How much must a restaurant take to bring home €2,000 a month?
The honest answer: far more than you expect. Yours is the trade where the distance between what you take and what stays with you is the widest — not because you are doing something wrong, but because you buy the raw materials before you sell them, and you pay the staff while you sell them. The count can be done, and it is done in four steps.
Why the count is harder in your case
Someone selling consultancy keeps almost everything they take: their goods are time, and time is not bought. You, on every cover, have already spent on raw materials before serving it, and out of what is left you pay the people in the kitchen and on the floor. Only then come rent, utilities and you. That is why the takings of the place next door tell you nothing: if they buy better or pay less rent, the same takings leave them twice as much.
The count is done backwards
Almost everyone starts from takings and hopes something is left at the end. Instead you start from what you need and work back up: the net you want in hand; plus tax and contributions; plus the fixed costs, the ones you pay on closing day too; all divided by the margin left to you on every euro taken. In your trade it is the last step that decides, and it is also the one almost nobody does.
The threshold you should know by heart
Not the month's takings: how many covers a day keep you level. Below that threshold you are paying to work, and it should be known before the end of the month rather than after. Once you have it, the hard decisions — raising prices, changing the menu, opening for lunch — stop being matters of gut feeling.
The count, with your figures
Enter what it costs you to stay open, what you buy and what you take on average per cover: out comes the takings you need, the threshold below which you are losing money, and what actually stays with you after tax and contributions.
Run it on your own figuresQuestions that always come up
What is the right food cost for a restaurant?
There is no single number that fits everyone, and the figures people quote are averages that describe no particular place. What matters is whether yours leaves enough to pay the people and the fixed costs: that shows in your own count, not in somebody else's average.
Why is the place always full and I earn nothing?
Full does not mean profitable. If what is left to you on each cover does not cover the fixed costs divided by the covers you do, more people only means losing faster. That is the case where working more makes things worse, and without the count you cannot see it.
Better to raise prices or increase covers?
It depends on where you are relative to break-even. Below it, you need covers: each extra cover carries a piece of the fixed costs. Above it, price is worth far more, because once the fixed costs are covered almost everything you add stays.
The same count, trade by trade
How much do I need to turn over to take home €2,000 a month?