What they found when somebody finally timed the kitchen.

Toasted had a very good year. Same-store sales up 33.6%, measured on matched days against the same days a year earlier.

That matched-days part matters, and we will come back to it.

The thing nobody had timed

Ticket times by hour are not a report most restaurants run, because most kitchens do not produce them. Toasted’s do.

At two in the afternoon the kitchen runs at twenty-eight minutes an order. In the morning it runs at fifteen. Not on a bad day — every day, in the hour when the fewest people are in the building.

Which is the opposite of what anybody guesses

Ask an operator when his kitchen is slowest and he will say Friday at eight. The rush is what he remembers, because the rush is what he stands in.

Two in the afternoon is the hour nobody watches. Shift change, prep starting, the line half broken down, and four tables who each waited half an hour for lunch and did not say anything about it.

And the number we threw out

The first version of the growth figure used July, and July flattered them — the year before had only part of the month on record, so it was a calendar artifact, not growth. It was thrown out. The 33.6% is August, matched day for day.

A number that cannot survive being checked is worth less than no number at all, even when it is in your favor.