Busy Work the Profit Killer

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Everyday restaurant managers transcribe data from one system into another manually. This manual busy work is a massive waste of time, it keeps manager’s off the floor where they belong, it is soul-crushing and incredibly expensive.

Here are some common examples:

1. Take labor numbers from the register system and enter them into a labor or expense tracking spreadsheet.
2. Conduct inventory on printed inventory forms and data enter them into a program or spreadsheet.
3. Data entering restaurant inspections or temp logs into a spreadsheet for scoring and record keeping.

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A lot of people think that because managers are salary employees “who cares” if they do a little busy work, it doesn’t cost any extra. That is a short-sighted way of looking at things.

You need to look at manager’s time from an ROI perspective. Every minute I’m paying this manager I should be getting a return on that investment. If there are two things, and there are always ten things in a restaurant, that need attention, then you should have manager’s focused on the activities that drive the most ROI in sales and guest satisfaction.

Use our Busy Work Calculator to determine what an activity is costing you and then determine if there is a solution that costs less than what you are paying for your manager’s time over an acceptable time period. If there is than you have found a positive ROI.

All of these individual 5 and 10-minute tasks add up over time. A restaurant that has 20 minutes a day of busy work built into their processes is wasting 121 hours or 3 weeks of manager work time over the year.

Here is another quick example, three waiters that stay on-the-clock 10 minutes longer than needed three shifts per week cost the company 78 hours of pay a year. Do you see how small things add up fast in restaurants?

We have a client, an area manager; that inspects his restaurant’s every month. He was spending an hour per inspection transcribing notes and scoring the inspection; we have found this to be a pretty common measure in transcribing inspections.

Because he conducts 16 inspections a month, that hour is actually two days a month of busy work or 24 days a year, at a cost to his company of $5,352 per year. With our system, he was able to save that hour. Imagine what you could do with an extra 24 days a year to focus on important stuff that drives sales and increases guest satisfaction.

Calculate how much your company is spending on you to do busy work by clicking here and using our Busy Work Calculator.

Tommy Yionoulis

I've been in the restaurant industry for most of my adult life. I have a BSBA from University of Denver Hotel Restaurant school and an MBA from the same. When I wasn't working in restaurants I was either doing stand-up comedy, for 10 years, or large enterprise software consulting. I'm currently the Managing Director of OpsAnalitica and our Inspector platform was originally conceived when I worked for one of the largest sandwich franchisors in the country. You can reach out to me through LinkedIn.

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