We won’t sugarcoat it: running a restaurant is expensive. The good news is, a restaurant cost calculator can help you keep your finances in order so you can make the most of each dollar. Download our restaurant cost calculator as an Excel, Sheets, or Numbers file, and then keep reading to learn more about how to use this powerful tool.
What Is a Restaurant Cost Calculator?
A restaurant cost calculator is a spreadsheet that helps you track, manage, and forecast your business’ finances. Put your numbers into the spreadsheet and it will calculate important figures, like average sales per day and cost of goods sold, for you.
Why Should You Use a Restaurant Cost Calculator?
There are many reasons to use a restaurant cost calculator, including to:
- Better manage your business’ finances
- Understand how much money your restaurant is bringing in through sales and profits
- Understand how much your business is spending on expenses like labor, rent, and inventory
- Forecast future spending and earning
- Inform business decisions regarding menu prices, menu items, expansion, and hiring
In other words, a restaurant cost analysis spreadsheet adds transparency to your business’ finances.
What You’ll Get From This Restaurant Cost Calculator
When you download our restaurant cost calculator, you’ll get four worksheets that will help you track your restaurant’s finances and guide your business decisions. Here’s what to expect from each spreadsheet.
Restaurant Revenue Calculator
The restaurant revenue calculator is designed to calculate your average sales, revenue, projected revenue, and sales mix percentage.
With projected midweek revenue figures, you can remind your servers to upsell, if you’re not meeting your sales targets. And if, for example, your sales mix is skewing higher towards food than you’d like it to be, you can pivot your restaurant upselling strategy to incentivize customers to buy more high-profit margin alcoholic drinks.
Controllable Cost Worksheet
This worksheet helps you understand controllable costs, including your cost of goods sold and labor costs, so you can better adjust them as needed.
For example, the data from this calculator might inform you that it’s time to look for new vendors or reduce portion sizes to increase profit margins. It could inspire you to adopt new technology to help staff be more productive, without increasing your labor costs.
Restaurant Sales Forecast Template
No one can predict the future, but our restaurant sales forecast template gets you pretty close. This worksheet uses your controllable costs and monthly expenses to predict annual costs and forecast your profit for the year.
You can use these insights to make big picture decisions about opening new locations or expanding your existing space to accommodate more customers.
Start-Up Cost Calculator
If you’re only in the idea stage of opening a restaurant, this start-up cost worksheet can help you understand all of the expenses that go into opening a restaurant, including rent, advertising, furniture, and equipment.
This restaurant cost analysis spreadsheet can help you predict how much money you’ll need to open your restaurant. And, if you need to apply for a loan or ask friends and family for investments, this document will serve as great evidence for why you’re asking for how much you’re asking for.
By using our restaurant cost calculator, you can introduce a new level of transparency to your business’ finances. You’ll be able to know at all times how much you’re spending, how much you’re earning, and what these figures mean for your restaurant. Download the restaurant cost calculator as an Excel, Sheets, or Numbers file today.
