FINDING 01
Two rushes make the day.
56% of revenue arrives in about five hours: lunch (12:00–1:30 PM, 21%) and dinner (4:30–8:00 PM, 35%). Friday is the busiest day at 70.8 orders, and Sunday the quietest at 50.5.
CASE STUDY · HOSPITALITY · POWER BI, POWER QUERY, DAX
Slice & Co. Pizza Operations
Sales were flat in 2015, so growth has to come from serving the rushes better, selling bigger baskets and rostering staff where the customers are.
- REVENUE
- $817.9K
- ORDERS
- 21,350
- AVG ORDER VALUE
- $38.31
- LABOUR, % OF REVENUE
- 38.0%
THE QUESTION
When does the money come in, which pizzas earn it, and is the roster right?
Slice & Co. is a single-site pizza kitchen selling 32 pizzas across four categories and five sizes. In 2015 it took 21,350 orders worth $817.9K. The General Manager could see the daily takings, but not when the money came in, why some days were different, or whether staff were on at the right times. I analysed all 48,620 order lines.
FINDING 02
The basket is the biggest lever.
38% of orders are a single pizza, averaging $16.52 against $51.66 for multi-pizza orders. If 1 in 10 of them added a second pizza, revenue would rise by about $13K a year with no new customers.
FINDING 03
Unusual days follow the calendar.
21 days stood out against a typical same weekday. The biggest spikes fell on Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Super Bowl Sunday (+65% to +89%), and came from more customers, not bigger orders.
WHAT IF THE ROSTER FOLLOWED DEMAND? · MODELLED
Labour sits in the wrong hours.
$39.6Ksaved a year, taking labour from 38.0% to 33.1% of revenue.
$0Yearly labour saving with a demand-based roster$39.6K
The staffing data is a synthetic scenario, disclosed in the README. The roster rule is a sizing signal, not a final roster.
Serve the rushes · Kitchen lead
Finish prep before 11:30 AM and 4:30 PM, and put the strongest team on Friday lunch and Friday 5–7 PM.
Grow the basket · Front counter
Offer a second pizza or a side with every single-pizza order: about +$13K a year if 1 in 10 converts.
Fix menu and roster · General Manager
Reprice or resize Brie Carre, stagger afternoon shift starts and give Sunday a lighter roster.
HOW I BUILT IT
- Power Query
- One flat file of 48,620 order lines reshaped into a star schema: three fact tables and five lookup tables.
- DAX
- 99 measures in a dedicated table, including the typical-same-weekday comparison that flags unusual days.
- Power BI
- Five pages with one sidebar, filters, a Reset button and auto-written insight panels for the General Manager.
- Caveats
- One year of data, so comparisons stay within 2015. Impact estimates assume customers behave as they did that year.