How to Create a Restaurant Dashboard in Google Sheets with ChatGPT

Wrestling with your restaurant's performance data can feel like you're trying to figure out a "daily special" from a jumbled list of raw ingredients. A clear, visual dashboard brings all your key numbers into one place, making it easier to see what’s working and what isn’t. This guide will walk you through exactly how to create a useful restaurant dashboard in Google Sheets, using ChatGPT as your personal data assistant to handle the tricky formula bits.

So, Why Bother with a Dashboard?

Putting in the effort to build a dashboard isn't just about creating pretty charts. It's about turning raw data from your Point of Sale (POS) system, reservation software, and delivery apps into a command center for your business. When done right, a good dashboard helps you make smarter decisions, faster.

You can instantly answer questions like:

• Which menu items are our sales leaders, and which are duds?

• What are our busiest hours of the day and days of the week?

• How much are we spending on food versus how much revenue is coming in?

• Are online or delivery orders making up a bigger piece of the pie?

Instead of relying on gut feelings, you can use real data to guide your menu engineering, staff scheduling, inventory orders, and marketing strategies. For a busy restaurant owner or manager, this is a total game-changer.

Step 1: Plan Your Dashboard - What Will You Track?

Before you jump into spreadsheets, decide what you want to measure. The best dashboards are focused and show you the metrics (or Key Performance Indicators, KPIs) that matter most for your specific goals. Trying to track everything at once will only create a cluttered and confusing mess.

Start with these essential categories. Pick a few from each to begin.

Sales & Financial Metrics

• Total Revenue: The simplest and most important number. A daily, weekly, or monthly look at your top-line sales.

• Sales by Category: Breakdown of sales between food, beverages (alcoholic and non-alcoholic), and merch. This shows you what's driving your revenue.

• Average Order Value (AOV): This is your total revenue divided by the number of orders. A rising AOV means customers are spending more per visit.

• Profit Margin: A clear look at the health of your business after costs are accounted for.

• Top 5 Selling Items: See which dishes are your true stars.

• Bottom 5 Selling Items: Identify the menu items that might need a rethink or removal.

Operational Metrics

• Table Turnover Rate: A measure of how quickly you're seating new customers. Crucial for maximizing revenue during peak hours.

• Number of Covers: The total number of customers served in a given period.

• Orders by Source: A comparison between dine-in, takeout, and different delivery platforms (e.g., Uber Eats, DoorDash).

• Seating/Capacity Utilization: How full is your restaurant on average? This can help you refine staffing and opening hours.

• Food Cost Percentage: The cost of your ingredients divided by the revenue from those items. This is a critical metric for controlling costs and pricing your menu correctly.

Customer Metrics

• Reservations vs. Walk-Ins: Understand your customer planning habits.

• Repeat vs. New Customers: Are your marketing efforts bringing in new faces, and is your quality of service bringing them back?

• Average Spend per Head: Total revenue divided by the number of customers. Helps in understanding customer behavior.

Step 2: Collect and Organize Your Data

Your data lives in different places. The biggest source will be your POS system (like Toast, Square, or Clover), which tracks every single transaction. You'll also have data in your reservation system, accounting software, and perhaps third-party delivery apps.

The simplest way to start is by creating a "Raw Data" tab in a Google Sheet. Regularly export CSV files from your POS system and paste the information here. Your goal is to have clean, organized columns. A good starting point would look something like this:

This might feel tedious, but keeping your raw data clean and consistent is the most important part of the entire process.

Step 3: Build the Dashboard with Help from ChatGPT

Now for the fun part. We’ll create a new tab called "Dashboard" and start filling it with our key numbers and charts. We won't be staring blankly at a formula bar - we'll just ask ChatGPT to do the heavy lifting.

Here’s how you can prompt ChatGPT to get exactly what you need.

Asking for Formulas to Calculate KPIs

A good prompt is simple and very specific. Tell ChatGPT what sheet you're working in, what your columns are, and what you want to calculate.

Example 1: Total Revenue

Your Prompt to ChatGPT:"I have a Google Sheet with a tab named 'Raw Data'. Column G contains the price for each item sold. On my 'Dashboard' tab, what formula can I use to calculate the sum of all values in Column G of the 'Raw Data' tab?"

ChatGPT's Response:You can use the SUM function for that. In a cell on your 'Dashboard' tab, enter this formula:

=SUM('Raw Data'!G:G)

Example 2: Revenue by Category (e.g., Food vs. Beverage)

Your Prompt to ChatGPT:"In my 'Raw Data' tab, Column E lists the category (like 'Food' or 'Beverage') and Column G lists the price. On my 'Dashboard' tab, I need a formula to calculate the total sales only for items in the 'Food' category."

ChatGPT's Response:You can use the SUMIF function. It adds up numbers in a range that meet a specific criteria. Here is the formula:

=SUMIF('Raw Data'!E:E, "Food", 'Raw Data'!G:G)

You can create another cell and simply change "Food" to "Beverage" to get the total for drinks.

Example 3: Counting the Number of Orders

Your Prompt to ChatGPT:"In my 'Raw Data' tab, Column C has the Order ID. Since each item in an order has its own row but the same Order ID, I need to count the total number of unique orders. What's the formula?"

ChatGPT's Response:To count the unique Order IDs, you can use a combination of COUNTUNIQUE. Use this formula:

=COUNTUNIQUE('Raw Data'!C:C)

Creating Charts and Visuals

Once you have your key numbers calculated on your dashboard, you can build charts to visualize trends. Let’s say you’ve calculated your total daily sales and organized them into a small table on your dashboard.

Your Prompt to ChatGPT:"I'm in Google Sheets. I have this data on my 'Dashboard' tab: Days of the week in cells A2 to A8, and corresponding total sales in cells B2 to B8. How do I create a bar chart from this information to visualize sales per day?"

ChatGPT's Response gives you step-by-step instructions:

1. Select the data range, from cell A2 to B8.

2. Go to the menu and click Insert > Chart.

3. Google Sheets will automatically suggest a chart type. If it's not a column or bar chart, find the Chart type dropdown in the Chart editor on the right and select 'Column chart'.

4. You can customize the chart's title, colors, and labels in the 'Customize' tab of the Chart editor.

You can use this same process for pie charts (for sales category breakdowns), line charts (for sales trends over a month), and more. Arrange these charts, along with your key numbers, on your "Dashboard" tab to create your command center.

Tip: Keep Your Dashboard Simple and Clean

The goal is to provide at-a-glance information, not to overwhelm yourself or your team. Stick to the metrics you planned in Step 1.

• Use whitespace effectively. Don't cram everything together. Give your charts and numbers some room to breathe.

• Use color with purpose. You can use your brand colors, or use colors like green for good trends and red for concerning ones.

• Label everything clearly. Make sure chart titles and metric labels are easy to understand. ‘Avg. Daily Sales’ is better than just ‘Sales.’

• Set a refresh routine. Since this dashboard isn't automatically updated, you need to decide on a schedule (daily or weekly) to export new data and paste it into your 'Raw Data' tab. All your formulas and charts will update instantly when you do.

Final Thoughts

Creating a restaurant dashboard in Google Sheets puts you in direct control of your business's data, empowering you to make smarter, evidence-based decisions. By leveraging a familiar tool like Google Sheets and using ChatGPT to take care of the complex formulas, this kind of powerful analysis is no longer out of reach for even the least technical restaurant owner.

While a DIY Google Sheets dashboard is a huge leap forward, you’ll likely find that the weekly ritual of downloading CSVs and pasting data can start to feel like a chore. At Graphed, we’ve automated this entire process. We connect directly to your data sources - like your POS system and marketing platforms - to build real-time dashboards that are always up-to-date. Instead of being a spreadsheet whiz, you just use plain language to tell us what you want to see, and a live, professional-grade dashboard is a few seconds away.