Answers / AI & data
How do you read a visit heatmap to find an F&B venue's true peak hours?
Written by PEKO Team.Last updated: 05/24/2026.
Plot transactions on a 7-day × 24-hour grid, then normalise by staffing cost. A 'peak' is only profitable if revenue per staff-hour exceeds 2.4× the hourly wage. Most cafés have one fake peak (Saturday 14:00) that loses money.
Published: 05/24/2026
A visit heatmap is a 7-row by 24-column grid where each cell is the count or revenue of transactions in that hour-of-week. Raw transaction heatmaps are misleading — a busy Saturday 14:00 lunch tail looks like a peak but usually loses money because staffing is still at peak level while throughput has dropped.
The fix is to normalise each cell by labour cost and overhead, producing a profit-per-hour heatmap. Cells that exceed 2.4× the hourly wage in gross contribution are real peaks worth promoting. Cells under 1.0× are candidates for promo-led traffic shifting or staff trimming.
Use a 168-cell grid
Hour-of-week, not day-of-week. The 'Tuesday 19:00' pattern is invisible if you aggregate by day.
Overlay loyalty visits
Members typically over-index on weeknight 18:00–20:00 windows. Promo those windows with tier-bonus multipliers to deepen the relationship.
Flag fake peaks
If revenue is high but profit-per-staff-hour is below 1.5×, you're paying for the peak. Shift promo demand into the adjacent valley instead of stacking more on the peak.
FAQ
How many weeks of data do I need?
Six weeks minimum to smooth out weather, holidays, and stock-outs. Twelve weeks is the cleanest signal for an independent café.
Does PEKO generate this heatmap?
Yes. The Visit Heatmap dashboard renders the 168-cell grid by branch, supports the labour-normalised view, and lets you draw a window to push a flash promo through ZNS to members likely to come in that slot.
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