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Restaurant Business Plan

Prepared for:
[Client.FirstName] [Client.LastName]
[Client.Company]
Prepared by:
[Sender.FirstName] [Sender.LastName]
[Sender.Company]

Executive summary

[COMPANY.Company]

c/o [NAME]
[ADDRESS]
[PHONE]
[EMAIL]

In your Executive Summary, you want to paint a picture and create a narrative for the birth of your restaurant. Get people emotionally invested in your vision. Introduce yourself and your company to your reader. Talk about your planned opening location. You can start in the opening paragraph with some abstract information but then drill down on the details in the following paragraphs.

In order to fulfill our vision for [RESTAURANT NAME] we will require [AMOUNT] in capital, which will be allocated roughly according to the following table:

Amount Use of Capital

If we are fully capitalized, we hope to be profitable by [TIME PERIOD].

Go in depth a bit here to describe some of the assumptions you are making regarding profitability. Anyone can make a profitability claim. If you want to really sell people on the idea, you need to explain the “why.”

Marketing plan

Our Clientele:

Here you want to define your demographic and explain how you will hook in that demographic. In the restaurant industry, branding and atmosphere are very important factors when attracting a certain demographic. You should describe the kind of atmosphere you will create along with any other reasons you will appeal to that demographic.

Our Competition:

Start general, then list specific examples of restaurants you will be competing with – most likely they will be local so research should be easy. In analyzing your competition, you can highlight both their strengths and weaknesses which will give your reader some context and allow you to explain why your restaurant will appeal to your target demographic over the competition.

Our Specific Marketing Plan:

Although word-of-mouth will certainly be important for any restaurant to succeed, there are many ways to help penetrate your local market through active marketing efforts – e.g., Groupon, PennySaver, etc. Which ones will you choose and why? Be sure to remember the context that you have created in the preceding paragraphs, however. Your marketing plan has to make sense given the demographic you are targeting and the strengths and weaknesses of your competition.

Our kitchen

The people running your kitchen are particularly important to the success of any restaurant. Therefore, it’s best to highlight their experience and put a face, name, and personality to the people that will be preparing food for your clientele. Get into their background, their experience, and even their hobbies. Again, you are trying to paint a picture and the more color you can add to your story, the more compelling it will be to investors.

Head Chef:

Sous Chef:

Head Chef:

Sous Chef:

The food you create is the central piece to your restaurant so be sure to go deep into that subject. You should provide tantalizing descriptions and photos to really drive the point home.

Operations plan

Really paint the picture of your restaurant here (and include pictures or mockups of the setting). Don’t just make it a mechanical description of the people being put into rooms. If you have a fountain, say it. Lots of plants, say it. Rich mahogany walls, say it. Whatever it is that you can use to paint a descriptive and full picture is worth including.

We expect our monthly outlay of expenses to approximate to the following:

Amount Type of Expense

Management team

Describe team

This section is where you introduce your key non-kitchen personnel – i.e., President, CEO, Legal Team, Accountants, etc. Depending on the size of your organization this section may not be necessary. For instance, if you are the Head Chef, President, CEO, and entire Board of Directors for your company, you can include that information in your Head Chef profile. Or you could move that down here. It’s entirely up to you how you want to paint the picture of your organization.

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FAQ

  • There isn't a single best business model for restaurants, as there are a lot of factors at play: from menu and decor to location and staff wages. The vision for the restaurant is important too. In the absence of a silver bullet, your best bet will be to research your competition and the market and come up with the most logical fit for success.

  • To write a business plan for a restaurant, you need to start by learning as much as you can about the place where you intend to open and the other places that operate there (e.g. if there are no steak houses in the vicinity but there is a demand for one, you have a better chance to succeed). You'll then need to estimate the costs of rent, utilities, equipment, staff, and overhead expenses. After that, define the vision for your project. To see how a business plan for a restaurant should look like, check out the Templates section on our website.

  • Some restaurants are profitable, others aren't. The profit margins are low, and there are a lot of things that could make or break such business. Even top restaurateurs like Gordon Ramsay have had to close certain locations. So the answer is "it all depends."

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Restaurant Business Plan Template

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Always dreamed of starting a restaurant? This free restaurant business plan template is your first step in making your dream a legal, planned reality.

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