Average spend (the average ticket) is the average amount each customer (or table) spends in your restaurant. It is a key indicator of commercial performance and of how well your menu works.
Average spend (also called average spend per cover or average ticket; ticket medio in Spanish) is a commercial metric that shows the average amount each customer spends in your restaurant during a visit. It is calculated by dividing total turnover by the number of customers or covers served in a given period. It is one of the most relevant KPIs in hospitality because, together with the number of covers, it directly determines the restaurant's turnover. Average spend varies enormously with the type of venue: a café may have an average spend of €5-8, a restaurant serving a set lunch menu (menú del día) €12-18, a casual restaurant €25-40, and a fine-dining restaurant €80-200 or more.
It also fluctuates with the day of the week (it is usually higher at weekends), the time of day (dinner vs. lunch), the season and special events. Breaking average spend down by service, day and type of customer helps you spot patterns and opportunities to improve. A rising average spend shows that your suggestive selling, menu design and menu engineering are working.
A falling average spend can point to problems with the sales mix, a lack of training among front-of-house staff or a menu with a poor spread of prices.
Total turnover (excl. VAT) / Number of covers
The calculation is straightforward: divide a period's total turnover excluding VAT by the total number of covers served in that same period. It is important to use covers, not tables or tickets, to get a comparable figure. If your restaurant took €18,000 (excluding VAT) in a week and served 600 covers, the average spend is 18,000 / 600 = €30. It is a good idea to calculate average spend by service (lunch and dinner separately), by day of the week and by month to identify trends and seasonality.
Some restaurants also calculate average spend by channel (dining room, terrace, delivery) to compare how profitable each one is.
Your restaurant took €45,000 (excluding VAT) in January and served 1,800 covers. The average spend is €25. Breaking it down, you find that weekday lunches have an average spend of €16 (the set lunch menu), while Friday and Saturday dinners reach €42. The set menu pulls the overall average down.
You decide to put three strategies in place: offer wine pairings by the glass with the set menu (an extra €3 per cover), train the front-of-house team in suggestive selling of desserts and starters, and redesign the evening menu to highlight the highest-margin dishes. After three months, average spend rises to €28, a 12% increase that, with the same number of covers, means €5,400 more turnover a month.
Average spend is one of the two main turnover levers in a restaurant (the other is the number of covers). Raising average spend by 10% has the same impact on turnover as attracting 10% more customers, but it is usually easier and cheaper to achieve. The ways to increase average spend (menu engineering, suggestive selling training, menu design, pairing offers, desserts and extras) need no extra space, no extra staff and no extra marketing budget. Tracking average spend also lets you quickly see the impact of menu changes, price rises or changes to the service format.
It is the metric that best connects the dining experience with the restaurant's financial results.
Zindra automatically calculates average spend by service, day, channel and period. The dashboards show how it is moving in real time and alert you if average spend drops below the targets you have set.
Tools and content to go deeper into this concept.
Food cost is the percentage of a dish's selling price that goes on the cost of its ingredients. It is the single most important indicator of how profitable your menu is.
RevPASH (Revenue per Available Seat Hour) measures the revenue generated by each available seat per hour. It is the most complete indicator of a restaurant's operational efficiency and real profitability.
Prime cost (coste primo in Spanish) is food cost plus staff cost. It is the most complete measure of a restaurant's direct operating cost and should stay between 55% and 65% of turnover.
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