A handful of categories, compared week by week, shows where the money comes from and how that is changing.

Choose categories that answer the questions you ask. Most venues want at least food and drink. Many split food into starters, mains, desserts and sides, and drink into soft drinks, hot drinks, beer, wine, cocktails and spirits.

Keep the list short enough to read at a glance, and keep it stable. Categories that change every few months make the figures impossible to compare, and a report with thirty categories is a dish report in disguise.

The most important split is the simplest: food against drink. The share of sales that comes from drinks says a great deal about a venue's trade, its guests and its margin.

A family restaurant with a busy lunch trade may take most of its money from food. A wine bar with small plates may take most from drink. Neither is wrong; each has its own healthy balance. What matters is knowing yours, by service, and noticing when it moves.

The gap is the difference between what the food to drink balance is and what it could be. A venue whose guests order wine at dinner but rarely at lunch has a gap at lunch. One whose bar is busy but whose diners order little has a gap in the dining room.

Finding the gap starts with the split by service. The total for the week blends services with very different patterns, and the gap is usually in one of them.

Split sales by category for each service: weekday lunch, weekend lunch, weekday dinner and weekend dinner, at least. The balance between food and drink differs enormously between them.

Lunch is often mostly food, because guests are working or driving. Weekend dinners usually carry the most drink. A weekday dinner whose drink share is far below the weekend's may be serving different guests, or the team may simply be offering less.

Drinks matter because they usually cost less to make, relative to their price, than food does. A glass of wine poured from an open bottle needs no cooking, little labour and no waste if the bottle is sold out. A plate of food needs ingredients, prep, a cook's time and a share of the kitchen's waste.

That is why a shift in the balance towards drink, at the same total, usually raises the venue's profit. It is also why a shift away from drink, even with the total holding, can quietly squeeze the margin.

Beverage cost percentage, the cost of drinks sold as a share of drinks sales, shows how much margin the drinks carry. It differs widely between categories: soft drinks, beer, wine, cocktails and spirits each have their own typical cost.

Work it out by category, not only in total, because a shift from one drink category to another can move the overall figure without any change in prices. Our guide to pour cost: the number behind every drinks price covers how to work out what each drink costs to serve.

Average spend per head, total sales divided by covers, rises and falls with the category mix. A guest who orders a main and tap water spends far less than one who adds a starter, a glass of wine and a dessert.

Split spend per head into food and drink to see which side moves. If food spend per head holds while drink spend falls, the change is in the drinks: fewer bottles, cheaper wines, more guests driving. Each has a different answer.

Menu mix, what guests actually order from the menu, is the detail behind sales by category. Within each category, a few dishes or drinks usually make up most of the sales, and changes in those few move the category.

Read the two together. If desserts fall as a share of sales, the menu mix shows whether one popular dessert left the menu, whether guests are skipping dessert altogether or whether the team has stopped offering it. Our guide to menu mix: what your guests order, not what you sell covers how to read it.

Revenue mix is the broader view: the balance between food, drink, events, takeaway, private dining and any other streams the venue has. It shows which parts of the business carry the rent and which are along for the ride.

A venue whose revenue mix leans heavily on one stream is exposed if that stream falters. One with a sensible balance can absorb a weak month in one part of the business with the others.

Within food, the split between starters, mains and desserts shows how many courses guests take. A venue where mains are most of food sales and starters and desserts are small is serving many one-course meals.

That may suit the venue, such as a quick lunch spot. In a dinner restaurant, it may point to an opportunity: a menu that makes starters and desserts appealing, and a team that offers them at the right moment.

Sides and extras, such as bread, chips, salads and sauces, are often overlooked in sales by category and can be a large share of food sales. They usually carry a good margin and need little extra work.

Watch their share. A fall may mean they have become too expensive, are not offered, or have been folded into the mains. A rise may mean guests find the mains too small and are making up the difference.

Soft drinks, water and hot drinks are a growing share of drinks sales in many venues, as more guests drink less alcohol. They usually carry good margins and deserve the same care as the wine list.

A thoughtful list of soft drinks, house-made sodas, good alcohol-free beers and wines and proper coffee can lift drink sales among guests who would otherwise order tap water, without pushing anyone towards alcohol.

Wine is often the largest single category in drinks for a dinner restaurant, and the one with the widest range of margins. A shift from bottles to glasses, or from mid-priced wines to the cheapest, changes the category's sales and its margin.

Split wine into glasses and bottles if you can, and watch the share of each. A team that recommends a bottle for a table of four, rather than four glasses, often raises both the sale and the guests' enjoyment.

The layout of the menu shapes sales by category. A drinks list placed after the desserts, or on a separate card that has to be asked for, is ordered from less often than one handed over with the food menu. Desserts listed on the main menu are chosen more often than those offered only at the end.

Where each category sits, and how much space it gets, is worth reviewing alongside the figures. A category that is hard to find on the menu will be small in the report, however good it is.

The main levers on sales by category are the menu, the prices and the team. The menu decides what is offered and how appealing each category looks. The prices decide how affordable each one feels. The team decides what is offered at the table and when.

Menu engineering, the practice of designing a menu around what sells and what earns, works on the first two. Training and briefing the team works on the third, and it is often the lever that moves the balance most.

The team's part is to offer, not to push. A server who asks whether guests would like something to drink while they look at the menu, suggests a wine that suits the dish and mentions the desserts before the plates are cleared will lift drink and dessert sales without any guest feeling pressed.

Brief the team on the categories at the pre-shift meeting: the wine of the week, the new dessert, the soft drink that pairs with the special. Specific suggestions are easier to make than general instructions to sell more.

Prices affect the balance between categories. A main course priced high relative to starters and desserts makes guests more likely to order one course. A wine list that starts at a price guests find steep makes them more likely to order tap water.

Look at the entry price in each category, the cheapest wine, the cheapest dessert, the cheapest starter, and ask whether it invites guests in or keeps them out. A slightly lower entry price can lift the whole category.

Promotions can shift the mix in ways that look good and earn little. A drinks offer that fills the bar with guests who order only the offer adds sales at a thin margin. A set menu that includes a glass of wine moves sales into the food category on the report while the wine is given away.

Read sales by category before and after each promotion, and check what happened to the categories around it. An offer that lifts one category while others fall may not be the gain it seemed.

The mix changes with the seasons. Summer usually lifts cold drinks, rosé and terrace trade; winter lifts red wine, hot drinks and heartier mains. Festive weeks lift drinks and set menus; quiet months may see guests ordering fewer courses.

Compare each month with the same month last year rather than with the month before, so the seasons do not mislead you about what is really changing.

Children's menus and family tables change the mix. They lift soft drinks and simple mains, lower alcohol and often lower spend per head, while filling tables at times that might otherwise be quiet.

Report family-heavy services separately if they are a large part of the trade, so a fall in the drink share at a weekend lunch is read as the families it serves rather than a problem with the drinks.

In a venue with a bar and a dining room, the two usually have very different category mixes. The bar sells mostly drinks with a few snacks; the dining room sells mostly food with drinks alongside. Added together, they hide both.

Split sales by category for each if you can, and read each against its own past. A bar whose food share is rising may be turning into a second dining room, which may be welcome or may be taking guests from the main room.

Takeaway and delivery usually carry far fewer drinks than dine-in, because guests drink at home. Including them in the same sales by category as the dining room drags the drink share down and hides how the room is doing.

Report them separately. The dining room's balance, on its own, is the one the team can influence at the table.

Private dining, parties and events often carry their own category mix: set menus, drinks packages, a cake brought in. Mixed with the everyday trade, they can make a quiet week look like a busy one and shift the balance in ways the regular services do not share.

Report them on their own line, or at least note the weeks they fell in. Their figures matter, but they should not be read as a change in the everyday mix.

When the balance between food and drink shifts, look for the cause before acting. A fall in drink share may come from a change in guests, such as more families or more lunch trade, from a cheaper wine list at a competitor, from a team that has stopped offering or from guests drinking less everywhere.

Each cause has a different answer, and some need none. A shift towards families may be good for the business even if the drink share falls.

A category's sales can rise because more items were sold or because each item cost more. Read units sold alongside value. If wine sales rise while the number of glasses and bottles falls, the rise is from price, and fewer guests are drinking wine.

The same check works for every category. A dessert category whose value is steady while its units fall has lost guests to higher prices, which may be fine or may be the first sign that desserts have become too expensive.

Report sales by category weekly, as a short list of categories with their sales and share, for each service. Add the food and drink spend per head beside it. Keep the same categories and the same order every week.

Highlight any category whose share moved by more than a few points, and add a sentence on why. The aim is a report that can be read in a minute and shows where to look.

An invented bistro reviews its sales by category for a month. Drinks are about a third of sales at weekend dinners, a quarter at weekday dinners and less than a tenth at lunch. Dessert sales at weekday dinners are half those at the weekend. Wine by the glass is rising and bottles are falling.

The owner adds a short list of soft drinks and alcohol-free wines for lunch, briefs the team to offer desserts at weekday dinners and suggests a bottle for tables of three or more. Over the next two months, lunch drink sales rise, weekday desserts recover, and the drink share at weekday dinners moves towards the weekend's, while spend per head rises gently and no guest complains of being pressed.

servearound's menu report shows sales by category for any dates: each category's units, revenue and share of sales, with the top sellers and every dish that sold. The categories are the ones you build on your menus, so a drinks list split into wine, beer, cocktails and soft drinks reports each separately, and food against drink is the sum of those lines. It covers whole days rather than a single service, it can be narrowed to one menu by the menu each dish belongs to rather than the hour it sold, and it has no comparison with an earlier period of its own, so run two date ranges to compare.

Costs are not held in servearound, so beverage cost percentage is worked out from your own purchases and stock counts. The dashboard shows spend per cover against the previous period, and payment analytics show revenue by hour. See Analytics.

Total sales split into a handful of categories, such as starters, mains, desserts, soft drinks and wine, with each one's share.

Because drinks usually carry a better margin than food, so the balance affects profit at the same sales.

It depends on the venue. Know your own, by service, and watch how it moves.

Yes. Lunch and dinner, weekday and weekend, usually have very different balances.

Offer at the right moments, suggest specific drinks and give non-drinkers a good soft drinks list.

Report it separately, because it carries few drinks.

Weekly, with the same categories in the same order.

Find the cause first. Some shifts, such as more families, need no fix.

Sales by category splits takings into a handful of stable categories and shows the balance between food and drink that the total hides. Read it by service, because lunch and dinner, weekdays and weekends, have very different balances, and set it beside average spend per head, split into food and drink, to see which side is moving.

Read it with menu mix for the detail and beverage cost percentage by category for the margin, and watch the wider revenue mix so the business does not lean on one stream. The menu, the prices and the team are the levers, and the team, offering rather than pushing, is usually the one that closes the gap.