So, what is SPROWTS?

SPROWTS is a bespoke Sales and Profitability Tracking System used by Hospitality and Leisure businesses. It helps small-to-medium sized businesses understand Profit Margins and Costs, and SPROWTS offers expert guidance on that.

SPROWTS provides weekly monitoring of the operating figures, generating real-time Profitability figures for owners and optionally for Senior team members too. This levels the playing field for SME businesses, granting them controls similar to those used by larger companies.

Additionally, SPROWTS examines medium to long-term Profitability, identifying patterns and trends. It offers real-time performance data helping you to make better informed operational decisions, with dedicated SPROWTS Consultants available to you as well, for ongoing support.

SPROWTS is useful to what type of business?

Almost exclusive to Hospitality & Leisure, SPROWTS customers are generally independently owned small-to-medium-sized businesses.  For example they might be:

  • Restaurants
  • Hotels
  • Pubs – with or without Accommodation
  • Bed & Breakfast Hotels
  • Bars; Cafes; Coffee Shops

Assuming I sign up … what happens next?

One of our Consultants will initially help by ‘’Benchmarking’’ your business, defining target and optimal Labour Costs, Food and Liquor Gross Profit Percentages (separately), and Wages costs. Together we will establish achievable performance targets. If reaching the Benchmark is challenging, we recommend gradual stages, especially if Profitability has declined or costs have spiked.

SPROWTS ensures target achievement through weekly performance measurement and offers technical assistance, Coaching, and Motivation, providing precise figures each week.

I’m interested in Joining

Contact David Hunter for more information!

Email: sprowts@bowdengroup.co.uk | Phone: 07831 407984

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In basic practical terms, how does SPROWTS work?

Every week you will be asked to fill in your main figures (on a simple eMailed spreadsheet, that has been configured specifically for YOUR business).

This will include Information such as:

Sales
… split between the various departments : Accommodation / Food / Drinks / Functions Food / Functions Drinks / Other Income etc

Cost of Sales
… such as Food and Liquor purchases; even Conference and Banqueting equipment if you hire that in.

Covers
… the numbers of meals served that week, at Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner, and maybe Afternoon Teas too, and all Functions – but only if you serve those things.

Bedrooms
… if you have Bedrooms – the number of rooms you sold, every night, and how many beds were occupied on those nights etc.

Wages
… we will need details of Wages too, and those should departmentalised if you can. If you have your wages done weekly, we will have those figures weekly, or monthly if you do monthly. Some places have some staff paid weekly and others monthly, plus casuals maybe. Whichever way you organise things, we can adapt our SPROWTS system to accommodate what you do in your business, and how you do that.

What Information Will SPROWTS Give Me?

Your weekly SPROWTS Report will tell you all that you need to know about your business … how it is running, what aspects are looking good, and what needs improvement.

It is everything about Sales and Profitability, real stuff, and:

  1. compared to the same period last year
  2. compared to the Budget that you have set (yes, we can do that for you too)
  3. highlighting the trends: all the trends: short- medium- and long-term

If you have a Restaurant we can measure Average Spend per Head (SPH)
If you have Bedrooms we look at Room and Bed Occupancy, Average Room Rate achieved … and many other statistics are available to you

We also look at forward booking numbers – and where possible we look at trends and we compare to industry standards. The list of comparables is endless – and you can have whatever information you want and need.

If you have Bedrooms we also look at Occupancy and Average Room Rate achieved.

We also look at forward booking numbers – and where possible we look at trends and we compare to industry standards. (the comparables list is endless – and you can have whatever information you need)

If you would like to see a sample of the weekly Report that is produced by SPROWTS, just click here: samplereport@sprowts.co.uk and we will get this back to you very quickly. We would be really happy to do that for you.

Case Study | Restaurant Industry

“I had very good Sales but no Profit”

This particular eaterie is located close to a Motorway Junction, on the outskirts of a large South West England town.

Sales are very buoyant – comfortably over £1 million per annum, and run by a phenomenal and inspirational owner with a fabulous team of long-serving staff.

The food product was perfect for that market, and very well produced. Portions were generous.

As is often the case, I found that the business was starved of financial information, and so the managers did not know WHERE the problem was – nor where to look. All they knew was that they were not making Profits.

We very closely monitored the business’s figures for seven weeks – Sales, Cost of Sales, Labour Costs etc – and we established that yes, the Wages bill was high, but there was a good reason for that – and that was because the location was not easy to get to for the staff, and employing extra short-shift workers to cover the peak periods was not viable due to the cost, and the time, of getting them on-site. So, most employees ended up being full time.

It became apparent that the Gross Profit Margin % was some 20 percentage points below what we would have benchmarked that business at. We helped the owner by giving her regular weekly-updated reports on her GP% and Labour Cost %s – and statistics on all the other overhead costs – and the owner managed to turn the business Profitability around, with our input, and with very very dramatic and positive financial effect.

Is SPROWTS part of a bigger organisation?

SPROWTS is a part of The Bowden Group, which is essentially a specialist Management Consultancy service operating only in the Hospitality Industry. David Hunter is the principal Consultant/Mentor and has been doing this work for the last 35 years, working over that time with a large number of Restaurants, Hotels, Pubs, Catering businesses, Bars and Cafes … all over Great Britain.

Client Testimonials

Matthew Horne, Caesar’s

I signed up for Sprowts and got a huge amount more than I expected. All the key figures for my Restaurant business were closely monitored and reported on, every week, with loads of useful information and pointers. They didn’t drown me in figures, they just gave me what I needed to know, about how the business was performing. Also, when we started with Sprowts they benchmarked the business so that I knew what figures I SHOULD be achieving. And … they were very happy to listen to me and provide it when I asked for extra detail. Really, no-one should run a Hospitality business without using Sprowts.

Legally trained operator of a Food Sector specialist website, S.K.

Legally trained, I am detail-orientated. What I really like about SPROWTS is that not only does it give you the Weekly Profitability figures factually every week, but it also gives you a shorter-term ‘’tracking’’ figure and a longer-term ‘’trending’’ figure. This way, you know exactly where you are, and where you are heading, on profitability issues. It quite literally acts as an ‘’early warning’’ system. All Hospitality businesses would be well advised to use SPROWTS and I have no hesitation in recommending anyone to try it.’

I'm interested in Joining

Contact David Hunter for more information!

Email: sprowts@bowdengroup.co.uk | Phone: 07831 407984

FIND OUT MORE