Restaurant owners are facing a challenging business environment. According to the National Restaurant Association’s 2025 State of the Industry Report, 61% of restaurants saw a drop in traffic between 2023 and 2024. Meanwhile, food and labor costs have both risen by 30% since 2019. You don’t need to be an economist to know that it’s getting harder to make ends meet.
But there are some easy ways to boost your bottom line. It all comes down to using your own data to make better decisions about things like menu pricing, inventory management, and shift scheduling. And if your restaurant is already using a modern cloud-based POS (point of sale) system, I’ve got good news for you — you already have access to all the POS data you need.
Leading POS providers like Toast, SpotOn, and Square not only collect all kinds of incredibly valuable data on food sales, hourly sales, and loyalty programs, they also help you analyze and act on that data. And thanks to the advanced analytical features that these systems come with, you don’t have to be a tech expert or a data scientist to use the data. You just need the right POS system.
If you have a good POS system, you already know that it improves the speed, efficiency, and accuracy of your operation. But that only really scratches the surface of what your POS technology can do. A recent article from food delivery service DoorDash says that 86% of restaurants also use POS data to make important decisions about marketing, promotions, customer acquisition, and customer retention.
Here are five easy ways you can use POS data to increase restaurant revenue.
Your POS system can make it easy to break down and understand your sales mix data. Sales mix data can tell you what percentage of your total sales come from each item on your menu. For restaurants that sell alcohol, the sales mix data can also show the breakdown between food and booze sales.
This means you can use your POS data to figure out which items are your best sellers and which items are just taking up space on the menu.
You can use your sales mix data as a baseline for adjusting your prices. For instance, a small bump in the price of your most popular items could boost your revenue, and lowering the price of your under-performing items could help improve their sales. And if that doesn’t work, you have the data to justify cutting these under-performing items from your menu altogether.
While sales mix data tells you how well the items on your menu sell in comparison to one another, food sales data tells you how much you're selling of every item in your menu and how much revenue your restaurant is making from each item.
Food sales data can help you drill down a lot of useful details on individual menu items including their sales volume, food costs, and profit margins.
Food sales data can paint a detailed picture of each menu item’s performance — how often it sells, when it sells best, and how profitable it is for your restaurant. You can use this restaurant POS data to spot sales trends over time.
For instance, you might notice that certain high-margin items sell better during weekend dinner services, while others perform best at lunch on weekdays. Use this information to promote feature items, adjust pricing, or or even redesign your menu layout to better spotlight your best performing and most profitable items.
You can also use this information to identify sales trends — both general and seasonal. Historical food sales data can help you design seasonal specials, promote limited time offers, or reconfigure your menu to match changing customer preferences.
Most leading POS providers offer inventory management systems (frequently as an add-on for an additional fee). Unless you already have an advanced inventory system that integrates with your POS platform, you may want to consider this add-on.
That’s because your POS system and inventory management system can work hand in hand to automate your food orders. Your inventory data can track your stock usage in real time and tell you which ingredients you’re under-ordering, overordering, or wasting altogether.
Use your inventory data to align food orders with actual usage patterns. For instance, if your kitchen is constantly throwing out spoiled lettuce, it probably means you aren’t selling as many salads as you think you are. If your kitchen is routinely running out of potatoes, it may mean that you’re selling more french fries than you realize.
Your POS data can take the guesswork out of the equation by showing you exactly how much of each ingredient is being used, and when. This means you can place orders based on actual consumption rather than estimates, reducing both food waste and stockouts. For example, if your POS data shows a spike in burger sales every Friday night, you can make sure you have enough potatoes for every side of fries as the weekend approaches.
This type of insight can help you order inventory with greater precision (and even automate food ordering), ultimately tightening up your control over food costs and helping boost your kitchen’s profitability.
One of the cool things about your POS data is that it really gives you the ability to understand your sales patterns in precise detail. Most POS systems provide you with hourly sales data, which means you can break down your restaurant’s revenue to the exact hour and day.
This means you can determine with greater accuracy exactly where the peaks and valleys in your sales fall in a given day or week.
Your hourly sales data is a direct window into the type of staffing levels you need for each shift. By matching your staffing levels to your actual traffic, you can reduce your labor costs without sacrificing quality service for your customers.
When you over-staff slow shifts, you’re overspending on labor. When you under-staff busy shifts, you run the risk of diminishing the customer’s experience (to say nothing about making your staff frazzled and unhappy).
Your POS data makes it possible to build out staff scheduling based on historical data and reliable forecasting. This takes the guesswork out of scheduling, which means you aren’t paying for unnecessary hands on deck or leaving your employees short-handed on their busiest shifts.
Your loyalty program is more than just a cool way to reward your best customers with fun promotions. It’s also one of your most valuable sources for data on things like customer demographics, contact info, favorite dishes, and ordering patterns.
Most of the leading POS systems come with loyalty programs built in. You just have to decide how to use them. The data that you gather through an effective loyalty program can help you make well-informed decisions about targeted outreach, personalized promotions, and menu specials.
You can use the data you've gathered through your loyalty program to learn what your customers like and create experiences that match their preferences. For example, you might identify loyalty program members who haven’t visited in a while and send them special offers to bring them back. Or you might send personalized happy hour promotions to customers who routinely visit your restaurant during the weekday evenings.
You can also use this POS data to reward your most loyal regulars with exclusive offers like discounted menu items, birthday freebies, and branded merch. These gestures can help keep your restaurant top of mind and give your regulars reasons to keep coming back.
Ultimately, if you use your loyalty program data the right way, you can turn one-time visitors into regulars, and turn regulars into your most authentic brand ambassadors.
Are you getting all the data and support you need out of your POS system? Do you have the systems in place to use POS data for increasing restaurant revenue?
If not, it may be time for an upgrade. But which is the right solution for your business? It depends on a number of factors, including your needs, goals, and budget.
Fortunately, we’re here to help you navigate a crowded space. Reach out today for your personalized consultation and we’ll find the right solution for you!