Interpret restaurant sales per labour hour without hiding preparation time

To calculate restaurant sales per labour hour, divide sales by the team’s included hours for the same period. Sales of 6,000 over 120 hours gives 50 per hour. The useful question comes next: did those hours include the preparation that made service possible?

Keep the sales total, hours and a short definition beside the result. Use the number to ask what changed—not to decide how many people to send home.

Define included sales and labour hours

Sales per labour hour, often shortened to SPLH, relates sales to employee hours. For example, 7shifts’ reporting documentation defines it as sales per employee hour worked, separately from labour percentage. Check your own report’s settings rather than assuming every system counts the same things.

For a weekly worksheet, agree these inputs with your bookkeeper and the manager checking time records:

1. Sales: use the same venue, local currency and completed week. For this worksheet, use net sales after discounts and refunds, excluding GST or sales tax collected and pass-through tips. Confirm the treatment of service charges and other adjustments. Keep the report name and filters.
2. Hours: use recorded employee time, not headcount or the hours your doors were open. Include the kitchen, floor, dish area and working managers. Make preparation, closing, meetings and training visible, not just guest-facing work.
3. Inclusions: write down how you treat breaks, paid leave and salaried managers’ time. Use the same basis each week, and flag missing records rather than entering zero. Keep forecasts and planned roster hours separate from completed results.

These are worksheet choices, not a ruling about payable time. Have payroll check the arrangements that apply to your workers. Australian managers can start with Fair Work’s unpaid-work guidance; US managers should use the relevant federal, state and local guidance, including the Department of Labor’s training-time advisor. Don’t remove required work from the record to improve a ratio.

Calculate comparable periods

Suppose a small cafe compares two completed Monday-to-Sunday weeks. It uses the same sales filters, opening pattern and employee-hour definition. All figures below are example inputs in the cafe’s local currency, not a performance target.

For these examples, hours include recorded work and paid rest breaks, but exclude paid leave and unpaid meal breaks. Each hour belongs to one category only: a cook’s prep hour is not counted again as a service hour. Working managers’ recorded time is included; the owner’s separate work is checked below.

Week A: 6,000 in sales

The manager records 86 service-and-support hours, 20 preparation hours, eight closing hours and six training-and-meeting hours. Service-and-support includes the paid rest-break time in this example’s definition.

The total is 86 + 20 + 8 + 6 = 120 employee hours.

6,000 ÷ 120 = 50 per employee hour.

Week B: 6,600 in sales

The same categories contain 92, 24, ten and six hours: 132 employee hours altogether.

6,600 ÷ 132 = 50 per employee hour.

Week B brought in more sales, but also used more included employee hours. The ratio is unchanged. That alone tells the manager neither that the extra hours were wasted nor that service improved. Ask what the team did with them.

Compare similar services where possible. Note a changed menu, different opening hours, a large booking or a learner’s supported shifts. If an input definition changed, recalculate the earlier week on the same basis before comparing.

Test prep, owner hours and sales mix effects

Keep preparation in view

Remove Week A’s 20 preparation hours from the worksheet and the calculation becomes 6,000 ÷ 100 = 60 per hour. Nothing about the cafe’s sales or work has improved; only the denominator changed.

Ask the kitchen or coffee lead when preparation happened and which service needed it. A quiet trading day may include batch preparation for tomorrow. For a weekly check, keep that work in the recorded week and note the carryover. Don’t quietly move hours between days to make the busiest service look better.

If you need to change start times, first map the opening jobs and their dependencies. A higher ratio is not evidence that those jobs can disappear.

Show owner work separately

Suppose the owner also worked ten hours in Week A, none included in the 120 employee hours. Keep the employee-only result at 50, and label a separate all-team comparison:

6,000 ÷ (120 + 10) = about 46.15 per hour.

That second figure makes this example’s owner contribution visible. It is not directly comparable with an employee-only report. If the owner’s time was already included, don’t add it twice. Record the hours actually worked, rather than treating an owner as unlimited spare cover.

Check price and sales mix before crediting speed

Now hold Week A’s employee hours at 120 and suppose sales reach 6,600 because the cafe sold a higher-priced mix of items. The calculation becomes 55 per employee hour, a 10% increase from 50.

That is more sales value per included hour, not proof the team completed tasks faster. Check item quantities, prices, dine-in versus takeaway work and preparation needs. Two menus with similar sales can require different work. If you need the financial view, calculate labour cost percentage separately; SPLH doesn’t include wage rates or tell you profit.

Use the result alongside service quality

Before changing next week’s roster, the manager and shift lead should compare the worksheet with service notes. Pick specific checks your venue can record: when preparation finished, orders that waited, remakes, missed relief and work carried into closing.

Use those notes to choose the next action:

1. A higher result with unfinished prep: check for omitted hours or work pushed into tomorrow. Fix the record and the task plan before calling it an improvement.
2. A lower result during supervised training: identify the learner’s practice and trainer’s support. Review what the learner can now do; don’t treat learning time as spare service cover.
3. A higher result with longer waits or rushed closing: investigate the uncovered role or bottleneck. Don’t repeat the staffing pattern just because the ratio rose.

There is no target in this example to copy. Start with your own consistently defined periods, and keep the number beside the work and service conditions that explain it.

Finish the review with one note: “For [week], sales were [amount] over [included hours], giving [result]. [Named manager] will check [specific issue] before we change [shift or task].” Then build the next roster around required work and available, ready people.

Use your existing worksheet for the calculation. To sketch the next week, CrewCentral’s free Schedule Maker is manual and browser-local, with no account or email needed to start. It is not an SPLH calculator, AI generator or shared cloud workspace.

For connected planning, explore CrewCentral Scheduling. Availability, role skills and roster drafts sit alongside hiring, onboarding and training. With an account, AI can help prepare a draft; a manager reviews and adjusts it before publishing. Keep the decision about preparation and service cover with your team.