Laravel's Cache Hocus Pocus: Are My Strategies Even Working?

Still wrestling with our Laravel app's performance, and honestly, I'm starting to think our caching strategies are just performing a magic trick where the load disappears, then reappears. I've thrown everything at it, from Redis to file cache, but the database still seems to be having a party without any bouncers, which makes me wonder about the effectiveness of my query optimization efforts. How do you guys *actually* confirm if Laravel's cache is genuinely reducing database hits and aiding in overall server load rather than just sitting there looking pretty? Are there specific metrics or tools you swear by to see if your cache is pulling its weight?