Free Restaurant Opening Planner

Download the free RestaurantLaunch Opening Planner (.xlsx). No signup, macros or paid course required.

The file is meant to help you decide whether a restaurant can support its bills and pay you. Enter your costs once, build sales from orders, then follow the money through the first year.

What the example actually tells you

The workbook opens with a fictional restaurant. These are teaching numbers, not price estimates for a particular city or a claim that this is enough money to open.

• Remaining opening payments: $146,000.
• Funds available before opening: $180,000.
• Cash left on opening day: $34,000.
• Sales in a normal full month: $51,282.80.
• Monthly cash after full staffing, operating bills, owner pay and debt: negative $4,968.30.
• Cash needed to cover the modeled opening payments, first-year cash draw and chosen $15,000 floor: $247,216.66.
• Additional funding gap: $67,216.66.

That is the point of the example. Having enough to finish construction does not mean the business works. Borrowing the gap would not fix the recurring monthly loss, and new loan payments would need to be added to the model.

Fill in the workbook in this order

1. Equipment: enter quantities and unit prices. Delivery, installation and repair amounts are totals for each row. Include taxes in the quote amounts. The equipment total flows into Opening budget automatically.
2. Opening budget: replace every estimate with your amount. Enter what you have already paid separately. Cash available today should be your current cash balance, after those earlier payments; do not subtract them twice. Mark each line Quote, Estimate or Not needed.
3. Sales: enter open weekdays, open weekend days, orders and average baskets by service period. An order is one transaction, even if it contains three meals. Delivery orders are a share of this total, not extra orders added again.
4. Staffing: build the actual weekly coverage. Hours are totals for each role. Work out overtime employee by employee before adding it to the role total. Include employer payroll costs using your provider's estimate.
5. Monthly bills: enter rent, utilities and the other operating bills. Then add owner cash pay, loan interest, loan principal and a tax reserve separately. Do not count owner pay again in Staffing.
6. 12-month plan: change opening days, the sales ramp and payroll coverage for each month. Put later funding in Other cash received and additional equipment or inventory purchases in Other cash paid.
7. Your numbers: read the funding gap, lowest cash balance and required orders. Investigate a red number before changing assumptions to make it disappear.
8. Before you sign: record the answer, evidence and owner for the location checks. A good spreadsheet cannot make an unusable hood or prohibited use disappear.

Run a test that can change your decision

On Your numbers, set the sales case to 2. The starting reduction is 20%. Orders fall; payroll and fixed bills do not automatically fall with them. In the example, normal-month sales become $41,026.24, the monthly cash shortfall becomes $10,767.79, and the first-year funding gap becomes $130,141.15.

Return to case 1, then change one real decision: remove unnecessary construction, reduce the opening menu's labor requirement, negotiate a lower occupancy cost, or change an uneconomic delivery price. Compare the result. Do not cut staffing unless the revised shift plan can still receive deliveries, prep, serve, clean and close.

What the file does and does not calculate

Yellow cells are inputs. Enter 0 when an amount is genuinely zero; leave an unknown blank so affected results show n.a. rather than a misleading total. “No break-even” means the modeled contribution per order is zero or negative.

This is a cash planning model, not a payroll system or a tax return. Sales exclude tax and tips. It assumes ingredient purchases replace usage and bills are paid in the month shown. If a platform holds $2,000 of receipts until next month, enter minus $2,000 in this month's Collection timing adjustment and plus $2,000 when it arrives. Do not deduct its fees again there.

Once open, compare actual orders, average baskets, payroll and bank balances with the plan each week. Replace a disproved assumption; do not preserve it because it made the original plan look attractive.