Bowl for Brinker International, Inc.; Outback Restaurants and Carrabas Italian Grill for Outback Steakhouse, Inc. and Lone Star Steakhouse for Lone Star Steakhouse, Inc. The choice for Darden was motivated by the fact that we were unable to find the average check price for the Bahama Breeze brand in the 10K report. We were unable to obtain or calculate seat turnover figures, due to lack of data. The rest of the comparison data are system-wide figures, as these could not be broken down into detailed values representative of our set choice for the average check. The labor cost figures was unavailable for Brinker and Lone Star as they were incorporated in the restaurant operating expenses. In order to calculate sales per employee figures, sales and number of employee data were obtained from the 10K reports.Table 3: Benchmarks Specific to the Restaurant Industry: Darden vs. Major Competitors and the Industry - Fiscal year 1999 For restaurants operating in similar segments, the average check figure can be used to explain operational procedures. Restaurant staff checking tables more often, resulting in customers making additional orders, could explain a higher figure. A lower figure could be due to a menu where portions are larger than the operating standards. Dardens food & beverage costs are comparable to the industry average. They are slightly lower than Outbacks and Lone Stars. They are however higher than Brinker who operates nine different concepts, which allows a more efficient distribution of costs throughout the range of brands. Dardens food & beverage costs percentage has been decreasing since 1997 due to comparatively increasing sales.Dardens labor costs percentage is within the industry average and has remained fairly constant since 1997. Although the dollar amount of labor costs has been increasing steadily during that period, proportionally increasing sales have counteracted this trend. Darden manages to efficiently control th...
