The ten numbers of the season to be drawn by August 31st

The average receipt, but broken down by time slot

The aggregate figure is useless. It tells you 32 euros and you don't know what to do with it. Break it down: weekday lunch, weekday dinner, weekend lunch, weekend dinner. And if you have the data, also separate the first shift from the second. This is where the interesting things arise—typically a weekday lunch that's ten euros below average and that you're carrying around out of habit, not convenience. Formula. Revenue for the segment ÷ seats for the segment. Alarm threshold. A gap of more than 25% between the best and worst segments. It's not a problem in itself, but it needs to be decided: that segment can be enhanced with a dedicated offering, or it can be closed.

Food cost per product family, not overall

Total food cost is the most cited and least useful number in Italian restaurants. Knowing you're at 31% doesn't tell you where to look. Break it down by family: meat, fish, dairy, flour, fruit and vegetables, beverages. All you need is three-month invoices broken down by category and the revenue from the corresponding items. You'll almost always find that the problem is concentrated in one or two families, often those where price lists have changed but technical specifications haven't. Formula: Family purchase cost ÷ revenue from the menu items containing it. Threshold: The most commonly used industry benchmarks place the overall food cost between 28% and 35% for restaurants and lower for pizzerias. But the real threshold is different: a single family that has earned more than three percentage points since the start of the season. That one should open immediately.

The sales ranking of the dishes, with the margin next to it

Not how many dishes you've sold. How many dishes you've sold and how much you have left. Take the top fifteen items by volume and add the contribution margin in euros next to them—not as a percentage, in euros. There are two columns. It's the most useful document you'll produce this year, and from there comes the September report. Threshold: Any dish in the top ten by volume that's below the average margin in euros. It's the classic decoy dish everyone orders and that's working against you: it needs to be repriced, reformulated, or moved to the bottom of the report. And the other half of the ranking: the items that don't make up 2% of sales. They take up space on the paper, in the warehouse, on the table setting, and on the staff's minds. In a report of forty items, there are always six or seven that need eliminating, and no one regrets them.

Hours worked per cover in food cost

You're already looking at the percentage of staff costs. This number is more raw and honest, because it isn't distorted by revenue. Formula: Total hours worked in the month ÷ Tables served in the month. All hours: dining room, kitchen, dishwashing, and your own. Threshold: A value that worsens by more than 15% from June to August with the same service formula. It means the organization absorbed the peak by adding hours, not efficiency—and in September, when table capacity drops, those hours remain.

The incidence of personnel costs, calculated well

"Good" means: gross wages plus contributions, INAIL (National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work), severance pay, night and holiday bonuses, and overtime. Not net pay. Threshold: The commonly used reference ranges are between 25 and 35% depending on the formula, with fine dining at the top and quick service at the bottom. The most common summary reference is prime cost—food plus labor—under 60-65%. If you're above, it's not a seasonal problem: it's a model issue, and it needs to be addressed now because it gets worse in the fall.

The no-show rate

How many reserved tables were no-shows, out of all reservations? If you're not already tracking it, this is the reason to start in September. The available data depicts a highly variable phenomenon: in Bologna, Ascom and Fipe indicated a percentage of reservations around 8%, with a greater concentration in mid- to high-end establishments. In Milanese establishments monitored by TheFork, the figure hovered around 2.9%. Your number could fall anywhere within that range, and no industry average tells you. Threshold: Above 5%, you stop considering it an inconvenience and it becomes a cost item. At that point, countermeasures—reconfirmation the day before, guarantee cards for groups, and overbooking tailored to peak periods—must be decided, not discussed.

The real weight of delivery and takeaway

Two numbers, not one. How much does it impact revenue and how much does it impact margins, net of the platform fee, packaging, and dedicated hours. Threshold: If delivery accounts for more than 20% of revenue but less than 10% of margins, you're working for the platform. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; it can help cover fixed costs in slower periods, but it needs to be acknowledged, not immediately.

The yield per seat

The number restaurateurs look at the least and the one that best reflects how well you fill your tables. Formula: Revenue for the period ÷ (seats × days open). To be precise, divide by service hours rather than days. Threshold: A decrease compared to the previous season with the same average bill. It means you're selling well but turning over less: the problem could be in service times, waiting list management, or average table length, not the menu.

The gap between theoretical food cost and actual food cost

You get the theoretical cost from recipe cards. The real cost from invoices and inventory. The difference between the two is the exact measure of what you lose in waste, errors, over-portioning, and shortages. Formula: Actual food cost − theoretical food cost, in percentage points. Threshold: Above three points, you have an operational problem, not a purchasing one. And after a summer with new staff, three points is more the norm than the exception—all the more reason to measure it now, while you can still reconstruct where they ended up.

The impact of beverages on the receipt

The last, and for many establishments, the most profitable, figure to move. How much of the average bill is beverage revenue? Formula: Beverage revenue ÷ Total revenue. Threshold: Below 25% in a restaurant with table service, there's margin left on the counter, almost always due to the menu rather than the paper. This is the number that moves most quickly with staff training, which is why it's worth having in hand before planning for September.

Then comes the part that matters

Extracting the ten numbers takes a couple of hours. Making them useful takes just as many, but they must be done immediately afterwards: write a single action and a date next to each one. Not three actions. One. If the food cost of dairy products has risen by four points, the action is "request a price list revision by September 10th." If there are seven menu items under 2%, the action is "new menu effective from September 15th." If the no-show rate is 9%, the action is "telephone reconfirmation for all tables of six or more, from September 1st." One sheet of paper. Ten lines. Pinned wherever you see it. On November 30th, you pick it up and check how many of those ten lines you've actually closed. That, more than the balance sheet, will tell you what season you've had.