HOW TO MEASURE SERVER PRODUCTIVITY & PERFORMANCE

A highly skilled waitstaff team is an

integral part of any successful restaurant. But how do you know how good your servers are?
What particular skills does each server excel at? How do you measure server productivity and
performance? Having the tools to measure their productivity gives a manager a matrix by which
to evaluate the strengths & weaknesses  of individual crew members. And being able to quantify
the individual talents of your waitstaff provides you with valuable insight into how to help them
improve their skills, which will of course help improve your operation and bottom line.
It’s important to note however that the “number crunching” on productivity is worthless without
clearly defined expectations on the standards of service which you require. Successful
productivity evaluation & measurement therefore starts with management clearly defining and
teaching what the expectations are. You cannot hold your crew accountable to a productivity
standard if you haven’t defined & taught the service standard and timeline.
The service standard and the productivity ratio are in direct opposition to each other. The higher
the service standard…the lower (worse) the productivity you will be able to achieve, because
better service requires more time.
And of course, the service standard needs to match your restaurant concept. A highly skilled
waiter from Thomas Keller’s French Laundry will not meet the standards at Denny’s because
they will be too slow…providing too much service and not enough speed. But a highly skilled
server from Denny’s will have huge learning curve if they expect to work for Thomas Keller.
Having well defined SOPs (standard operating procedures) will make the evaluations much more
accurate and fairer. And it’s important to remember that for the SOPs to work they must be
achievable by most of the crew most of the time. If only a small number of your crew can achieve
the standard then the error is with you the manager for either not properly training them, or for
setting standards/timelines which are for some reason not attainable.
Read How to Improve Server Performance (coming soon) for an example of a good SOP.

How to Measure Server Productivity

Here are some common metrics which can be used to evaluate server productivity &
performance. Note that while some or all of these stats may be used on your P&L as a general
summary of your FOH team performance, for the purposes of understanding and improving
server productivity they should be calculated for each server individually.

 Number of guests (not tables) served per server per hour

o Formula: Total number of guests served/number of service hours worked
 So, if Susan worked 8 hours from 4 – 12 but you don’t open for service
until 5 then you would use 7 hours for this calculation.
o Compare this matrix with customer comments about each server. If they serve a
lot of guests and have great comments, then they are a high-performing server.
o But if they serve a lot of guests and have above average guest complaints then
they are receiving more guests than they can effectively handle, and you need to
cut back on the number of guests they serve or give them better training.
 Guest check average per person
o Formula: total server sales/total number of guests served by that server
o Note that the highest guest check average per person may not necessarily reflect
what is best for your business. A high guest check average with a low table turn
average or low number of guests served per hour may result in a lower-than-
average total sales revenue per hour.
 Number and/or dollar amount of “upsells”
o Appetizers/soups/salad
o Desserts
o Alcoholic drinks
o Wine
o Note on upselling desserts. It is good to upsell dessert when you have no guests
waiting to get into the restaurant. But if you have a wait list, and people are
leaving to go elsewhere rather than wait, then perhaps turning the table is more
beneficial than upselling dessert in that circumstance.
 Table turn time
o POS systems such as MICROS will give you this info, assuming that you have a
host who tracks when guests arrive and depart from each table.
o Recognize that if the kitchen is slammed, under-staffed, or just plain inefficient
that it will directly impact table turn time
o Recognize also that if the servers are slammed or over-sat due to a rush that it will
directly impact table turn time
 Customer pro/con comments per server
o A great server should consistently receive great comments from their guests.
o Any server who consistently, repeatedly receives poor comments needs:
 a. to be re-trained
 b. to be terminated if re-training does not improve their guest relations.
 o Every server will receive some bad comments. Everyone makes mistakes or has
an “off day”. And sometimes patrons are just plain dicks looking to take it out on
someone or trying to scam the system for a free meal. The goal isn’t to eliminate
bad comments, but to minimize them.
o Learn to read between the lines. If you have a server who is very popular with
your customers and who also has a low guest check average, it is possible that
they are giving away food or discounts in exchange for a better tip. A simple
visual inspection of their tickets and actual food delivered can resolve any
concern
 Server errors per guest
o Formula: total number of server errors/total number of items (food or
beverage) wrung in
o Server errors can be miss-keyed items into the POS, misunderstanding what the
guest ordered, or other refires based upon server error. Server item errors (and
kitchen item errors) hurt productivity, communication, the bottom line, and team
morale. The focus should be on getting the order correct the first time, keying it
into the POS correctly, and the kitchen properly producing it all the first time.
o Again, if a server has more than the average number errors then perhaps, they are
managing more guests than they are capable of effectively serving.

 Sales per server hour

o Formula: Total server sales/number of service hours worked
 It the ratio is too high then perhaps the guest isn’t receiving the customer
service you desire. If the ratio is too low, then perhaps the server is less
productive than you desire.
 Team Moral
o This one is on management. A team with a high moral is fundamentally better
equipped to perform better than a demoralized crew. And the moral of your crew
is very closely tied to the way you and your supervisors interact with the team.
o How do you measure team moral?
 Turn-over: is your staff comprised of mostly long-term team members,
or are they mostly newer recruits? The majority of your crew should be
long-term employees. (Note: I mean long term in the sense that they want
to stay, and you want to keep them. It does not include long term
employees who are grandfathered in due to company politics, seniority, or
union rules.)
 Call-ins: although it’s not uncommon to have a small portion of your
team members regularly call in sick (when you suspect that they actually
aren’t!), if a lot of your staff routinely call-in then the problem may well
be with your management team’s treatment of the crew.
 Apathy: read their faces! Listen to the tone of their voice. If many of your
crew are apathetic then you need to seek to understand why. And to fix it
will probably require a change in the way some or all of your
management team interacts with the crew.

Other Important Considerations in Measuring Productivity

A friend in the business asked a very poignant question: “How do you gauge employee
productivity by also considering the human element in the equation?” Some servers are faster,
others are more organized, some excel at guest service while others are fantastic at upselling, and
perhaps a slower server has the least number of comps & server errors which means that the
overall revenue they generate may be more than a top seller who also has a lot of comps & errors.
These variables make it clear that while the straight productivity numbers provide some basic
information, they require the insight of a wise manager to interpret them correctly.
You do not have a grasp of the numbers until you understand WHY they are what they are
and understand what specific training needs to be done to improve the skills of any particular
server. Do not make the mistake of sitting at your desk, reading your numbers, and thinking that
you have an accurate picture of the productivity of your staff. Seeing the numbers and
understanding the numbers are two very different things. You need to understand WHY the
numbers show that a particular server is under performing or outperforming when compared to
others. Understanding WHY will give you the most insight into how to improve your entire team
and your operation. But the numbers just by themselves could lead to incorrect assumptions and
poor decisions.
For instance, if a server only works on the slowest (or busiest) shifts or days then it’s possible
that their numbers are a result of the shift and not a result of their service skills
Efficient scheduling also plays a big role in in managing your FOH productivity numbers. If you
need 7 servers to get through the rush, what time do you actually need them scheduled at? If you
have all of them start at 4:00 but you don’t get your push until 7:00 then perhaps a staggered
schedule with 4 on at 4:00, 1 on at 5:00, and the last 2 on at 6:00 would work better for your
business needs.

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