Labor % tracks sales volume
Every store-month since September 2024. The dark line is what Tchoupitoulas, Baton Rouge and Algiers averaged at each sales level: the benchmark each store is graded against. Months outside the selected period are faded.
Huntsville March 2026 (opened 3/22; $72,110 at 60.3%) is off the chart.
At the same sales, established stores land within about two points
Labor % by monthly sales band, all 24 months, labor-dollar weighted. A store appears in a band only with two or more months there. No store wins every band.
Huntsville's bars are its opening months (April–August 2026) and sit above every established store.
Each store's own labor % rises in its slow months
One panel per store, all 24 months. Gray dots are the other stores; the line is the sales-band benchmark. Tchoupitoulas included.
A third of hourly labor is spent before the doors open
Share of daily sales vs. share of hourly labor dollars, by daypart. The pre-open and close-out crew is the fixed floor every Barracuda carries, whatever it sells.
Toast Hourly Sales report, 15-minute rows, 11 complete days 8/28–9/7/2026. Hourly job titles only; salaried Store Manager and ASM excluded.
Two report cards for the same stores
Flip between how stores look today on raw labor % and how they look against the benchmark for the sales each one actually did, month by month.
Month by month against the benchmark
The benchmark moves with each month's sales and still flags real misses. Red shading is labor over the benchmark; blue is under.
Huntsville against stores at similar sales
Each month, Huntsville's labor % against the range Tchoupitoulas, Baton Rouge and Algiers ran in months within ±15% of the same sales. Above the range April through July; inside it in August.
August's comparison rests on three Algiers months, so treat it as direction, not proof. Volume explains Algiers; it explains only part of Huntsville.
What one point of food cost is worth
Dollar value of one percentage point of COGS in the selected period. Food cost is less tied to volume than labor, but a busy store can carry more waste inside the same percentage. The fair test is actual vs. theoretical food cost: what the recipes say the items sold should have cost.
Toast net sales approximate QuickBooks Total Income but are not identical. QuickBooks COGS today is purchases, not usage, so an actual-vs-theoretical test needs recipe costs and period-end inventory counts. Proposed as the method for the 9/17 food-cost audit.
The data
Every figure behind the charts above, for the stores, period and benchmark you've selected.