The daily report: five lines before you open

Most managers start the day the same way: unlocking the door, checking the deliveries, answering a supplier's call and walking into the first problem of the morning. By the time they look at yesterday's figures, if they look at all, the lunch service has started and the moment to change anything has passed.

A daily report puts that moment back at the start of the day. Five lines about yesterday and three about today, read in five minutes before the doors open, tell the manager what happened, what is coming and the one thing to do differently. It is the smallest piece of restaurant reporting a venue can have, and often the one that changes the most.

This guide covers the five lines about yesterday, the three about today, how to read them in five minutes and how the daily report fits with the service report and the weekly review. Every venue and figure in it is an example.

A daily report is a short note, prepared before the first service, that sums up the day before and looks at the day ahead. It is for the manager running the day, and for whoever they share it with: the chef, the owner, the assistant manager.

It is deliberately small. Not a full analysis, not a month's trends, but the handful of figures that tell a manager whether yesterday went to plan and what today needs.

Five lines is about as much as anyone reads properly before a busy day. A report of twenty lines is skimmed, and the important line is lost among the others. A report of five can be read, understood and acted on in the time it takes to drink a coffee.

The limit also forces a choice. If only five figures fit, the manager has to decide which five matter most, and that choice, made once and kept, is what makes the report useful.

The five lines about yesterday are usually sales, covers, spend per head, labour hours and one problem. Each is compared with what was expected: the budget, the forecast or the same day last week.

Together they answer the questions that matter about any day. Did we take what we expected? Did the guests come? Did they spend? Did we staff it sensibly? And what went wrong that we should fix?

Start with sales, against the day's budget or forecast. A day that took less than planned needs an explanation: fewer guests, lower spend or both. A day that took more is worth understanding too, so it can be repeated.

Compare with the same day last week as well, because days of the week differ so much. A Tuesday compared with a Saturday tells you nothing; a Tuesday compared with last Tuesday tells you whether the week is going well.

Covers show how many guests came. Set them against the bookings that were in the diary at the start of the day, so the gap shows no-shows and walk-ins together.

A large gap in either direction is worth a few words. More covers than booked suggests strong walk-in trade; fewer suggests no-shows or cancellations that might be reduced with reminders or a waitlist.

Spend per head, sales divided by covers, shows how much each guest spent. It moves with the menu, the guests and how well the team recommended drinks, sides and desserts.

Watch it for changes rather than its level. A fall of a pound or two for a few days in a row, with no change to prices or menu, is often the first sign that something in the service has slipped.

Labour hours show whether the day was staffed sensibly for its trade. Record the hours worked against the hours planned, and, if you can, sales per labour hour: the sales taken for each hour of staff time.

The point is not to cut staff after every quiet day, but to notice patterns. A Monday that is overstaffed every week, or a Friday that is always short, will show up in the daily report long before it shows in the monthly accounts.

The fifth line is the one thing that went wrong yesterday and is worth fixing: the grill that fell behind at eight, the delivery that arrived short, the table that waited too long for its bill. Just one, because a list of problems is read as noise.

Choose the problem that, if fixed, would most improve today. Often it comes from the service report the team wrote the night before.

The three lines about today are the bookings, the team and the one change. They turn yesterday's lessons into today's plan.

Like the five lines about yesterday, they should take a minute to read. The aim is not to plan the whole day, but to make sure the manager walks into it knowing what is coming and what they will do differently.

Look at the day's bookings: the covers booked for each service, the large parties, the guests with allergies or special occasions and the times when the room will be busiest. Compare with a normal day of the same kind.

A day with far more bookings than usual may need an extra cook or server; one with far fewer may need a call to a regular or a word with the team about walk-ins.

Check the team against the bookings. Is there anyone off sick, late or new? Is the kitchen staffed for the large party at seven? Does the rota match the busiest times in the diary?

A gap found at nine in the morning can be filled with a phone call. A gap found at seven in the evening can only be survived.

The last line is the one change for today, drawn from yesterday's problem. If the grill fell behind at eight, today's change might be a second tray of garnish prepared before service. If bills were slow on the terrace, it might be a server checking the terrace every ten minutes after nine.

Write it down and tell the team at the pre-shift briefing. A change that is only in the manager's head is easily forgotten in the rush.

Sales by hour, how much was taken in each hour of yesterday, adds depth to the daily report when it is needed. A day that matched its total might still have had an empty lunch and a crowded dinner, or a slow first hour that cost covers later.

Look at it when something in the five lines looks wrong, or once a week to see the shape of each day. It shows when to have the most staff on, when to open and close and where a quiet hour could be filled.

Bookings move overnight. Guests book late in the evening, cancel first thing in the morning or change their party size. Check the day's bookings when the report is prepared and again just before the briefing, so the numbers the team hears are the ones that will walk through the door.

Note any large change since yesterday's close: a party of ten added, three tables cancelled, a booking moved from lunch to dinner. Those are the changes that alter the day's staffing and prep.

The chef reads the daily report for different reasons from the manager. Yesterday's covers against bookings show how much was prepared for guests who did not come; today's bookings and large parties shape the prep list and the order of the morning.

Share the report with the chef before the kitchen's day starts, not at the briefing, so the prep can follow it. A chef who knows at nine that a party of twelve is booked for one can plan for it; one who hears at half past eleven cannot.

The daily report should be read in five minutes. Keep it on a single page or a single screen, in the same order every day, with each figure next to what was expected.

If it takes longer, it has grown too large. Move the extra figures to the weekly review and keep the daily report to its five and three lines.

The person who closes usually has the figures fresh, but the person who opens needs the report. In many venues, the closing manager leaves the five lines and the opening manager adds the three about today.

In a venue with one manager, the same person does both: a few minutes after close to note yesterday's problem, and a few minutes before opening to complete the rest.

Keep the lines in the same order every day. Sales, covers, spend per head, labour, problem; then bookings, team, change. The reader learns where to look, and comparing one day with the next becomes easy.

Change the order or the lines only when something is not working, and keep the old reports so that a month of them can be read together.

The service report and the daily report are written for different readers. The service report is for the team, written after each service: covers, spend, ticket times, voids and comps, feedback and one note. The daily report is for the manager, prepared before the day: yesterday's results and today's plan.

The service report feeds the daily report its problem line. Our guide to a service report the whole team can read covers the team's version.

At the end of the week, seven daily reports become the raw material for the weekly review. Seven sales lines show the week's shape; seven problem lines show which problems keep coming back.

A problem that appears in three daily reports in a week deserves a fix that lasts. Our guide to a weekly review that takes thirty minutes covers how to turn the week's reports into a short list of changes.

The daily report is one of a small set of reports a venue needs: the service report for the team, the daily report for the manager, the weekly review and the monthly figures for the owner. Each has a different reader and a different rhythm.

Keeping each one small and regular matters more than having many. Our guide to restaurant reporting: six reports, no more covers the full set and what each one is for.

Some venues read the daily report aloud at a short morning meeting, a few minutes standing up before the first service. The idea comes from the stand-up meeting used by many teams: brief, at the same time each day, focused on what happened and what is next.

Keep it to five or ten minutes. The manager reads the lines, the chef adds anything the kitchen needs to know and everyone hears the one change for today.

Sometimes a figure in the daily report looks wrong: sales far above or below what seems possible, covers that do not match the room. Check before acting. A bill left open, a payment entered twice or a booking recorded on the wrong day can all distort a single day's figures.

Fix the mistake at its source rather than in the report, so that the weekly and monthly figures built from the same records are right too.

On the morning after a closed day, or after a weekend when the manager was off, the daily report may need to cover more than one day. Keep the same lines, one set for each day, rather than adding the days together, so that each day can still be compared with its own kind.

Spend a few more minutes on it than usual. A manager returning after two days needs to know what happened while they were away before the first guest arrives.

In a venue with lunch and dinner, the five lines are often worth splitting by service. A day whose total looked fine may have had a strong dinner and a weak lunch, and the fix for each is different.

Keep the split simple: sales and covers for each service, with spend per head, labour and the problem for the day as a whole. More detail can wait for the weekly review.

In a group, each venue's manager prepares their own daily report, and an area manager or owner may read them all. Keeping the same lines across every venue makes them easy to read together, and makes a venue that is slipping easy to spot.

Do not compare the venues' figures directly in the daily report. Each venue has its own size, prices and trade. The comparison that matters is each venue against its own plan.

The daily report can live on paper, on a whiteboard in the office or in a shared document. What matters is that it is prepared every day, in the same place and the same order, and that the manager reads it before the doors open.

A paper sheet pinned to the office wall has one advantage: the week's reports are all visible at once, and the patterns are easy to see.

Daily reports tend to grow. A line is added for the bar, another for deliveries, another for the website, until the report takes twenty minutes and nobody reads it properly.

Resist. Each new line should replace an old one or move to the weekly review. Five lines about yesterday and three about today is enough for a manager to start the day well.

Some mornings there is no time: a delivery is late, a cook has called in sick, a pipe has burst. Prepare the five lines anyway, even in a minute, because the busiest mornings are when the day's plan matters most.

If the report must be shorter, keep today's three lines and the problem from yesterday. The rest can wait for a quieter moment.

Keep every daily report for at least a year, in order. Read together, a month of them shows the patterns no single report can: the day of the week that always overruns its labour, the problem that keeps coming back, the bookings that always arrive late.

They are also what makes next year's comparisons possible. A note that says a week was quiet because of roadworks, or busy because of a festival, explains a figure that would otherwise puzzle whoever reads it a year later.

An invented café-bistro's manager reads the daily report at half past eight each morning. Yesterday: sales slightly below budget; covers 118 against 125 booked plus usual walk-ins; spend per head steady; labour two hours over plan; one problem, a twenty-minute wait for tables at half past twelve because two servers started at noon instead of half past eleven.

Today: 140 covers booked, including a party of twelve at one; the team is full, with one new server on their second shift; one change, both lunch servers start at half past eleven. At the morning briefing, the manager reads the lines and the chef plans the party's courses. Lunch runs without a queue.

servearound does not send a daily report: nothing is emailed in the morning, and it has no end-of-day close. The five lines are a few minutes' work in its reports with the range set to Yesterday, on the venue's own clock. The dashboard shows revenue, covers, spend per cover and the no-show rate against the day before, payment analytics show what was collected, by tender and by member of staff, with revenue by hour for yesterday's sales by hour, and reservation analytics show covers and bookings with covers by shift.

For today's three lines, the dashboard's Right now panel shows today's covers and bookings, guests seated and waiting, tables in service and open orders, and the reservations calendar shows the day's bookings. Labour hours come from your own rota and timesheets, outside servearound. See Analytics.

A short note before the first service: yesterday in five lines and today in three.

Usually sales, covers, spend per head and labour hours against plan, and one problem.

Today's bookings, today's team and the one change for today.

About five minutes.

Often the closing manager notes yesterday, and the opening manager adds today.

Yes, with the same day last week, as well as with the day's budget.

The service report is for the team after each service. The daily report is for the manager before the day.

Check the records before acting, and correct the mistake at its source.

A daily report gives a manager yesterday in five lines and today in three, read in five minutes before the doors open. Yesterday's lines are sales, covers, spend per head and labour hours against plan, with the one problem worth fixing. Today's are the bookings, the team and the one change, which goes to the team at the morning briefing.

Look at sales by hour when something looks wrong, keep the same lines in the same order every day and resist adding more. Feed it from the team's service report, gather a week of daily reports into the weekly review and keep it as the smallest, most regular piece of restaurant reporting the venue has.