Accurate sales forecasting when planning schedules and stocks

The importance of accurate sales forecasting in restaurant planning

Getting your staff rotas right and ordering the right amount of stock is a science in itself. Especially if you are managing more than one site and several teams.

Demand can fluctuate on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, and even within the same business day. So, the more accurately your sales forecasting is, the more you’ll optimise your resources, costs and increase revenue.

Reducing food waste is also a top priority in the food service industry. Finding ways to measure food waste and adjust our menus to reduce food waste has never been more important.

Restaurant planning: fail to plan, plan to fail…

Food and labour costs are at an all-time high, increasingly squeezing margins. Without reliable sales forecasting based on real, reliable data, you risk wasting money, your team’s time and reducing your business profits.

Having too many people working during low periods is a waste of your money and could also be a demotivator for them. On the other hand, being understaffed during busy periods loses you potential sales and the extra pressure can breed discontentment among the team.

Ordering too much fresh produce for low periods wastes money, but also food. And if you don’t control stock efficiently, you’ll find you have products past their sell-by date which are unusable.

These are just some of the scenarios you can avoid by improving your approach to restaurant planning.

What can Mapal do to help you improve restaurant planning?

Mapal’s suite of hospitality solutions enable you to digitise your back-office restaurant management, providing you with real-time data to help you make better, faster decisions, improve sales forecasting, and optimise your restaurant planning.

Workforce — Team planning and schedule optimisation engine that generates perfect schedules in a few clicks. Predict sales based on past data and plan staffing needs for up to a year in advance, reducing labour costs and optimising productivity.

Easilys f&b — Kitchen inventory, menu and waste management software helping you efficiently manage suppliers, ingredients, prices, and waste. Integrates with your POS to automatically update future orders, helping you control food costs.