Restaurant Financial Model: Quick-Service Restaurant

The starting $18 order contains 1.5 complete-meal equivalents at $12 each. Dine-in and takeaway have the same initial basket, but remain separate order streams. Dine-in alone uses the 32-seat gate, with a 30-minute visit and 1.5 guests per order. Rejected seated demand does not automatically become takeaway demand.

Eligible demand then shares equipment, productive cooks, ordering endpoints and paid handover minutes. A common fulfillment fraction applies to both channels before whole-order rounding. Four production-cook FTE initially support the kitchen; prep and management do not create a second production allowance. Selected throughput is an operating assumption that needs a time study.

• March demand starts at 65% and reaches 100% in the sixth active month.
• Ordering and handover each require 1.5 minutes per transaction; they are separate constraints.
• Zero seats can leave takeaway operating. Zero kitchen or ordering capacity stops both channels.

The initial recipe costs ($1.65 protein/dairy + $1.10 bread/sides + $0.75 sauces/drinks) divided by 90% usable yield: approximately $3.88889 per meal equivalent, or $5.83333 per order. Yield loss is included once. Packaging is a separate $0.60 per fulfilled order, including the blended dine-in supplies allowance.

Paid staffing starts at 10.5 FTE and reaches 12.2 in 2031. The working owner receives $74,880 annually from January; prep and cooks begin in February. Employer load is 10.65%, with a separate $1,200 monthly welfare budget. Rent/CAM starts at $5,000 per month for the selected footprint. These amounts are planning budgets, not hiring or lease quotations.

• Salary and recurring expense assumptions grow 3% annually.
• Card costs use 90% card share, 2.6% of gross tender and $0.15 per paid order.
• Annual cost shares preserve the existing expense schedules; changing within-year channel economics can approximate monthly unit costs.

Initial capital is $352,000: $320,000 of base assets plus $32,000 of contingency modeled as spent. The reused-shell fitout is $160,000, with cooking, refrigeration, ventilation, dining fixtures, ordering equipment and other assets separately funded. A $15,000 replacement follows in January 2030. Installed costs require actual bids.

January financing totals $525,000. The $180,000 loan uses assumed 10% fixed interest and 84 monthly annuity payments without grace; its $5,400 fee is an expense. The cash trough without equity, including the loan and its service, is −$269,360. Adding the $75,000 reserve and rounding equity upward to $1,000 produces the $345,000 contribution.

• The reserve remains cash and is not another opening expense.
• Receivables are two revenue days, food inventory seven food-cost days and payables zero.
• Seven-year book depreciation does not represent tax depreciation or equipment resale proceeds.

The Base case produces $1,232,388 of 2027 revenue across 68,466 fulfilled orders. Its $131,219 EBITDA includes the first year's setup period. Revenue totals $9,891,764 across the 60 months, with $2,412,060 EBITDA. Later margins rely on traffic and prices growing faster than the selected labor and overhead budgets.

Monthly EBITDA, EBIT and operating cash first become nonnegative in April 2027 and remain nonnegative. Project payback arrives in October 2028, forecast month 22, when cumulative undiscounted unlevered free cash flow crosses zero. That measure includes startup investment and operating deficits, excludes financing and terminal value, and does not describe an owner distribution.

• Base minimum funded cash is $75,640 in March 2027.
• The Low monetary scenario leaves $28,713 minimum cash with Base financing unchanged.
• Price and cost scenarios do not change physical order counts; test operational demand and staffing separately.