Running a restaurant isn’t just about cooking great food and delivering top-notch service—you also have to keep an eye on your numbers. And if we’re being honest, most restaurant owners don’t love diving into financial reports.
But here’s the thing: if you don’t track the right numbers, you’re flying blind.
You might be making money, but are you making enough?
Are you spending too much on food? Is labor eating into your profits?
That’s where KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) come in. They’re the numbers that tell you what’s really going on with your business.
And in 2025, if you want to run a restaurant that’s profitable (and not just surviving), these are the financial restaurant KPIs you need to track.
1. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) – The KPI That Changes Everything
Most restaurant owners only look at daily sales—how much money came in today, how much food was sold. And yeah, that’s important. But it’s short-term thinking. What you really need to know is how much a customer is worth over time.
Think about it like this: A guy comes into your restaurant and spends $50. Great! But what if he comes in twice a month for a year? Now he’s worth $1,200. And if he keeps coming back year after year? He could be worth tens of thousands to your business.
Now, here’s the real game-changer: What if you increased how often he visits? Or got him to bring friends? Or upsold him a bottle of wine every few visits? Suddenly, that one guy is worth way more than you originally thought.
So how do you track this? At Vast, when we help restaurant owners figure out their CLV, we start by looking at repeat customer data. If you’re using a system like Toast or Clover, you can actually see how often a customer comes back and what they’re ordering. If you’re not using a POS system with customer tracking, even a simple spreadsheet can help you get a rough idea.
Once you know your CLV, you can start making better marketing decisions. Instead of throwing money at ads hoping for random new customers, you can focus on getting existing customers to come in just a little more often—which is almost always cheaper and more profitable.
2. Revenue per Available Seat Hour (RevPASH) – Are Your Tables Pulling Their Weight?
This is one of our favorite KPIs, because once restaurant owners understand it, things start to click.
Here’s the deal: Every seat in your restaurant should be making you money. If your tables are sitting empty for hours, you’re losing revenue. And if you’re not turning tables efficiently, you’re leaving money on the table—literally.
Think about a hotel. If a room isn’t booked for the night, that’s lost revenue. The same applies to your restaurant seats.
Let’s break it down with an example. Say your restaurant has 50 seats and you’re open for 5 hours per night. If you make $5,000 on a Friday night, your RevPASH is $20 per seat per hour.
Now, if that number seems low, you have options. You can:
- Turn tables faster (without rushing customers) by tightening up service.
- Fill slow periods by offering early-bird specials or happy hour deals.
- Increase check sizes by training staff to upsell drinks or desserts.
At Vast, we help restaurant owners figure out where they’re underperforming. If your RevPASH is way lower on Wednesdays than Saturdays, maybe it’s time to offer a midweek special or experiment with different pricing. If it’s low across the board, you might need to rethink your floor plan, staffing, or menu.
Tools like Restaurant 365 can track this for you, but even if you just run the numbers once a month manually, it’s an eye-opener.
💡Tip: Aiming for a RevPASH of $20 to $30 is considered healthy, but this can vary based on your restaurant’s concept and pricing.
3. Food & Labor Efficiency – The Hidden Costs That Kill Profits
Let’s talk waste.
Every time you throw out food, that’s your money in the trash. If your waste percentage is even 5-10%, that adds up to thousands of dollars lost every year.
Here’s how we help clients at Vast cut waste: We start by looking at portion sizes. If plates are coming back half-eaten, portions might be too big. We also check ordering patterns—are you over-ordering perishable ingredients? And we track spoilage rates—how much food is expiring before it’s used?
On the labor side, we see a lot of restaurants losing money to overstaffing during slow periods or overtime costs that could have been avoided with better scheduling.
If you want to track this yourself, tools like Toast and Clover have built-in food cost tracking, and for labor, Gusto is great for seeing payroll trends and managing schedules efficiently.
💡Tip: Aim to keep your food cost percentage between 28% and 35% of total sales. This percentage is standard across the industry, though it can vary based on the type of cuisine and market prices.
4. Menu Profitability – Are You Selling the Right Food?
Let’s say you have two dishes on your menu.
- Burger: Costs $3.50 to make, sells for $12. (71% profit margin)
- Pasta: Costs $6 to make, sells for $16. (62% profit margin)
If the pasta is selling better, but the burger is way more profitable, shouldn’t you be promoting the burger more?
This is why menu engineering is so important. At Vast, we help restaurant owners run profit reports on every menu item so they can decide what to push, tweak, or cut completely.
If you’re using Toast or Clover, you can pull reports on which dishes bring in the most revenue—but more importantly, which actually make you money. If you don’t have a system like that, even a simple profitability spreadsheet can do the job.
💡Tip: Each menu item should ideally have a profit margin of 65% to 70%.
The Bottom Line: These Numbers Will Make or Break Your Business
We know numbers aren’t the most exciting part of running a restaurant. But trust us—once you start tracking these KPIs, everything gets easier.
You stop guessing. You stop stressing about whether you’re making money. You actually start seeing where the money is going and how to get more of it.
And the best part? You don’t have to do this alone.
At Vast, we help restaurant owners figure this stuff out every day. We’re not here to drown you in spreadsheets—we’re here to make sure you actually understand your numbers, so you can run a profitable business (and still have a life).
If you’re not sure where to start, let’s talk. A quick conversation could save you thousands of dollars in wasted costs and missed revenue.
Simply head over to our Get In Touch page to get started. We’re always here to help.
Until next time!
