Restaurant Operating Hours

The word hospital is in the word hospitality; however, we are not hospitals and do not have to be open 24 hours a day 7 days a week offering services to everyone. Consider the following when selecting the hours of operation for your business.

• Be true to your restaurants concept: Your hours of operation and offerings should

fit your restaurants concept and how you want to be perceived in the market. For

example, if you are a high-end dinner only restaurant located in a dense downtown it

may be tempting to serve early morning breakfast, but does that conflict with the

perception of your concept in the market? Will it detract from your dinner business? Will

it strain your staff? Is there a positive upside to profitability? Perhaps a Sunday Brunch,

with a higher price point is a better message to the market and fit for your operation.

• Analyze profit by hour and cut unprofitable time slots: This pertains mostly to

opening and closing hours that are not profitable and take away from the profit made in

peak hours. I work with a client that opened for lunch at 11am and closed for dinner at

11pm. The average customers prior to 12 noon at lunch were less than 20 and the

average customers from 10pm to 11pm were less than 10. By opening for lunch at 12

noon it allowed all team members to come in 1 hour later. By closing an hour earlier,

there was a savings of 45 minutes per day in clean up and closing duties. Sales did not

decline because the customers knew when to come use this successful restaurant. The

saving in labor averaged $225 for the 6 days a week they were open. That is equal to

$1350 a week and $70,200 annually prior to taxes and benefits cost. This increased the

restaurant’s productivity which meant they kept the profit earned from the peak hours of

operation instead of giving it back it the non-producing hours.

• Focus on peak profitability periods: The hours you are open should focus on

maximizing your customers during that time. Peak lunch and dinner hours will require

you to ensure you are properly prepped for the shift, do not over book reservations, be

properly staffed for the shift, and execute proper kitchen ticket times, which will lead to

efficient table turn times. Do not overload your offerings with too many specials,

discounts or items that are difficult and take a long time to prepare from your kitchen.

Provide the experience that the customer is looking for and pour on the hospitality. In

step 3 the subject of Labor Optimization was presented. Utilize the tools of Sales per

labor hour and Customers per labor hour as the data to aid in this process.

• Use the airline approach to maximize productivity and discontinue offerings and

time periods that are not profitable: Most restaurants are not consistently busy at all

time periods, every day of the week that they are open. To build traffic on an off night

many will try discounts and promotions. Some operators will add on a daypart such as

late-night Happy Hour. It is important to track the actual cost of these promotions to

ensure they are increasing your customer count and bottom line and not detracting from

it. Discounting is tricky and depending on your concept and price point may not be a fit.

Instead of a blanket discount, some restaurants will promote a special offer such as a

date night menu for two or a selected featured wine night to attract guest on an off night.

These types of promotions may have a discounted feature, but those items are add on

purchases that do not subtract from the average per person spent, but actually build the

per person spend by encouraging that add on purchase at a discount. This will ensure

profitability and be an offering appreciated by your core customer. Too many times

operators will promote a $1 wing night and $2 Taco Tuesday. These may be very

successful and sell well. However, if you are not making money on them (which is

difficult with todays food cost) you may be adding customer count and losing money. In

addition, are your building customer count with customers that will come back on other

nights or only come for the discount?

• Don’t try to be everything to everyone: As mentioned in the first section “Be true to

your concept.” It is tempting to think you may be successful at everything you promote

to your market. Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Late Night Happy Hour, Live Entertainment

Weekends, Saturday and Sunday Brunch, Monday Night Wings, Taco Tuesday….. .It is

always best to limit your offerings at the start. Maximize the hours of operation you are

open that fit your core concept before adding on too many offerings that may confuse

the public or worse teach them to only use you at non profitable discounted off hours.

You can always add but once you put messaging out and take it away you appear to be

unsuccessful.

• Do the math: The math doesn’t lie. Prior to adding or deleting your hours of operation

calculate the cost of what additional hours or dayparts will cost in labor and cost of

goods (especially if discounted). What do you need to produce in sales and customer

count to break even? What will my marketing cost be to get the word to produce the

sales needed and how much are you willing to invest to create those sales before it

becomes profitable? If you are deleting hours for example closing between 2-4:30 after

lunch the reopening at happy hour determine what are my labor dollar savings? Is there

additional work to shut down and re-open? Is this a benefit for my team members to get

a break? Having the correct hours of operation to ensure profitability is critical to your

business. Remember for every hour, daypart or promotion that loses profit, it adds

stress to those days that earn profit just to make it back. Don’t work hard at getting tired.