What is a covers report, and how to read it

Every Monday, a restaurant manager opens last week's covers report and sees a good week: 640 covers, up from 610. The owner is pleased. But the chef says the kitchen felt quieter than the week before, and the takings are slightly down. Both are right. The report counted every booking as covers, including the eleven parties that never arrived, and missed most of the walk-ins, because the host only records them on busy nights. The number on the report was a guess dressed as a fact.

What is a covers report? It is the report that counts the guests a venue served: how many, on which days and services, at what times, from bookings or walk-ins, and how that compares with the week, the month or the year before. It is one of the most important reports a restaurant has, because almost every other number, the staffing, the prep, the spend per head, is planned or measured against it.

This guide covers what a covers report should include, how to read it each week, how it differs from the sales figures, the two numbers that are usually wrong and how to make them right. Every venue and figure in it is an example.

A cover is one guest served a meal. A covers report counts them, over a period, and breaks the count down in the ways that help the venue plan: by day, by service, by hour, by source and by party size. Our guide to what a cover in a restaurant is, exactly covers the definition and its edge cases.

The report answers simple questions that matter: how busy were we, when were we busy, where did the guests come from and how does this compare with before?

A useful covers report includes the total covers for the period and the change against the previous period; covers by day and by service, such as lunch and dinner; covers by hour or by arrival time; covers from bookings and from walk-ins; party sizes; and the no-shows and cancellations that did not become covers.

Each part answers a different question. The total says how the week went; the days and services show the pattern; the hours show the peaks; the sources show how guests arrive; the no-shows show what the bookings promised and did not deliver.

The covers report counts guests; the sales report counts money. They move together, but not exactly. A week with more covers and lower sales means guests spent less each, perhaps because of a set-menu offer or a shift towards lunch. A week with fewer covers and higher sales means guests spent more.

Read the two together, through the spend per cover: sales divided by covers. A covers report read alone can make a quieter, more profitable week look like a bad one.

Each week, check four things first. The total against the previous week and the same week last year. The busiest and quietest services, and whether they are where you expected. The no-shows and late cancellations. And the walk-ins, as a share of the total.

Those four answer most of the questions a manager asks on a Monday. The rest of the report is detail for when one of them looks wrong. Our guide to the covers report read on a Monday morning covers the weekly routine.

Covers by day and service show the shape of the week: the quiet Monday lunch, the busy Friday dinner, the Sunday that is busier at lunch than in the evening. The shape changes slowly through the year, and knowing it is the base for the rota and the prep.

Look for changes in the shape, not just the total. A Tuesday dinner that has grown for six weeks is worth noticing; so is a Saturday lunch that has been slipping.

Covers by hour, or by arrival time, show when guests actually come. They are what the kitchen and the floor feel: a dinner that is busy from half past seven to nine is a different service from one spread evenly from six to ten.

Read covers by hour beside sales by hour, which show when the money is taken. Our guide to sales by hour: the shape of your trading day covers how to read the second.

Covers by source show how guests booked or arrived: the venue's own booking page, its website, the phone, a staff member taking the booking in person or a walk-in. The mix tells the venue which channels bring its guests, and which ones to protect.

A venue whose walk-ins are falling and whose online bookings are rising is changing, and the rota and the table plan may need to change with it.

Party sizes show how guests come: in twos, fours or larger groups. The mix affects how many seats are sold when the room is full, because a table for four seated with a couple leaves two seats empty.

Compare the party sizes with the room's mix of tables. If most parties are couples and most tables are fours, the room is selling fewer seats than it could at the peak.

The first number that is usually wrong is the walk-ins. Bookings are recorded because they must be; walk-ins are recorded only if the host remembers, has time and has a way to do it. On a busy night, many venues seat walk-ins without recording them at all.

The result is a covers report that undercounts the busiest nights, a walk-in share that looks smaller than it is and a forecast that plans too few staff for the nights when walk-ins arrive. Record every walk-in, every night, the same way as a booking.

The second number that is usually wrong is the no-shows, and with them the covers from bookings. A report that counts every booking as covers, whether or not the party arrived, overstates the week. One that counts the party size booked rather than the number who came overstates it too.

Mark every no-show as a no-show, and update the party size when fewer guests arrive than booked. The covers report should count the guests who were served, not the guests who were expected.

Getting both numbers right is a habit, not a system. The host records every walk-in and marks every no-show; the server updates the party size when it changes. A few seconds per table, every night, make the report a fact instead of an estimate.

Check the habit each week. If the walk-ins on the busiest night look too low, or the no-shows are always zero, the habit has slipped.

Reservation reports add detail the covers report may not show: how far ahead guests book, how many bookings are confirmed and how many seated, when cancellations arrive and the no-show rate by day, by source and by party size.

Our guide to reservation reports worth reading on a Monday covers the ones to check. Together with the covers report, they explain not just how many guests came, but how they booked and how reliably they arrived.

A covers report is most useful as a comparison: this week against last week, this month against the same month last year, this Saturday against the average Saturday. A number on its own says little; a number against its past says a great deal.

Compare like with like. A week with a public holiday should be compared with the same holiday week last year, not the week before. A month with five Fridays is not directly comparable with one that had four.

The covers report is the base for the covers forecast: the estimate of how many guests the venue will serve next week, by day and service. The forecast starts from the same weeks in the past, adjusts for the bookings already made and for anything different, such as an event or a holiday.

A forecast built from a covers report that undercounts walk-ins will undercount them too. Our guide to a covers forecast your kitchen will believe covers the method.

The rota is planned from the covers report and the forecast: the most people on the busiest services and hours, fewer on the quiet ones. A report that shows where the covers really fall lets the manager put the hours where they are needed.

Look at the covers by hour, not just by service. A dinner whose covers arrive in a single wave needs more people for those two hours and fewer either side.

The kitchen uses the covers report to plan prep and ordering: how many guests to expect, on which days, and roughly what they will order. A kitchen that prepares for the covers it will actually serve wastes less than one that prepares for a guess.

Share the covers report and the forecast with the head chef each week. The kitchen often notices when the numbers do not match what it cooked, which is a useful check on the walk-in and no-show habits.

Spend per cover, the sales divided by the covers, is the bridge between the covers report and the money. A rising spend per cover with steady covers means guests are spending more; a falling one may mean an offer, a menu change or guests choosing cheaper dishes.

Watch it each week beside the covers. Our guide to what average spend is, and how to raise it covers what moves it.

For a group, the covers report for each venue shows how each one is trading, and a combined view shows the group. Compare venues by covers per seat or per service, not only by the total, so a small venue is not judged against a large one unfairly.

Keep the definitions the same at every venue: what counts as a cover, how walk-ins are recorded and how no-shows are marked. A group whose venues count covers differently cannot compare them.

A covers report does not need to be long. The total, the days and services, the hours, the sources, the party sizes and the no-shows, each against the previous period, are enough for most venues.

Add detail only when a question needs it. A report with fifty figures is read by nobody; one with ten that are right is read every week. Key performance indicators work best when there are few of them.

Covers from private dining and events can distort the covers report. A private party of forty on a Tuesday makes the week look busier than the dining room was, and an event cancelled at short notice makes it look quieter.

Report event covers separately from the dining room's, so the main room's trend is visible on its own. The total matters for the kitchen; the dining room's figure matters for understanding the venue's everyday trade.

Takeaway and delivery orders are not covers in the usual sense: the guests are not seated, and the kitchen's work is different. Count them separately, as orders, rather than adding them to the covers.

Mixing them makes the dining room look busier than it was and the spend per cover look lower. Two clear figures, covers and orders, are more useful than one combined.

Decide whether children count as covers, and keep to the decision. Many venues count every guest who is served a meal, including children on a children's menu, and leave out babies who are not served.

The choice affects the spend per cover, because children usually spend less. Whatever the rule, apply it the same way on every night, so the figures can be compared.

Sometimes the covers report and the bookings disagree: more covers than the bookings and recorded unbooked parties explain, or fewer. The gap usually comes from party sizes that changed on arrival, guests added to a table, or unbooked guests who were seated without being recorded.

Investigate a large gap once, on a few nights, by comparing the bookings, the tables and the bills. The cause is usually a habit that one short training session can fix.

Over a year, the covers report shows the venue's seasons: the busy months, the quiet ones and the weeks around holidays and events. Keep the reports, and compare each week with the same week a year earlier as well as with the week before.

Seasonal patterns repeat more than owners expect. A covers report kept for two years is one of the best guides to planning the next.

Share the covers report with the people who use it: the chef for the prep and the orders, the manager for the rota, the owner for the trend. A short weekly summary, with the four first checks and anything unusual, is enough for most.

A report that only one person reads helps only that person. One the whole team sees makes everyone's planning better.

Covers per seat, the covers in a service divided by the seats in the room, shows how many times each seat was used. It is a quick way to compare services and venues of different sizes: a room of sixty that serves 120 covers has used each seat twice.

Watch it beside the total. A rising total with steady covers per seat means more seats were open, such as a terrace; a rising covers per seat means the same seats were used more.

Weather moves covers, especially for venues with terraces or many unbooked guests. A wet Saturday may look like a bad week in the report when it was simply a wet Saturday.

Note the weather beside unusual days in the report. Over a season, the notes explain many of the swings, and make the forecast for the next wet weekend more realistic.

Once in a while, check the covers report against the bills for the same service: the number of guests on each bill, added up, should match the covers recorded. If it does not, the habit of updating party sizes on arrival may have slipped.

A check on a few services each quarter keeps the report honest without much effort.

An invented brasserie's covers report shows 640 covers last week, up from 610. The manager checks the four first things: the total, the busiest services, the no-shows and the walk-ins. The no-shows show eleven parties that never arrived but were counted as covers, and the walk-ins on Saturday look far too low.

The brasserie changes its habits: no-shows are marked every night, party sizes are updated on arrival and every walk-in is recorded. The next week's report shows 615 covers, a truer figure, with walk-ins making up nearly a fifth of Saturday's guests. The rota for Saturdays gains a host for the early evening, and the forecast is finally close to what the kitchen cooks.

In servearound, the covers report is part of reservation analytics: covers, bookings, the no-show rate, the cancellation rate, the median lead time and the seated rate, each against the previous period of the same length, with covers day by day, by shift, by source and by party size, and a map of covers by day and hour. Walk-ins appear as their own source when the host records them, and no-shows count when a booking is marked as one.

The dashboard shows covers and spend per cover against the previous period, and every report takes a date range, so last year's weeks can be looked up and compared by hand. servearound does not forecast covers. See Analytics and Reservations.

A count of the guests served, by day, service, hour, source and party size, against previous periods.

The total, the busiest services, the no-shows and the walk-ins.

The walk-ins, which are under-recorded, and the covers from bookings, which include no-shows.

Record every walk-in, mark every no-show and update party sizes on arrival.

It counts guests, not money. Read them together through spend per cover.

The previous week, the same week last year and the average for that day.

It shows where the guests really fall, by service and by hour.

No. A few correct figures read every week beat many that are not.

What is a covers report? It counts the guests a venue served, by day, service, hour, source and party size, against the past. Read the covers report each week with four checks first: the total, the busiest services, the no-shows and the walk-ins, and read it beside sales by hour and spend per cover.

Fix the two numbers that are usually wrong by recording every walk-in and marking every no-show. Use reservation reports for the detail behind the bookings, compare like with like and build the covers forecast, the rota and the prep from a report that counts the guests who actually came.