Forecasting F&B Revenue with Covid-19 Restrictions | Acxtron

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected many. The Food and Beverages (F&B) industries may be particularly hard hit when dining in is no longer allowed. This has happened in Singapore during the Circuit Breaker in Apr 2020 and continued through Phase 1 until Jun 2020. Now once again, we are facing the same challenges in Phase 2 (Heightened Alert) starting from 16 May 2021.

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Studying the Impact by Phases

It is hard to tell how long this will impact the industry, but one thing is certain, they will need to plan for different scenarios. By understanding how their business was affected during initial circuit breaker measures with good analytics in their sales and breakdown into the various categories such as dining in, delivery and takeaway, it can give a business better insights to make better decisions.

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By having data analysed from their sales, we could see how their business has been affected in the various phases that Singapore has gone through as part of the pandemic response. For example, in this snapshot from the dashboard, we can see that when circuit breaker start, delivery and takeaway average daily sales grew by 81% and 64% respectively compared to before the circuit breaker.

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The F&B industry is a significant contributor to our nation’s GDP with an estimated $12 billion contribution annually, according to data from Temasek Holdings (2018). Therefore, when the industry is impacted due to Covid-19,  it will definitely have a negative impact on the economy.

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Flexibility in Forecasting

In order to respond to a situation which is constantly evolving and always on a knife's edge, your business intelligence tool needs to be dynamic and flexible. This is why we use Microsoft Power BI because it can allow us to take into consideration new information and make adjustments as necessary, while relying on analysis of past data to make calculated decisions to guide our forecasting.

In order to survive, many F&B businesses had to pivot and increase their revenue streams through services such as delivery. We can understand the growth in delivery and takeaway sales during the circuit breaker and use that information for us to forecast the revenue ahead.

By having custom dashboards that can allow you to work with different parameters, such as the number of days of restrictions, adjustments to the original forecast, or restriction on group size when we reopen once again, it can allow us to account for these during the affected period.

This greatly increases the flexibility in terms of the type of forecasts that you would like to see. We can also create different scenarios so that you can consider different options.

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Analysis and Forecasting for Other Industries

This type of analysis and forecasting can be used to suit the needs of other industries affected, such as retail, sports, wholesale trade etc. Understanding your data in-depth can allow you to make strategic key decisions to help tide you over in these uncertain times.

If you would like to know how to integrate your existing sales data with analysis in Covid-19 phases and find out more on forecasting, please reach out to us for a free consultation.