Restaurant Dashboard: Five Screens and the Owner’s Decisions

What a restaurant dashboard is

A dashboard is a screen with selected metrics and the ability to drill down into variances. For a restaurant, it can bring together sales, food consumption, and channel performance. Align the screen content with management decisions. From the high-level summary, provide drill-downs to a location, shift, dish, or document.

Start with a specific question. For example, the owner wants to understand why a location's revenue fell below plan. To answer that, you need check count, average check, operating hours, and daily sales. A question about milk requires different data: recipes, stock balances, and usage documents.

A single report can consist of several screens. Keep a brief overview on the first one. Open detailed tables only when drilling into a selected variance. The manager must understand where to verify the number and whom to contact if the source lacks data.

You can organize a report in your POS system, a spreadsheet, or a BI tool. iiko has the iikoDashboard app for viewing reports on a phone, with permissions configured separately. Before developing something new, check which questions your current tools already answer. Criteria are covered in our comparison of POS and Power BI.

Screen one: the owner's morning

Show yesterday's performance by location. To start, choose revenue, check count, average check, and variance from the agreed plan. Next to them, display operating hours and the completeness of POS data uploads. If a location closed early, the owner should see that before the manager's review.

Compare like-for-like days. For a café in Almaty and a coffee shop in Astana, check the format, schedule, and dining area availability. For a newly opened location, highlight its launch status. The approach to like-for-like locations is covered in the article on coffee shop analytics.

Allow drilling down from total revenue to days and hours. For check count, display the definition used, including refunds and split bills. Keep track of plan versions. If the plan was modified after the day closed, the manager must be able to restore the previous baseline for comparison.

End the screen with a short list of questions for today. For example, in a hypothetical scenario, morning sales at one location dropped after a schedule change. The manager will check the actual opening time and hourly traffic. Set a response deadline and a date to follow up.

Screen two: menu and dish contribution

Gather portions sold, revenue, and margin after food costs for each dish. State the time period and current recipe. Separate dine-in, pickup, and delivery wherever unit economics differ. For delivery, display packaging costs and platform commissions at the next level of calculation.

Analyze demand alongside contribution margin. A popular dish may leave only a modest amount after ingredient costs. For a slow-moving item, check purchasing of dedicated ingredients and write-offs. The decision matrix and process are covered in the article on menu engineering.

Keep a filter for comparable groups. Review drinks of different sizes and individual dishes versus combos according to agreed rules. If a modifier changes ingredient usage, check whether it is captured in the source data. If the required detail is missing, state the calculation limitation.

At your weekly meeting, choose a specific action: review display placement, menu offerings, or kitchen prep. Keep the baseline period and conditions. After making changes, evaluate demand and margin together to measure results on a comparable set of sales.

Screen three: costs and waste

Display theoretical consumption based on recipe cards, actual usage based on stock balances and movements, recorded write-offs, and unexplained variances. Show ingredient quantities and their monetary value separately. That way, the manager can track milk usage independently of changes in purchase prices.

Indicate warehouse readiness. Yesterday's sales can be discussed based on closed POS registers. Calculating the final actual food cost requires reliable inventory balances and source documents. Until they are confirmed, display a preliminary status and the date of the last inventory count. Formulas are detailed in the article on calculating food cost.

Provide drill-downs from a product group to specific ingredients and inventory movements. If write-offs are already included in usage derived from stock balances, display them as an explanation of part of the variance. Make sure you do not double-count that usage in the reporting model.

Assign someone to investigate the root cause. When a variance occurs, they will verify units of measurement, invoices, and recipe cards, followed by food preparation. Numbers help identify what to examine. Drawing conclusions about employee actions requires source records and reviewing specific operations according to standard procedures.

Screen four: staff and shifts

Match hourly revenue and check count with the available work schedule. Keep planned shifts separate from confirmed actual hours. If hours worked are tracked manually, assign a spreadsheet owner and indicate the cutoff date for verified data.

Account for non-checkout tasks. Before opening, staff prep ingredients, and during service they pack delivery orders and maintain the dining room. Hourly revenue alone cannot tell you how many people you need for the entire shift. Discuss task breakdown and transitions between responsibilities with the manager.

Measuring service speed requires agreed timestamps for the start and end of each stage. Check their availability and meaning. Receipt closing time may differ from order handover time. If there are no timestamps, start with a control observation following an agreed procedure and sign off on the measurement method.

In your meetings, review peak queue hours and reasons for delays. Based on the results, you can adjust task distribution or staffing schedules. In the next comparable period, check revenue, order volume, and speed. Save menu and channel changes that could have also affected workload.

Screen five: delivery and pickup

For each channel, display sales, returns, food cost, packaging, and verified direct expenses. Commissions and advertising expenses for Wolt, Glovo, and Yandex Eda depend on your contract. Use your establishment's specific terms and available settlement documents.

Pull order data from aggregator partner portals. Check the data structure and history depth with the provider. If an order is already registered in iiko or r_keeper, include the sale in the total only once. Use the aggregator report for reconciliation and deduction reviews.

Separate contribution and cash payout. Service payouts may belong to a different billing period. Display sales dates and settlement dates on the screen. The complete procedure and a fictional example in tenge are in the article on delivery margin.

When orders spike, review kitchen workload by the hour. For returned orders, locate the cause and preparation details. Finish the review with a decision on menu items, order assembly, or promotion terms. Save the document so the manager can verify the outcome of the change.

How to establish a daily, weekly, and monthly rhythm

Schedule meeting times around when data sources are ready. A morning overview can rely on a closed cash register, while an inventory review will require completed documents. Align expectations with the people who enter the data. Record when a metric is considered preliminary and who approves the final figure.

Maintain a decision log alongside the report. Record the observation, verified root cause, action, responsible person, and verification date. Open this list at your next meeting. For any unresolved task, find out what is missing: a document, access, or a leadership decision.

Include general expenses from 1C after aligning with the accountant. The approach to connecting management metrics is described in the article on the 1C sales dashboard. For a restaurant, separately verify the inventory period, recipe costing cards, and expense allocation rules.

What to keep on the owner's phone

Open the report on the device the owner uses. On the first screen, keep the date range, update timestamp, and a few core metrics. For any discrepancy, provide a clear drill-down to the location and cause. Verify that amounts in tenge and long dish names remain readable.

Maintain context when navigating. If you select yesterday and one location, the detailed table must reflect that same filter. Make sure it is clear how to return to the overview. Ask the owner to navigate this path independently and explain what action they will take after reviewing the data.

Verify manager permissions using a dedicated account. They should only see the agreed scope of data for their role. Discuss the location of data sources, intermediate staging storage, and backups with IT and legal counsel. The preparation pipeline is described in the article on POS data, 1C, and Power BI.

Why teams stop opening the dashboard

Designate a single report owner on the establishment's side. They will align definitions and question priorities. Distribute technical support and data source preparation among your team. When a failure happens, the responsible person and recovery procedure must be clear, or employees will return to personal spreadsheets.

Keep the first screen focused on decisions. For each figure, define a question and an action. If a number does not affect your next review, move it to details. Profile views in 2GIS do not replace purchase numbers, and Kaspi deposits require reconciliation with register sales.

Verify trust in the data. Show raw data rows for a control day and repeat the calculation together with the manager. If an error occurs, document the explanation and the corrected period. For an unavailable data source, display the upload status. A manager should not assume zero sales simply because a space is blank.

What an initial version can look like in 2-3 weeks

Treat 2-3 weeks as a benchmark for a focused first version once access is set up, formulas are agreed upon, and a valid data sample is ready. This is not a promise of full integration for every source. Before starting, assess the gaps and define an outcome that your team can verify.

First, agree on a single control period. Choose one location, sales data, and a small set of decisions. Reconcile the cash register with the report total. List any unavailable fields. Prepare the structure of five screens, and add data only where you can explain the calculation.

Then test the operational workflow. Open the overview, navigate to the drill-down, assign a task, and refresh the data. Walk through this on a phone using manager permissions. Test data source errors separately: the report should display the date of the last successful upload.

In the first version, an agreed manual expense file is acceptable if you specify the owner, period, and verification procedure. You can keep the delivery screen with a pending report status. Never replace missing data with fabricated amounts or present preliminary food cost as finalized.

Yashcher implements Power BI. If your current cash register or spreadsheet already handles these questions, start by working with it consistently. The overall launch process is outlined in the restaurant analytics guide.

Frequently asked questions

What is a dashboard in simple terms?

It is a screen with selected metrics and drill-downs to details. A restaurant owner reviews variances, checks the source, and assigns an action. Definitions, periods, and data readiness must be clear to the decision-maker.

How many metrics does a restaurant owner need?

Choose a few numbers tailored to daily questions. To start, track revenue, check count, and variance from the plan. Add product and channel metrics as data sources become ready. For each number, name an owner and an action.

Can you view a restaurant dashboard on a phone?

Test the chosen solution on the owner's device, including login, permissions, and navigation. iiko offers iikoDashboard for viewing reports. For a standalone BI tool, confirm access terms with the vendor and test how convenient your report is.

Can you get the first version in 2-3 weeks?

This timeline is realistic for a limited scope when data and access are ready. Agree on a benchmark period, metrics, and verification criteria. Estimate the time needed to fix accounting records and connect unavailable sources separately after reviewing them.

Who is responsible for the dashboard after launch?

Appoint a business rule owner at the restaurant and someone for technical support. For each data source, assign a person who confirms data completeness for the period. Document the procedure for fixing errors and reloading data, then test it on a trial update.