Revenue per hour worked: building the right metric for your restaurant

Comparing two venues or two time slots by only looking at labour cost as a percentage of revenue hides part of the picture: two venues can share the same percentage with very different productivity. Revenue per hour worked compares how much each hour of work actually returns, not just how much it costs.

How to build the metric

The base calculation is: net revenue for the period ÷ hours actually worked in the same period. It becomes useful when calculated per time slot and per venue, not just as a daily or monthly average, because the average hides exactly the differences that matter for decisions.

• Lunch revenue ÷ hours worked at lunch
• Dinner revenue ÷ hours worked at dinner
• Weekend revenue ÷ hours worked over the weekend
• Same slot, different venues: a direct comparison between comparable locations

What a slot comparison reveals

A low-productivity slot is not automatically one to cut: it might be an opening slot needed to serve a loyal audience, or a service still being built up. Reading it correctly means telling apart structural low productivity, which needs to be accepted as part of the business model, from low productivity caused by too many hours assigned, which should be fixed.

1. Spot slots with productivity consistently below the venue average
2. Check whether staffing in that slot matches expected traffic
3. Separate seasonal dips from structural ones
4. Act on assigned hours, not by cutting services that create value in other ways

Comparing venues

Across multiple venues, a direct comparison of the metric helps identify which locations have room to improve their hours distribution, and which have a traffic or positioning problem that no shift reorganisation can fix on its own. Confusing the two leads to the wrong action: cutting hours where the problem is demand doesn't increase traffic, it only increases the risk of poor service.

Using it without hurting quality

The most common mistake is optimising the metric by cutting staff until service worsens: longer waits, less attentive tables, more mistakes. Revenue per hour worked should be read alongside service quality indicators (wait times, complaints, reviews), never alone. An isolated metric always pushes in the same direction, cutting, which is not always the right direction.