GGB The earliest signal is almost always in the numbers, not the dining room — a prime cost drifting up, a rent-to-revenue ratio that was always too high, a reserve thinning faster than sales are building. A restaurant that reads those weekly catches trouble while there is still time to act; one that waits for the month-end statement learns too late. Measuring early is the whole game.
From Why Restaurants Fail: The Honest Reasons, From the Turnaround Chair — the full reading, with the method behind this answer.