Key points
- Find slow hours by recording sales by block of hours for two weeks, then compare sales per hour.
- Pick one promotion, a bundle, a pair price, or a special price on one item, for items you have enough ingredients for.
- Work out the gross profit on the promotion with COGS. On customers who would have bought anyway, the discount is gross profit you lose.
- Set a start and end date, brief your staff, then compare sales and gross profit before and during the promotion.
Picture this: it's 15:00 at your outlet. The lunch crowd has gone, most tables are empty, and your barista is waiting for the next order. Rent and wages keep running through hours like these.
A promotion can help fill slow hours, as long as its price still leaves gross profit and you measure the result. This article covers the order to do it in: find your slow hours, pick a type of promotion, cost it, run it with your staff, and compare the results.
Example: Every time, price, COGS figure, and sales number in this article is an example, not data from a real business.
Find your slow hours
Start with your busy hours. The business advice you can ask Kazeer AI for can name your outlet's busy hours, as in this example: "Your busy hours are 11:00 to 13:00. Get your stock ready and promote your signature items." (Kazeer AI gives its advice in Indonesian; this example is translated.) During busy hours, follow that advice: get your stock ready and offer your signature items. A promotion with a lower price suits slow hours better.
To find your slowest hours, record your sales by block of hours for two weeks:
- Pick a few fixed times, such as 11:00, 14:00, 17:00, and closing.
- At each of those times, write down today's total sales. In Kazeer, today's sales report updates itself, or you can ask Kazeer AI "How much have I sold today?" (in Indonesian, "Berapa penjualan hari ini?").
- Subtract each reading from the one after it. The result is your sales for that block of hours.
- Keep weekdays and weekends apart, because their patterns can differ.
The result looks something like this, for an average weekday:
| Block of hours | Average sales | Per hour |
|---|
| 07:00 to 11:00 | Rp850,000 | Rp212,500 |
| 11:00 to 14:00 | Rp1,650,000 | Rp550,000 |
| 14:00 to 17:00 | Rp450,000 | Rp150,000 |
| 17:00 to 21:00 | Rp1,300,000 | Rp325,000 |
| Whole day | Rp4,250,000 | |
Compare sales per hour, not per block, because the blocks are different lengths. In this example, 14:00 to 17:00 is the slowest. The same notes, taken every hour, also help you build your staff schedule. The guide to shift schedules shows how.
Three types of promotion are easy to run and easy to cost:
- A bundle: one drink and one food item for one price. Good for raising what each customer spends, and for items that earn well but rarely get ordered.
- A pair price: two of the same item for one price, such as two Kopi Susu Aren. Good for getting customers to come with a friend.
- A special price on one item at certain hours. The easiest to explain to customers and to your cashier.
For how to choose the items, read the article on best sellers and the most profitable items. An item that earns well but sells little, like the Americano in that article's example, is a good one to try.
Three rules before you choose:
- Run one promotion at a time. With three running at once, you won't know which one worked.
- Pick items you have enough ingredients for. Ask Kazeer AI "Which items should I check?" ("Barang apa yang perlu dicek?"), then check the shelves and the fridge yourself.
- Keep promo prices to slow hours. In busy hours, customers already come in and pay full price.
Before you set a promo price, work out its gross profit using your COGS per item. For how to calculate COGS, see the guide to COGS per menu item. In Kazeer, COGS per item can also be calculated from the item's recipe. The examples below use dine-in COGS.
| Promotion (example) | Regular price | Promo price | COGS | Gross profit on promo | COGS percentage |
|---|
| Kopi Susu Aren + Croissant Butter | Rp42,000 | Rp35,000 | Rp17,000 | Rp18,000 | 48.6% |
| 2 Kopi Susu Aren | Rp44,000 | Rp38,000 | Rp16,800 | Rp21,200 | 44.2% |
| Americano | Rp20,000 | Rp15,000 | Rp4,400 | Rp10,600 | 29.3% |
How to read the first row: the regular price is Rp22,000 + Rp20,000 = Rp42,000. The COGS is Rp8,400 + Rp8,600 = Rp17,000. At the promo price of Rp35,000, gross profit is Rp35,000 − Rp17,000 = Rp18,000 per bundle. At the regular price, it's Rp25,000. So you give up Rp7,000 on each bundle.
On customers who would have bought anyway, that Rp7,000 is gross profit you lose. Extra gross profit only comes from people who buy because of the promotion.
Example: Between 14:00 and 17:00, 5 customers a day usually buy a coffee and a croissant together. With the promotion, the gross profit from them drops by 5 × Rp7,000 = Rp35,000 a day. To cover that, you need 2 bundles from extra customers: 2 × Rp18,000 = Rp36,000. The third bundle onward is extra gross profit.
Two more things:
- A promo price must never be below COGS. If it is, every serving you sell adds to your loss.
- For takeaway, add the cost of the cup, lid, straw, or box to COGS, then work it out again.
Set the dates, then tell your staff
Without an end date, a promotion can easily run on without ever being judged, and customers may start to treat the promo price as the normal price. Set:
- A start date and an end date, such as two weeks.
- The days and hours, such as Monday to Friday, 14:00 to 17:00.
- What the promotion covers: which items, whether it's for dine-in or takeaway, and whether it can be combined with other offers.
Write all of that on one card and keep it by the POS. Before the first day, explain it to your staff:
- Cashiers: when the promotion applies, how to offer it to customers, and how to record it.
- Bar and kitchen: which ingredients to have ready before 14:00.
- Who decides questions outside the rules, such as a customer who arrives at 17:05.
Also set the bundle or promo price in Kazeer's promo feature before the promotion's first day, so promotional sales are recorded and you can count them.
Compare before and after
Use the same recording method you used to find your slow hours. Compare the two weeks before the promotion with the two weeks it runs, on the same days.
The example below uses the Kopi Susu Aren + Croissant Butter bundle from earlier. During the promotion, the 5 customers who usually buy a coffee and a croissant pay the bundle price, and other customers buy an average of 6 extra bundles a day.
| Average per weekday | Before | During | Change |
|---|
| Sales, 14:00 to 17:00 | Rp450,000 | Rp625,000 | up Rp175,000 |
| Sales for the day | Rp4,250,000 | Rp4,425,000 | up Rp175,000 |
| COGS for the day | Rp1,700,000 | Rp1,802,000 | up Rp102,000 |
| Gross profit for the day | Rp2,550,000 | Rp2,623,000 | up Rp73,000 |
| COGS percentage | 40.0% | 40.7% | up 0.7 points |
How to read it:
- Sales in the promotion hours went up by 6 × Rp35,000 − 5 × Rp7,000 = Rp175,000. Daily sales went up by the same amount, so customers didn't just move over from other hours.
- COGS went up by 6 × Rp17,000 = Rp102,000 for the 6 extra bundles. The COGS percentage went up a little because of the lower promo price. That's expected, as long as gross profit in rupiah grows.
- Gross profit went up by Rp175,000 − Rp102,000 = Rp73,000 a day, the same as 6 × Rp18,000 − Rp35,000 from the example earlier. Compare that with any extra cost of the promotion, such as printing a poster.
In Kazeer, reports show sales, COGS, and gross profit, so you can take the daily rows above from your reports. Sales in the promotion hours come from your block-of-hours records. You can also ask Kazeer AI for yesterday's sales and number of transactions. See a sample conversation in the Kazeer AI section.
Watch out for unusual days. If there was a public holiday, a day of heavy rain, or an event near your outlet, leave that day out of the comparison.
- Record sales by block of hours for two weeks, then find your slowest hours.
- Pick one type of promotion and one or two items you have enough ingredients for.
- Work out the gross profit on the promotion using COGS, and make sure the price is above COGS.
- Set the start date, end date, days, and hours.
- Set the promo price in Kazeer's promo feature, write the rules on a card by the POS, then explain them to your cashiers, bar, and kitchen.
- When the promotion ends, compare sales and gross profit with the two weeks before, then decide: keep it, change it, or stop it.