Brewery Staff Training with Data and Metrics

As the landscape for breweries and brewpubs evolves, it's crucial to adapt and improve your operations, including staff training. Simply saying "improve X" without clear direction is like shooting in the dark—no one knows how they're doing or what success looks like. Instead, setting clear goals with data and metrics provides a map and compass for everyone. This allows your team to track their progress and see how they're contributing to the overall success of the business.

Everyone in the organization, from ownership to staff, should have visible goals that the whole team can monitor. This creates alignment, ensuring everyone is moving in the same direction and working toward the same objectives.

Kitchen Metrics: Controlling Food Waste and Profitability

Setting a food cost target—say 25%—is crucial, but it's meaningless if you're throwing away product. Tracking food waste alongside Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) helps the kitchen understand how effectively they're managing costs. Sharing this data with your kitchen staff on a monthly basis or more frequently helps them take ownership and improve performance.

Rather than spending hours watching over your kitchen staff, streamline oversight by knowing the exact weight of each plated dish. Randomly order meals and weigh them to ensure portion control without micromanaging. This simple practice saves time and ensures consistency.

Consistency in kitchen ticket times is essential for a smooth customer experience. Set benchmarks for how long it should take to get food out on a normal night, with a 30% buffer on busier nights. If inefficiencies arise, work with the kitchen team to identify whether it's a training issue, equipment problem, or if menu changes are needed.  This is an easy target to keep track of with the GoTab Kitchen Display System (KDS).

One easy task to review with the kitchen is the Product Mix of items sold. Look at how they're handling the bottom 20%. If an item has low margins and the stock doesn't turn over for several weeks, work with the kitchen to determine whether they can improve the item or simply remove it from the menu.

Front of House Metrics: Train with Tangible Targets

Start with Product Mix analysis for the front of the house. Review what's being sold and get staff opinions on product performance. Perhaps that expensive bottled spirit seemed like a great idea but didn't pan out—you can remove that cost and replace it with something that has better turnover. Also discuss beer sales with your team. If 80% of your beers are selling well, get feedback about the other 20%. Consider involving the brewer in this conversation to explore new flavor profiles that will keep customers and the brewer engaged.

When training your front-of-house team, it's more effective to give tangible targets than vague directions like "do better." One successful strategy is to take your top performers' tip percentages and set that as the goal for everyone. By tying performance to tip outcomes, your staff is financially incentivized to improve. When they follow the proper steps of service, they should meet the goal, and coaching becomes easier if they don't.

Encourage your servers to sell six-packs as an upsell by setting a target of selling them on 20-30% of tickets. Make it convenient for customers by having servers offer and retrieve the six-packs at the end of the meal. This not only increases brewery revenue but also boosts server tips as customers often tip on the six-pack price.

Owner/Manager Metrics: Accountability at the Top

Owners and managers should also be held accountable, and one way to do this is by tracking the employee turnover ratio. High turnover often indicates needed improvements at the leadership level. With training costs reaching up to $2,000 for a new server/cook and up to $15,000 for a new manager, reducing turnover is not only financially prudent but reduces stress for everyone. Here’s a simple formula to calculate your breweries attrition rate:

(Number of Employee Departures) / (Average Number of Employees) x 100 = Attrition Rate (Percentage) 

Managerial Focus: Driving Net Profit and Ownership of Metrics

While your kitchen and servers don't directly control net profit, your managers do. Sharing net profit as a percentage (rather than a dollar amount) can help your management team stay focused on improving the bottom line. This creates open discussions about meeting profit targets, fostering more buy-in from the team. 

Pro-tip: you can use AI to convert your financial statements to “common size” (percentage based) to make it easier for everyone to understand.

Labor costs have become increasingly challenging to control. Whatever percentage you set as your target labor cost, ensure the team is aware and helps manage it. Use historical averages to determine staffing levels, but be ready to adjust based on factors like weather. If labor costs are too high, consider sending staff home early (avoid if at all possible) or having them perform deep cleaning or maintenance tasks.

While restaurants traditionally use table turns to measure success, revenue per seat is sometimes a more appropriate metric for breweries and brewpubs. On busy nights, measure how much you generate per seat during your peak times. This metric provides an excellent benchmark for growth and focuses attention on individual seat performance. Staff should focus on driving more sales per seat, while ownership and management should concentrate on bringing in customers.

Company-Wide Metrics: Team Performance

Average ticket size is a metric that unifies everyone's efforts—from kitchen staff to servers and managers. When you track and share this metric with the team, they have a clear benchmark for their performance. This number should increase over time as everyone improves their contribution to upselling and customer satisfaction.

Monitor your performance through customer feedback. The GoTab Mobile Ordering & Payment System offers discreet ways to gather feedback, allowing you to gauge team performance. Sharing this feedback each month keeps the staff motivated and aligned with your customer service goals. Here’s a formula for calculating customer satisfaction at your brewery or brewpub:

CSAT = (Number of Positive Responses / Total Number of Responses) x 100

Event Performance: Balancing Data and Art

Event success measurement combines data analysis with artful execution. While this can be complex, the fundamental consideration is profitability versus cost. If an event costs $100 to organize with an expected $200 profit, that's a solid foundation for planning additional sales opportunities.

Consider these scenarios:

• Specialty Tastings: For events like whiskey tastings, consider the total audience impact. If you host 15 people for a tasting, you might have 25-30 people dining afterward, including waiting companions. Even if you break even on the tasting itself, the additional food and beverage sales create valuable reciprocity with your patrons.
• Large-Scale Events: For bigger events like music festivals, expect higher drink sales relative to food sales. Maximize revenue by enabling pre-orders through platforms like GoTab Online Ordering to streamline service. Faster service means more sales during peak times.

Success indicators extend beyond immediate profits. Positive word-of-mouth, community buzz about upcoming events, and brand engagement all factor into event value. Breaking even on an event doesn't necessarily mean failure—consider running it again with adjustments. Only consistently underperforming events should be discontinued.

Conclusion: Building a Data-Driven Brewery Culture

By implementing these metrics and sharing them with your team, you can create a more focused, data-driven culture in your brewery or brewpub. Everyone will have clear targets, whether it's reducing waste in the kitchen, improving customer satisfaction, or increasing average ticket size. When your team knows the goals and has the data to track their progress, it fosters accountability, improves performance, and ultimately drives business success

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