Why Most Operators Don’t Do This Themselves (Even Though They Could)
You could do this yourself.
The math isn’t secret.
The data is already in your POS.
If you’re comfortable with spreadsheets and willing to spend a few weekends on it, you could derive your own labor multiplier.
A few operators do.
Most don’t.
Not because they’re lazy.
Not because they can’t handle the math.
Because the math isn’t the hard part.
The Hard Part Is the Hours
To derive a multiplier properly, you have to:
Export and clean several weeks of POS data
Reconcile labor hours against payroll
Separate production hours from service hours
Analyze how staffing scales with volume
Validate the result against data you didn’t use
Pressure-test the number to make sure it holds
That’s 8–12 hours of focused, uninterrupted work. More if the data is messy—and everyone’s data is messy.
The real question isn’t how to do it.
It’s where those hours come from.
You Don’t Have Spare Hours
You’re already working 50, 60, maybe 70 hours a week.
You’re covering call-outs.
Handling vendors.
Fixing whatever broke yesterday.
Putting out fires you didn’t schedule.
If you magically found 10 extra hours, you wouldn’t spend them on a spreadsheet.
You’d spend them with your family.
Or sleeping.
Or finally dealing with the walk-in that’s been making that noise for three months.
Those hours don’t exist in your schedule. They’d have to come from somewhere—and there’s nowhere good to take them from.
The Hidden Cost of DIY
Let’s say you decide to do it anyway.
You carve out a Sunday afternoon. You start pulling data. You make some progress.
Then Monday hits.
The restaurant needs you.
The spreadsheet gets parked.
Two weeks later, you pick it back up—but now you’ve forgotten where you left off. So you start over.
This repeats.
Weeks pass. Maybe months. Maybe you finish. Maybe you don’t.
Either way, the project sits in the back of your mind the whole time—the low-grade guilt of the thing you said you’d do but haven’t done yet.
That’s the hidden cost.
Not just the hours you spend—but the hours you spend thinking about spending them.
What Your Time Is Actually Worth
Here’s a cleaner way to look at it.
If you’re running a restaurant doing $20,000–$30,000 a week, your time inside the operation matters.
Every hour you spend:
on the floor
on the line
with your team
is an hour maintaining the system that generates revenue.
An hour on a spreadsheet is an hour not doing that.
You can hire someone to do analysis.
You can’t hire someone to be you.
This Isn’t an Indulgence. It’s a Trade.
Paying someone to derive your multiplier isn’t a luxury.
It’s a trade.
Your hours for their hours.
Your focus for their focus.
They’ve done it before.
They have the templates.
They know where the data breaks and how to fix it.
What takes you 10–12 hours takes them a fraction of that.
And at the end, you get the same thing:
A number you can use forever.
The real question isn’t “Can I do this myself?”
You can.
The question is “Should I?”
The Real Calculation
If a calibrated multiplier saves you $5,000–$10,000 a year in labor you don’t need to schedule—and it often does—then paying $997 to get it is straightforward.
But even if the savings were smaller, there’s still the time.
Would you trade $997 to get back 10–12 hours of your life?
To not have this project hanging over you?
To just have the number and move on?
Most operators would.
That’s why most operators don’t do this themselves.
If You’re Ready
You’ve read the posts.
You understand the problem.
You know the number exists.
If you want to find out whether there’s a real gap worth fixing in your operation—without committing to anything—that’s what the diagnostic call is for.
Fifteen minutes.
We look at your situation.
I tell you what I think is there.
If there’s a gap, I’ll tell you what it might be worth.
If there isn’t, I’ll tell you that too.
No pressure.
No pitch.
Just an honest look at whether this makes sense for you.
Kwan Howard helps independent restaurant operators stop leaking cash by bringing clarity to labor, scheduling, and everyday decisions. Based in South Florida. Available nationwide.
