Every scheduling tool on the market steers labor with revenue: sales per labor hour, covers per shift, labor as a percentage of turnover. None of them can tell you what an hour actually *earned*, because none of them know what your dishes cost. A fully-booked brunch selling low-margin plates can earn less per staffed hour than a quiet weeknight selling cocktails — and revenue-based numbers will tell you the brunch is your star.
One division
Take a Tuesday early-evening slot, 15h to 18h. Two people minimum to be open — that's the floor, you can't staff half a bartender. Six staffed hours at 28 fully loaded: 168 of labor. The slot's sales, costed item by item, contribute 120 of gross margin. That daypart loses about 48 every single Tuesday, before rent. Run the same division on your Friday rush and you might find 90 of margin per staffed hour. Same venue, same team, nearly a five-fold spread between hours — invisible to a labor percentage, which averages it all into one number.
The minimum-crew floor
Small venues carry a structural burden the ratios ignore: half to two-thirds of all labor hours are committed just to *being open* — the two-person floor a service needs regardless of covers. You can't schedule your way below the floor; you can only decide which hours deserve to exist. That's why the highest-leverage question for an independent isn't "who works Tuesday" but "should Tuesday 15h–18h be open at all" — and margin per hour is the only number that answers it. One dead daypart like that, open every day, quietly costs around 340 a week.
Four kinds of hours
- Engines — high margin per hour, lots of hours deployed: protect them, and add staff if service strains (never cut here)
- Sleepers — high margin per hour, few hours: the happy-hour slot that earns like a peak; extend it
- Leaks — busy hours earning badly: the problem is the sales mix, fix what they sell, not the rota
- Dead hours — below the minimum-crew wage bill: fill the paid floor with prep, or shorten the opening
Why nobody shows you this
Schedulers hold punches and revenue but no recipe costs; costing tools hold plate costs but no hours. The division needs both sides. At Chat Noir, 649 of 649 items carry a real ingredient cost and the till syncs item by item every day — which is what makes margin-per-hour computable at all. The ingredient half of that equation is one leg of prime cost, and the staffing half starts in the labor cost guide.
