Restaurant Financial Model: Fixed-Menu Session Restaurant

Two scheduled sessions each use 150 dining minutes plus 15 reset minutes inside a six-hour window. Five 25-minute courses fit the sitting. A booking limit takes the lowest of 32 seats, 40 installed kitchen covers per course, 36 plating-release covers and funded kitchen/service budgets allocated equally across the offered sessions.

Paid and complimentary requests share that limit proportionally. Accepted paid bookings then receive a 96% attendance factor and round down per sitting. Only served paid covers earn the $125 starting menu price. Optional $35 nonalcoholic pairings are a subset of served paid guests, constrained by beverage labor. They do not add seats or guests.

• Unused capacity in one session is not automatically reassigned to the other.
• One enabled session admits early demand only; zero sessions stop service.
• Payment is after service. No prepaid ticket or deposit revenue is counted.

The five-course edible basket is $4 starter, $6 fish, $10 main, $1 palate course and $5 dessert: $26 total. Dividing by 90% usable yield gives $28.8889 raw ingredients per accepted menu. Food is prepared for both regular and complimentary bookings, including no-shows that earn no menu revenue. Preparation loss and discarded no-show menus are measured separately without charging either twice.

The starting 9.6 paid FTE includes the owner, executive chef, kitchen brigade, preparation/pastry cook, dining service, beverage preparation, dishwashing and relief. Owner salary is $74,880 from January. Chef and kitchen preparation start in February; guest service starts in March. Employer load is 10.65%, with a separate $1,500 monthly welfare pool.

• Each sold pairing uses an $8 ingredient allowance; each served guest uses $1.50 consumables.
• Initial rent/CAM is $4,500/month; full wages are paid without tip credit.
• Annual cost shares reconcile yearly totals but can alter monthly costs; maximum Base ingredient allocation difference is $655.65.

Initial CAPEX is $348,920: $317,200 base assets plus $31,720 spent contingency. It includes a $144,000 reused-shell fitout, cooking, a three-position plating/pass setup, refrigeration, ventilation, warewashing and courseware. January 2030 adds $15,000 replacement spending. Actual installed prices and service performance need confirmation.

The financing package is $526,000 in January: $366,000 equity and a $160,000 loan at assumed 10% fixed interest over 84 monthly annuity payments, without grace. The $4,800 fee is expensed. Cash without owner equity reaches −$285,027. Adding an $80,000 retained reserve and rounding upward produces the equity requirement; costs in the trough are not added again.

• Minimum funded cash is $80,973 in March 2027.
• Receivables use two days, food inventory seven days and payables zero.
• Book depreciation uses seven years; terminal valuation is excluded from project payback and cash ROI.

Base 2027 revenue is $1,281,435 from 9,365 paid dining covers and 3,166 pairings. Total served guests are 9,801 after complimentary attendance. The 12,531 sold menu-and-pairing units used by the financial report are therefore not a guest count. Base 2027 EBITDA is $268,697.

Monthly EBITDA, EBIT and operating cash first become and remain nonnegative in April 2027. Project payback is April 2028, month 16, without later reversal. The 60-month simple project cash ROI is 500.3%: $2,186,630 net unlevered project FCF divided by $437,059 absolute negative monthly project FCF. This strong scenario depends on the premium tariff, recipe budget and productive time.

• The project measure is undiscounted and nonannualized; it excludes financing and terminal sale proceeds.
• Low monetary stress has $58,615 minimum cash, below the $80,000 reserve objective.
• No shareholder distributions are scheduled; retained business cash is not a realized investor return.