How RMI measures restaurant market performance

RMI reports net revenue, covers and average spend as primary measures, with food revenue, beverage revenue, revenue mix, spend per head, weekday and weekend revenue, and lunch and dinner trade as secondary measures.

Net revenue is trading revenue net of VAT and net of discounts actually granted. Service charge is excluded unless a participant’s reporting convention includes it, in which case it is adjusted during standardisation.

Average spend is calculated as net revenue divided by covers for the same period and the same trading scope.

Participants submit against a fixed schema: trading date, restaurant, net revenue, covers, food revenue and beverage revenue.

Trading date follows the participant’s trading day definition, recorded at onboarding, so late-night trade is attributed consistently between participants.

Covers are defined as guests served, not bookings or bills. Where an operator can only supply bills, the restaurant is excluded from cover-based benchmarks until a covers feed is available.

Comp sets are constructed from geography, format, service style, price positioning, average spend band, seat count, trading pattern and ownership structure.

Participants may nominate competitors for consideration. RMI controls final membership so that confidentiality thresholds and comparability standards are both satisfied.

Comp set membership is reviewed periodically. Where membership changes materially, the affected series is annotated.

An index expresses a participant’s movement relative to comp-set movement over the same period: (1 + participant movement) ÷ (1 + comp-set movement) × 100.

100 is the comp-set benchmark. Above 100 is outperformance, below 100 is underperformance.

Comp-set movement is weighted by contribution scale so that a single small site cannot distort the benchmark, and the participant’s own data is excluded from its own comp-set benchmark.

A comp set requires a minimum number of participating restaurants drawn from multiple ownership groups.

Ownership concentration limits prevent any single group from dominating a comp set to the point where individual performance could be inferred.

Where thresholds are not met, the benchmark is suppressed. Suppression is shown explicitly in the product rather than replaced with a wider market figure without labelling.

Markets are published at city, region, nation and segment level, with price position as a further dimension where sample allows.

Segments are: fine dining, premium casual, casual dining, gastropub, pub, café, QSR, bar-led restaurant, destination restaurant and other.

Price positions are: value, mid-market, premium and luxury, supported by observed average spend bands.

Submissions are checked against the restaurant’s own trailing ranges by day of week, against internal reconciliation (food plus beverage against net revenue), and for completeness across expected trading days.

Records outside tolerance are flagged as Review Required and excluded from benchmark production until resolved.

Validation status is visible to the participant at restaurant level in the Data Centre.

Benchmarks are produced daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually. Weekly reporting uses a Monday to Sunday week unless a participant’s reporting calendar is aligned differently at onboarding.

Year-on-year comparisons align equivalent days of week rather than calendar dates, so trading patterns remain comparable.

Where a participant resubmits corrected data, affected periods are restated and marked as revised, with the revision date recorded.

Material revisions to published market series are disclosed in the monthly market review.

Every published figure carries its sample size and a data confidence indicator.

Confidence reflects sample size, ownership spread, submission completeness and history length. Developing markets are labelled as such and should be treated as indicative.