Food Industry Performance Indicators Tell You if Your are Winning

You can't tell if you're winning if you don't keep score! Food industry performance indicators simply help you work out how well your business is doing.

Performance indicators are simply financial and non-financial metrics used to express the performance of a business based on the goals and objectives it has set for itself.

Let's take a school for example. One performance indicator may be the failure rate of its students. This rate will show whether or not the school is meeting its goal of educating students. Obviously, if the rate is too high, then the school needs to be doing something else or doing something more in order to keep more kids from failing.

If the performance indicator shows that a small percentage of the students are failing, than it reflects that the school's goal has been achieved.

The food service industry has performance indicators as well and there are about nine performance indicators that are common to most food service businesses. But the best way to discuss them is to look at a restaurant.

The goals of a restaurant are roughly the same as other businesses in the food service industry, so it's a good focus point in discussing industry performance indicators. So now let's go over some of the main food service performance indicators to better get a feel for what the food service industry is all about.

First, let's deal with customers. While some aspects of the food industry might not have customers in the sense of people coming to dine at a restaurant, it's important to keep track of whoever may be considered close to a customer or client. If it's a catering company you're talking about, count the number of people per party you cater and consider them all customers.

Whatever business you have, you should have an average amount that each customer will pay when dining at your establishment or using your services. Divide this number into your goal for the amount you think you should receive from customer in total per month, year, or what have you. This will give you a number that expresses how many customers need to visit your place in order to meet your goal. Just go through the receipts at the end of the night, count how many people showed up, and see if that performance indicator says you've met your goal or not.

When it comes to food service performance indicators customers is one of the most important, because without them there is no way a business can grow. Another major factor is how much is spent in a certain period of time on equipment or supplies. Whether you need to buy or a new refrigerator when one breaks on you, or your weekly shipment of eggs or milk, you should keep track of your expenses with these things. They should be added to other expenses, such as what you spend on rent or taxes, and put up against how much you're making. Then you can see how much profit you are making, which is a very important performance indicator as to whether or not your place is making any money at all.

By looking at the goals you have set for yourself in the food industry, you should be able to figure out a number of performance indicators for yourself. These will make it easier for you to see if you've met any or all of your goals, and will probably let you know what you need to work on if you find your goals have not been met. In an industry with as many ups and downs as the food service industry, it's important to know what performance indicators to look at, because otherwise it can be difficult to keep your goals and your performance in line.

And remember you can't tell if you're winning if you don't keep score!

About The Author-- Robert Bylett helps managers who are open to new and innovative ways of looking at solutions to food service problems focus energy, optimise performance, and achieve their objectives faster and easier. More info: Just Consultancy

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