Business Plan

One reason people fail at a business is that they don't have a plan. There's an old saying: Write it down, it forces you to think!  Investors usually won't invest unless there's a plan. It's important to have a real plan - BUT YOU CAN KEEP IT SIMPLE! Profitability often depends on following the documented thoughts and methods that you analyzed and agreed would pay back your investment (or investors) and be profitable This section will help narrow down the key areas that can create profitability and success.

 

buying an Existing Business

There are many opportunities out there to buy an existing restaurant. For both buyers and sellers, it's important to understand the key value indicators and potential for a new owner. If you want to buy an existing restaurant it's more important than ever that you cover all your bases on the research of that business, its location and relationships it had with customers and suppliers. We provide a detailed checklist and questions to ask before buying any restaurant.

 

financial Projections

Projecting / budgeting for your business is extremely important to determine if you can make money or not. Numbers don’t lie. In the resource file there's an easy to use detailed Pro Forma (projections) spreadsheet that can be used to determine revenue and profit potential before opening, and/or as part of an investor package. It creates a detailed one and ten year financial model that will show profit or loss based on your projections - let you know if you're going to be successful or a struggle..

 

capital requirements

Time after time owners run out of money to operate a restaurant prior to it being profitable. A business plan and projection can help to determine a capital run rate. It's very common to hear current successful restaurant owners say it takes three years before the business is profitable. This section shows various restaurant types and the typical investment required.

 

Attracting investors

This section discusses both traditional and untraditional ways to attract investors to your current or potential business.  The book was created primarily to help small restaurants - new and challenging businesses. This section describes the basic documentation you will need and how to present it to potential investors.

 

merchant services

This is credit card processing 101 and you need to know the basics of how the system works or you’re going to be bleeding money slowly due to hidden costs and percentages. We present several options for accepting credit cards, either as part of a POS system or standalone. What credit cards should you accept? How do I handle remote transactions?  Contracts with service providers, options for leasing equipment and equipment suppliers are all discussed in this section.

 

Tracking performance / easy Calculations

In this section, we take you through the performance metrics you should be using to monitor how your business is doing. We include descriptions and how to calculate things like Break-Even Point, Prime Cost, COGS, Overhead Rate, Gross Profit, Food Cost Percentages and much more. We include in the companion resources file, easy-to-use and understand templates for monitoring daily sales and expenses to produce a clear monthly snap-shot of how the business is doing.