Beverage Sales Insights to Protect Profits

Protect Profit with Beverage Sales Analytics

In this article, we’ll learn how to improve your beverage sales in order to increase profit.  To do this, we will help you identify a target sales mix (% of total sales) and determine how your current beverage sales are performing. Then you’ll track your success as you make changes, and help you quantify the impact of your success.

We will guide you through three steps to increase Beverage sales in your sales mix:

• Getting Started - Establish a baseline to understand your current performance
• Set your goals and timeline
• Track your results and communicate your success

Getting Started - Establish a baseline to understand your current performance

Alcoholic beverages have the highest opportunity for profit margin but are commonly overlooked when promoting your chef's newest featured entrée or working with our servers to increase their check average. A common industry target for sales mix is for Beverage sales to make up 30-35% of gross sales, and closer to 40 or 50% for fine dining restaurants or beverage-focused concepts.

Let’s check if your establishment is hitting the mark.

• To do this, run the Sales Category Report and identify the current sales mix (food/bev % of sales).
  • We’ll get started by selecting a date range in the Report Generator for the past 3 months to establish our baseline. A broader timeline helps avoid impactful outliers that may skew your results.
  • Because you’re primarily interested in beverage sales in the dining room, at dinner time, select the appropriate revenue center, meal period, and global category filters in your report generator.
  • This report defaults to show you Gross Sales and %Total Amount, which is exactly what you need. 
  • Click GO

Set your goals and timeline

Now determine what your goal is for the beverage category, and take note of where your sales mix is currently so you can quantify and communicate your results and successes. 

• • Based on your menu, concept, and needs, set an appropriate goal to increase your beverage sales mix from the current state of _____% to ______% by next quarter.
  • With your goal determined, set up a report to track your success on this initiative.
    • Run a new date range for this Category Sales Report, we recommend a trend for the last 8 weeks.
    • Be sure to continue to use the same “apples to apples” comparison using the same revenue center and meal period. Consistent filters will keep variables from skewing your results. 

Track your results and communicate your success

Now it’s time to track your results by adding this to your dashboard as well as setting this report up to be emailed weekly so you can keep tabs on the progress your team is making towards the goal.

Selecting a dynamic date range means the report will automatically update for you each week with new information. A dynamic date range is a term for date that constantly updates, like 'Yesterday' or 'MTD' (Month-to-Date) which will always be that condition. A static date range is fixed dates and will not update, such as January 1-15. 

Track results at a glance on your dashboard

Run your Category Sales Report with the same parameters you used to set the baseline, and use a Dynamic Date Range, as described above. 

• Click the dashboard icon at the top of the graph to add to our dashboard. The dashboard is a great centralized location to track initiatives and key metrics. You can have multiple dashboards for specific purposes or initiatives. 
  • When you click the dashboard icon, make sure to select ALL the columns in your report to include so you don't miss any details!

Set a weekly progress report to email to all managers

Run your Category Sales Report with the same parameters you used to set the baseline, and use a Dynamic Date Range, as described above. 

• Click the envelope icon at the top of the report.
  • Click weekly to set this email up to be delivered at the beginning of each week.
  • We recommend sending this report to your management team every Monday morning at 9 AM (be sure to select the day that your fiscal week begins, if not Monday).
  • Add a title for this email that is clear and short
  • Add a description that references the project, baseline, and goal so the management team knows exactly how to use these weekly emails.
    • Select the entire management team to receive this email so managers can focus on constructive and targeted discussions during pre-shift meetings.
    • Additionally, encourage them to hold tastings and test servers on descriptors on key beverage items. Both of these exercises will help to increase beverage sales by boosting team confidence in upselling these drinks.
    • Consider adding a contest or server incentive for beverage sales and post weekly results to get server buy-in to your goal.

Calculate your success

In the last emailed report (determined by your target date) you can note your final beverage % of sales.

Our baseline is ____% with the goal of _____%.  If we meet our goal at the end of our program, we will have had a _____% increase in beverage sales.

That wraps up this tutorial on improving your beverage percent of sales to increase profit. If you have further questions, please feel free to reach out to [e-mail]