Prime cost in real time
Food cost + labor cost as a % of sales — the single most important number in restaurant operations — updated every shift, every location. Set thresholds and get alerts when prime cost drifts above target.
Analytics, reporting, enterprise management
Run the numbers in real time. Across every location.
Katalyst’s analytics platform ships 200+ restaurant KPIs out of the box — prime cost, item margin, labor %, void rates — updated in real time and consolidated across the group. Drill from total revenue down to the ticket in one click.
200+ restaurant KPIs
out of the box, no custom reporting required
Multi-location consolidation
from group dashboard down to single ticket
Real-time, not next-day
every transaction updates the dashboard within seconds
What you get
Reporting tuned for the way restaurants actually run
Generic BI tools give you charts. Katalyst analytics gives you operating decisions: what to prep for tomorrow, who to schedule when, which menu items are pulling weight and which are dragging margin down.
Item-level margin and velocity
Sort every menu item by margin × velocity to find your real profit drivers. Most operators discover their highest-popularity item is actually their lowest-margin item — and adjust the menu accordingly.
AI-powered demand forecasting
Next-week sales predicted by daypart, factoring weather, local events, and historical seasonality. Drives prep volumes, inventory ordering, and labor scheduling. 3–5% labor cost reduction is realistic.
Void and comp leak detection
Voids and comps tracked per server, per shift, per item. Servers running 5%+ void rates against a 1% baseline flagged automatically — early-warning system for training gaps and theft.
Enterprise consolidation
Group-level dashboards roll up across 1 to 200+ locations. Drill from total revenue → state → location → daypart → server → ticket — all in one click. Built for multi-unit operators.
Open API and exports
Connect Katalyst data to Snowflake, BigQuery, Looker, Tableau, or your accounting platform via REST API. CSV exports, scheduled email reports, and webhooks for real-time event streams.
From analytics to intelligence
Restaurant analytics vs restaurant intelligence
Analytics is retrospective: what happened last week? Dashboards, reports, KPIs. Necessary, but not sufficient — by the time you’re looking at last week’s prime cost, the damage is done.
Intelligence is forward-looking and prescriptive: what should I do tomorrow? Forecasts, recommendations, automated alerts. Tomorrow’s lunch rush projected by daypart with weather and event factors baked in. Friday-night labor schedule auto-suggested from forecasted demand. Inventory POs triggered when usage patterns indicate a stock-out is 48 hours away.
Most restaurants have analytics. Few have intelligence. Katalyst’s analytics platform ships both — the dashboards for the questions you have, the AI layer for the questions you didn’t know to ask. For a deeper take, read our restaurant analytics and AI guide.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What KPIs are tracked out of the box?
200+ KPIs including: prime cost (food cost % + labor cost %), item-level margin and velocity, void rates and comp rates by server/shift/item, average ticket and table turn time, customer lifetime value, channel mix (dine-in/online/catering), labor as % of sales by daypart, ingredient usage variance, and gift-card outstanding balance. Plus all the standard P&L line items rolled up by location and group.
How is this different from third-party restaurant analytics tools?
Third-party analytics (Avero, Restaurant365, etc.) sit on top of your POS as integrations. They see only what gets synced — typically transactions and basic metadata. Katalyst analytics IS the POS, so it captures every modifier, every void, every channel, in real time. Plus there’s no integration to maintain and no per-location SaaS fee on top of POS.
Can I do custom analytics or build my own dashboards?
Yes. Standard dashboards cover the operating metrics most restaurants need. For custom analytics, the Katalyst REST API exposes the full data model — pipe it into Looker, Tableau, Metabase, or a Snowflake warehouse. We have customers running 50+ custom dashboards per group. CSV exports work for ad-hoc analysis without engineering involvement.
Does it work for groups with mixed POS systems?
If some locations are on Katalyst and others are on different POS systems, you’ll need a data warehouse to unify reporting. We can pipe Katalyst data into Snowflake/BigQuery via API; the other POS systems would need their own pipes. Most multi-unit groups standardise on Katalyst across all locations within 12–18 months — at which point unified reporting comes for free.
What does forecasting accuracy look like?
Sales forecasts at daypart granularity typically run 85–92% MAPE (mean absolute percentage error) for steady-state operations. Black-swan events (storms, holidays falling on unusual days) drop accuracy temporarily. Most operators use forecasts for prep volumes and labor scheduling — both of which tolerate ~10% error well.
Is the data exportable for finance and tax?
Yes. Standard exports cover daily sales summaries, payroll-ready labor exports, sales-tax reports per jurisdiction, and ingredient COGS by period. Direct accounting integrations available for QuickBooks, Xero, Sage Intacct, and NetSuite. Most multi-unit operators automate end-of-month close — typical close-time drops from 5–7 days to 1–2 with proper integration.
Run the numbers
See Katalyst analytics in action
A 30-minute walkthrough — your operating questions answered with real dashboards on a sample data set.