Restaurant Financial Model: Full-Service Restaurant

The starting case requests 80 lunch guests and 120 dinner guests per open day, rising to 94 and 140 by the fifth year. Opening demand ramps from 60% to 100% over six months. These are selected planning inputs, not measured traffic for a particular address.

Served guests are the minimum of demand, usable seat turns, equipment throughput, funded kitchen labor, and funded service labor. Lunch has a three-hour service and 60-minute dwell; dinner has 4.5 hours and 90-minute dwell. An 85% usable-seat factor allows for imperfect seating. Productive cook and server hours are allocated once across the two services.

Net spend starts at $24 for lunch and $34 for dinner, with approximately 3% annual escalation. Sales exclude sales tax, voluntary tips, and alcohol. No national seasonal pattern is imposed: calendar demand multipliers start at 1.00.

• Equipment is assumed to process 40 guests per hour; that throughput is an engineering assumption.
• Kitchen productivity is 14 guests per productive cook hour, with 75% of paid hours productive. Service is 10 guests per productive server hour, with 90% productive.
• Change labor and capacity alongside demand before interpreting a sales increase as feasible.

The funded team reaches 16.1 FTE: an owner/general manager, head chef, line and preparation cooks, dishwashers, servers, and hosts. Hiring starts across January, February, and March 2027. The owner receives compensation; servers receive a full employer-funded wage plus voluntary tips.

Employer load is 10.65% and pay increases 3% annually. Employee health and welfare are separate fixed expenses. Paid hours are based on 2,080 hours per FTE per year, while only the specified productive share contributes to capacity.

Food and nonalcoholic beverage costs are 32% of net sales. This is a sales-based cost schedule, not a recipe and yield model. Variable expenses include 3.05% card processing, 0.9% linen/consumables, and 1.377% employer FICA on tips. Rent/CAM starts at $7,500 per month for the selected site.

• The rent allowance is not a restaurant lease quote and includes no refundable deposit.
• Fixed costs include utilities, maintenance, insurance, software, marketing, administration, cleaning, benefits, and permit renewals.
• Sales-based food cost increases when selling prices increase; it does not hold ingredient cost per guest constant.

Initial capital spending totals $442,200. It assumes a reusable fitted shell, including $240,000 for dining/kitchen fitout plus kitchen equipment, ventilation, refrigeration, furniture, smallwares, technology, signage, and professional work.

The initial total includes a $40,200 build contingency, calculated as 10% of $402,000 of other opening uses. That allowance is spent CAPEX in this case. A separate $15,000 equipment replacement occurs in January 2030, taking 60-month CAPEX to $457,200.

Funding arrives in January 2027: $517,000 of owner equity and $200,000 of debt. The loan assumes 10% fixed annual interest and 84 monthly annuity payments with no grace period. These are selected terms, not a lender commitment. Seven-year book depreciation starts as spending occurs and is not a tax depreciation schedule.

• Operating losses, interest, and working capital are included in the cash forecast; adding them again to the cash trough would duplicate them.
• A $90,000 retained-cash target is distinct from the build contingency.
• Equity and debt remain fixed inputs after changes. Recheck the cash requirement when the case changes.

Base-case 2027 revenue is $1,384,320 across ten operating months, while EBITDA is negative $58,843. The first year includes pre-opening activity. By 2028, a full operating year, revenue is $2,089,293 and EBITDA is $280,830. These are modeled outputs, not expected returns for another restaurant.

With the selected debt and debt service but without equity, cash reaches negative $426,186 in June 2027. Adding $517,000 of equity produces a funded minimum cash balance of $90,814. Working capital assumes two receivable days, seven inventory days, and zero payable days.

Operating break-even is July 2027, the first active month with nonnegative EBITDA, EBIT, and operating cash flow, sustained thereafter in Base. Project payback occurs in February 2030 when cumulative undiscounted unlevered free cash flow crosses zero. Counting starts in January 2027, includes opening and replacement investment, and uses whole months. Shareholder distributions are zero, so this is not realized owner payback.

The Low money scenario has minimum cash of negative $220,200 and 60-month EBITDA of negative $237,604. The same funding does not cover that scenario. Financial multipliers are sensitivity tests, not probabilities or changes to physical guest demand.

• Unlevered project free cash flow excludes interest, financing flows, and terminal-sale proceeds; operating cash flow includes interest.
• The six KPI groups cover net guest spend, sales per paid hour, food cost, labor and benefits, occupancy, and pretax margin.
• The 2031 pretax margin of 14.2% is an ambitious case supported by rising traffic/prices with broadly fixed staffing, not a typical restaurant margin.