Restaurant ratios: which numbers to track to know if a dining room is profitable

Why ratios matter more than raw revenue

Revenue alone says almost nothing. A dining room can post an excellent monthly turnover and still lose money, or generate a modest turnover and be comfortably profitable. What matters is the relationship between what the room produces and what it costs to run.

A handful of well-chosen ratios, calculated regularly, are enough to give an honest picture of a restaurant's health. None of them require heavy accounting software: a spreadsheet, an export from the POS or booking system, and a bit of consistency.

The five ratios that actually matter

1. Revenue per cover

The simplest and most useful ratio. It is calculated as:

• Service revenue (ex-VAT) ÷ number of covers served

What it shows: the average value produced per guest, taxes aside. Compare it against the average menu price to spot services where guests consume less (quick table turnover, low basket).

2. Dining room fill rate

• Number of covers served ÷ theoretical capacity of the service

A half-empty service is not, by itself, a problem — some slots are structurally slow. But a service that is usually full and suddenly drops 20 points of fill rate over a few weeks is a signal to dig into (no-shows, lost momentum, visibility issue).

3. Average ticket per bill

• Total bills (incl. VAT) ÷ number of bills

Distinct from revenue per cover: the bill-level average looks at the whole bill, while revenue per cover divides by the number of guests. The two rarely drop at the same time, which helps to see whether the problem comes from footfall or from what people order.

4. No-show rate

• Number of unfulfilled reservations ÷ number of confirmed reservations

Calculated on the booking, not on the service. A high rate is one of the earliest warning signals: the room has empty inventory despite existing demand, which means work to do on reminders, deposit policy or booking page ergonomics.

5. Food cost margin on signature dishes

• (Selling price ex-VAT - food cost ex-VAT) ÷ selling price ex-VAT

No need to compute it for the full menu. Three or four signature dishes are enough. A margin that drifts down quarter after quarter on a star dish, with no price-side reason, is a warning about portions, supplier costs or kitchen waste.

How to read these ratios without fooling yourself

Compare over time, not in absolute terms

National restaurant profitability averages circulate widely, but they depend on the concept, the location and the average ticket. A fine-dining room at a €45 average ticket and a Japanese spot at €17 have nothing to compare.

What matters is the trajectory: this month's ratio versus last month's, versus the same period last year. A consistent time series is more useful than any questionable external benchmark.

Separate the structural from the one-off

A rainy weekend, a big match, a strike, a trade show: a single service can deviate from habit without the room being in trouble. The idea is not to react to every fluctuation but to look at the 4 to 8-week trend.

Do not confuse revenue with profit

Revenue that rises while costs rise faster is not good news. That is why tracking payroll, food cost and fixed costs (rent, energy) in parallel matters: without those numbers, the ratios above quickly become decorative.

Where Suzzy helps concretely

Suzzy does not replace an accountant. For two ratios in particular though — fill rate and no-show rate — the booking tool provides the raw data directly: covers per service, status of each booking, history of peaks and slow Tuesdays. The manager no longer has to count covers by hand or guess why a Tuesday is empty: the answer is in the diary.

The Suzzy dashboard is designed to make these indicators readable without prior training, so the weekly follow-up takes minutes rather than half a day.