Make Huge Impact in 5 Minutes with KPI’s

 KPI’s and numbers were not a thing I cared about when I first started my business.  In fact, the money was coming in so quickly that I didn’t have time nor cared to track numbers.  There was money in the bank account and that was the dream, right?  I’ll give you a hint: It’s not.  

               Let’s go back to May 2019.  It was 6AM and I, along with my husband and other team members were recovering from my husband’s 40th birthday party.  It had been a surprise the night before and we had a great time ringing in Shawn’s 40th as a surprise birthday party at a brewery.  Everyone was in a great mood & we were looking forward to a lovely Sunday after a long Saturday night.  I got a call bright & early from our Executive Chef who was clearly in better shape than me even though he also had been at the party, and he told me I needed to get to the restaurant right away.  This was really unusual because I hadn’t worked at the restaurant on the weekends in over a year, but we packed up the kids & headed to Downtown Milwaukee.  What we saw I’ll never forget. 

               Our basement had begun flooding overnight and was now into everything; our walk-in cooler, freezer, the offices, coming into the shelving with dry food storage - we were losing everything in front of our eyes.  We had known this was an issue in the past as the building was next to the Milwaukee River & it had been a high year for water that year, but nothing like this had ever happened before.  This was the first day of a 4+ month long journey of closing the restaurant & re-opening it in a new location that fall.  I’ll spare the details for this chapter.  It became quite clear that the money wasn’t rolling in anymore when the expenses began piling up and so did the bank account.  I quickly realized that a disaster like this was going to cripple us if I didn’t figure out our numbers, and fast.  

               I ended up sitting down & pulling apart our financial statements, sales reports, and bills and learned the ins and outs pretty fast as I had to.  I learned the difference between COGS & Expenses (quick lesson - COGS stop when your restaurant floods, Expenses don’t).  I truly hope something like this doesn’t happen to your business, but if it does, knowing your KPI’s and your numbers is extremely important.  If you aren’t tracking your numbers yet, don’t worry, there’s no better day than today. 

               So, what to track and when?  Let’s dive in.  I highly recommend tracking your numbers weekly.  I used to do monthly, but the issue became that it was usually around the 10th of the month by the time I dove into my numbers from last month.  In the restaurant industry, timing is important and by the time I saw the numbers from last month, I was already a third of the way into the new month!  The damage was done, and it was too late.  When I began tracking weekly, I could catch things early enough & make quick corrections where I needed to.  

               As far as what to track.  Try this.  Picture yourself sitting on a beach.  You haven’t been to your business in months & are enjoying a nice drink while staring at the ocean, with the only worry on your mind is whether to have sushi again tonight or to maybe enjoy a nice lobster tail - but you know, you had lobster a couple days ago…sigh.  Problems…. Anyway, the waiter comes up and he also happens to have a small piece of paper in his hands.  He hands it to you.  You review the numbers on the paper, smile, and order another drink.  You’ve just read your KPI’s (key performance indicators), and they look great.  You know your company is thriving and you know because of the numbers on the paper.  If you had to choose 5 things to track, what would it be?  Use that example as a tool to figure out what your business needs to track.  Report those numbers to yourself weekly or assign someone to report them to you Mondays by 10AM.  Set a reminder for yourself every Monday at 10AM (or whatever time you choose) to review the numbers & make corrections or schedule time to meet with whoever is needed to correct what needs to be corrected.  

               Here is an example of the KPI’s we tracked in the restaurant.  This is an actual depiction of 3 locations’ worth of numbers.  We used these to track figures in the stores week by week and to determine the “health” of the business.  Our focus each week then became in those areas.  It also helped us determine what initiatives or promotions were having the greatest impact, positively or negatively.  

You can’t avoid numbers in business.  There is so much freedom and power in knowing the important figures and having a constant report card of the health of your company.  It’s so fun being able to set goals and initiatives based on these numbers and get your team involved in making the #’s look how you want them to look.  Without KPI’s, it is difficult to set goals, measure impact, or track how your team and business is doing in a certain department.  Use Department specific KPI’s to keep your team on track & to give them healthy & productive goals.  Your business will thank you.