How to Know If Your Labor Multiplier Is Wrong (Without Doing the Math Yet)
You don’t need a spreadsheet to know something’s off.
If you’ve been following this series, you understand the idea by now: there’s a number—a labor multiplier—that should tell you how many hours to schedule for any given sales level.
Most operators don’t have that number. They’re working from gut feel, industry percentages, or last year’s schedule.
But here’s the thing: even before you calculate your multiplier, you can tell if the one you’re implicitly using is wrong.
Here’s how.
1. Your Slow Days Feel the Same as Your Medium Days
If Tuesday feels just as covered as Thursday—same pace, same comfort level, nobody stretched—something’s off.
Properly staffed slow days should feel a little lean.
Not short-staffed.
Just efficient.
Everyone’s busy. No one’s standing around waiting for something to do.
If your slow days feel comfortable, you’re probably scheduling medium-day hours on slow-day sales. That difference doesn’t show up as chaos—it shows up as cash leaving quietly.
2. You’ve Cut Hours on a Slow Week and Nothing Broke
Think about the last time sales came in lower than expected.
Did you trim hours?
Did service suffer?
If you’ve cut labor during slow periods and:
guests were still happy
food still came out on time
your team wasn’t overwhelmed
that’s a sign you had room to cut.
Which means you were paying for hours you didn’t actually need.
3. Your Labor Percentage Is Stable, but Sales Aren’t
This one hides in plain sight.
If your sales swing 20–30% between slow weeks and busy weeks—but your labor percentage stays roughly the same—your hours aren’t flexing with volume.
A correct multiplier produces:
fewer hours on low-volume weeks
more hours on high-volume weeks
The percentage might stay similar. The hours should move.
If hours stay flat while sales swing, you’re overstaffed on slow weeks and possibly under-resourced on busy ones.
4. You Build the Schedule by Copying Last Week
Be honest.
When you sit down on Sunday afternoon, do you start with a blank page—or do you pull up last week’s schedule and adjust?
Most operators copy and tweak. It’s faster. It feels safer.
But copying assumes last week was right.
And if last week was a guess, this week is a guess built on a guess.
That’s not a multiplier. That’s momentum.
5. You Can’t Trace Your Labor Target Back to Your Own Data
Where did your labor target come from?
An industry benchmark?
Something your last restaurant used?
“What feels right”?
None of those are calibrated to your operation.
A real multiplier comes from your data: your sales, your tickets, your labor hours, your flow. If you can’t explain where your number came from—or recreate it from your own operation—it probably isn’t right.
6. Payroll Sometimes Surprises You
Even small surprises count.
“Huh. Labor was higher than I expected.”
If that happens—even occasionally—it means your schedule isn’t anchored to a real target. You’re committing cash and hoping it lands somewhere acceptable.
With a correct multiplier, payroll isn’t a surprise. You know what it should be before the week starts because you scheduled toward a number, not a feeling.
7. You’re Hitting the Percentage but Not Building Cash
This is the clearest signal.
You’re at 29%. Or 31%. Whatever your target is, you’re “in range.”
Your accountant isn’t concerned.
But the bank account doesn’t grow.
There’s never quite as much cash as the P&L says there should be.
That usually means one of two things:
your percentage target doesn’t fit your operation, or
you’re hitting the average while overstaffing specific days and dayparts
The average looks fine. The details bleed cash.
What This Tells You
If two or three of these sound familiar, your implicit multiplier is probably off.
Not wildly off—you’d notice that.
But off by a few hours a day, a few days a week.
That’s enough to matter.
Enough to compound.
Enough to quietly drain cash over the course of a year.
The fix isn’t to guess harder.
The fix is to derive the actual number.
That takes your data—sales, tickets, labor hours—and some focused analysis. It’s not complicated, but it does require sitting down and doing the work.
Or having someone do it for you.
Kwan Howard helps independent restaurant operators derive their calibrated labor multiplier and stop leaking cash through everyday scheduling decisions.
If you’re seeing these patterns in your operation, book a free 15-minute diagnostic call to see if there’s a meaningful gap worth fixing.
