Field note
Labour minutes hide in popular services
The services everyone loves can be the ones that steal time between appointments — and never show up on a simple mark-up sheet.
A colour treatment that “takes an hour” may occupy the chair for seventy minutes and the basin for fifteen more. A custom cake that looks like a standard SKU can require two consultations nobody invoices. Popularity is not proof of contribution.
Time three real instances of each flagship service — not the brochure time, the clock time. Include setup, cleaning, and the messages you answer afterward. Then divide your true labour cost by those minutes and compare it with what the ticket collects after materials.
You do not need laboratory precision. You need honesty about the gap. When the gap is wide, options include raising the price, narrowing what is included, adding a consultation fee, or retiring the offer for new customers while grandparenting existing ones for a defined period.
This is the kind of detail we unpack in a Margin Recovery Session when owners already suspect a few favourites are the problem.