The channel margin audit
A three-step audit to reveal the real contribution margin of each order source in your restaurant.
Mohammad Anjum
Operator & product, SavorQ
12 March 2026
Stop averaging your channels together
Most restaurants know their overall food cost and labour ratio. Far fewer know what an Uber Eats lunch actually contributes after packaging, payment fees, refunds, and the time the pass spends on that ticket.
A channel margin audit is not a finance project. It is an operating habit: pick a representative week, separate the sources, and force the numbers to tell the truth about each one.
Step 1 — Map every order source that hits the kitchen
List every path an order can take into service: dine-in POS, own online ordering, phone, marketplace apps, kiosk, third-party WhatsApp or Instagram flows if they still happen. If it prints or lights up a ticket, it belongs on the list.
- Name the channel the way the floor talks about it, not how the software labels it.
- Note who owns pricing and promos for that channel.
- Capture whether the order arrives with full modifiers and allergens, or as a partial handoff.
Step 2 — Build contribution, not just revenue
For each channel, calculate a simple contribution per order for the sample week: net sales after discounts and refunds, minus food cost for those tickets, minus packaging where relevant, minus explicit marketplace or card fees, minus a labour proxy for prep and handoff time.
You do not need perfect activity-based costing on day one. You need directionally honest numbers that make a poor channel look poor and a strong channel look strong.
- Use average basket and average ticket time if item-level cost is incomplete.
- Treat comps and remakes as channel costs when the channel caused them.
- Separate tip income from contribution if tips do not fund the kitchen.
Step 3 — Decide what changes this week
An audit without decisions is a spreadsheet. Rank channels by contribution, then choose one action per weak channel: raise menu price on that channel, cut a promo, throttle hours of availability, improve phone capture, or move volume onto a higher-margin path.
Re-run the same audit after four weeks. The point is not a perfect model. The point is that operators can see margin by source before the monthly P&L arrives too late to act.