Your business is generating data every day. Are you using it?

Every transaction your business processes is a data point. Your card terminal, your bank account, your accounting software – together they offer a complete overview of your operation. Most F&B operators collect all this data yet use little of it. Here’s how to change that.

Cast your mind back to last Thursday, Friday or Saturday, likely your busiest service days of the week. Every table turned, every drink ordered, every card transaction – all recorded, timestamped and sitting in your payment system right now as hard data. The question is, what do you do with this goldmine of information?

For most independent F&B operators, the honest answer is not very much. The data exists but if you don’t read and use it, you’ll never benefit from the insight it can provide into your business. Building good habits – reading it regularly and systematically with an eye on next week rather than last month – will only help you understand your business better, and in turn arm you for success.

Mark Hughes, director of growth at payments provider CreatePay, has spent years watching this gap play out across thousands of hospitality businesses: “I think too many business owners think data is a scary word. It's not. It's just numbers.”

Even for those operators who do regularly review their data, he points to the problem of how to use it effectively. “Too much of the data is backward-focused, not forward-focused. It’s not helping them or telling them what to do. That’s the massive gap.”

You may think that means needing sophisticated data crunching software or even specialist support. But as Hughes sees it, the fix is far simpler: change how you read the numbers you already have – and when.

Digest your data week to week

The most common financial habit Hughes identifies among struggling F&B operators is reviewing their business performance at the end of the month. Speaking to his contacts running pubs and restaurants, he asks if they sit down on a Sunday and look at how their week went. The answer is often no. “We wait until the end of the month,” they tell him. “By then, it’s too late,” he tells us.

Check monthly and four weeks of decisions have already been made – staffing levels, stock orders, when to run promotions, what worked, what didn’t. These are hard to remember accurately after so long, and too late to change so the damage, or the missed opportunity, is already baked in.

In Hughes’s experience, more businesses that succeed review their numbers weekly. Some do it daily. They know their break even points, which service period drove the most volume, and which promotions really paid off. And with that cadence of up-to-date knowledge, they can make more informed decisions.

Recent Zempler research found that 41% of small F&B businesses point to seasonal trends, major events and operational efficiencies as the biggest opportunities to grow their businesses over the next 12 months. The data to capitalise on all of these is already there for the taking. 

Know your break-even days

One practical shift that Hughes recommends is lasering in on your break-even days. Knowing which days cover your fixed costs and which don’t will fundamentally change the decisions you make – where to concentrate promotions, when to bring in extra staff, which quieter days to treat as controllable cost rather than foregone revenue.

The data to calculate this already exists in every operator’s payment system. CreatePay’s live transactional data shows that Thursday to Saturday trading drives the majority of revenue for most F&B businesses – and this pattern holds consistently across the year. The volumes may shift from season to season but the proportional shape doesn’t. Operators who understand that shape can plan into it rather than react to it.

“The businesses that are succeeding are the ones using data to guide decisions rather than gut feeling or instinct,” explains Hughes.

This kind of forward planning also applies to events and seasonal patterns. A sporting event on a sunny bank holiday can represent 5% of an operator’s entire yearly revenue in a single day. A wet February weekday, by contrast, can reduce card transaction volume by double digits.

Stuart Dawson, director of partnerships at 365 Finance , helps fund independent F&B businesses with merchant cash advances. He explains that seasonality is the dominant stress pattern in hospitality, with December to February seeing the most defaults, especially in businesses that have a bad summer. “If somebody in the F&B space doesn’t succeed September to December, you will naturally see a tail off the next year.” Businesses emerge from winter needing capital to fund their good season.

These are predictable patterns visible in historical data. Operators can and should use it to prepare for the best and worst, rather than carry on unprepared and have to absorb bumps in the road as they appear.

The tools are already there

The practical entry point for operators who want better financial visibility is simpler than it might appear. Accounting software like Xero, QuickBooks and Sage connect directly to bank transaction data through open banking, automating the reconciliation process that would otherwise take hours of manual effort – usually done after hours by owner-operators who are time poor, tired and unmotivated.

Dawson identifies this connection as the most accessible fix available to operators running without an accountant or finance director. The biggest barrier to uptake, he notes, is trust rather than technology.

Open banking is underused by micro-operators because many don’t yet have the confidence to connect their transaction data to third-party platforms. That hesitation is understandable, but it carries a cost: the hours spent manually doing what the software would do automatically are hours not spent running your business.

Banks, meanwhile, sit on a more complete picture than any payments provider and are far better positioned to provide forward cashflow forecasting for F&B operators. Your payment terminal sees card transactions, but your bank account sees everything: money in, money out, net position, patterns over time. 

The implication, says Hughes, is that "banks have a big role to play in F&B. They have the full picture." Yet many operators still aren’t taking advantage of it.

Turn data into decisions

The shift towards better planning comes with building a regular rhythm digesting the numbers your business already generates. You don’t need to become data literate in any technical sense. Check your card takings against the same week last year. Identify which days outperformed and which underperformed. Use that pattern to plan your staffing, your stock orders and your promotions for the week ahead. Do this week in, week out to build good habits.

Hughes’s advice to operators is simple: don’t be intimidated by data, because it’s just numbers. Successful operators consider it as important as the food coming out of their kitchen and give it the same regular attention and care it deserves. For those that let it fall behind and check it as an afterthought, it’s already too late to do anything with it. 

Zempler Bank works with hospitality businesses across the UK. We support restaurants, cafes, pubs, food trucks, and more. Our business accounts come with built in tools to help you stay on top of cashflow — from £0 per month. Check our accounts.

Put it into practice

👉 Review your numbers weekly, know your break-even days and plan your staffing and promotions around it.

👉 Your historical data tells you what to expect and when. Use it to look forward rather than back.

👉 Connect your accounting software to your bank via Open Banking. The manual reconciliation is costing you time you don’t have.

👉 If you’re not using the transaction data your card terminal already generates, start there. It’s already yours and it’s invaluable.