Your Labor Problem Is a Scheduling Problem

The money is not lost to how much you pay or how many you employ. It is lost to when they are on the clock.

When an operator tells me labor is killing them, they usually mean wages are too high or they have too many people. They are almost always wrong on both counts. The money is lost in the schedule.

As a share of revenue, full-service labor now runs around a 36 percent median — and the ones who clear a profit hold it closer to 34. That two-point gap is won in the schedule, not in pay cuts.

Where the money leaks

Pull a week of labor against a week of sales, hour by hour, and the leaks announce themselves: the over-staffed Tuesday lunch, the prep cook who starts an hour early, the closer kept on an hour past the last table. Each is a small, reasonable decision made without the numbers in front of it.

The fix is a habit

Build the schedule against forecasted demand, not last week's habit. Know your sales by daypart, know how many hours each daypart can carry, write to match, and check actual against forecast every week. The two points appear without anyone taking a pay cut.

What not to do

The reflex is to cut bodies from the floor. Resist it — cut service and you damage the top line, which makes your labor percentage worse, not better. The goal is never the lowest labor cost. It is the right labor cost.

The DC Group — an independent hospitality practice. Operating worldwide. info@thedcgroup.ca