WHAT HAPPENS WHEN LABOUR COSTS GET OUT OF CONTROL

Nobody robs a restaurant with a mask on anymore. They do it quietly, one extra hour at a time, and they always look reasonable.

The scary part about labour costs is that it never feels like a crisis while it's happening. The rotas look fine. The team's happy. The place is busy. Then the P&L lands and 38% of your turnover went on wages and you realise you've been working for the payroll company.

What fixed it for us wasn't one dramatic cut. It was boring discipline: measuring labour weekly instead of yearly, building the rota around the sales curve instead of around people's preferences, and stopping the quiet drift of 'just covering' shifts. Boring fixes, dramatic results.