Summary
- Why make a catering business plan?
- How does our restaurant business plan model work?
- What are the fields of our catering business plan model?
- What are the key values of the business plan?
- What are the specificities of a business plan for a restaurateur?
Why make a catering business plan?
This business plan is a document that makes it possible to present the project of the catering company in the most effective way possible (at the time of creation or after). In addition, this document must make it possible to verify the viability and solidity of your project from a strategic and financial point of view.
First of all, the business plan is a good way to take a step back from the structure of your project to identify the ins and outs of the latter in a relevant way. Also, the business plan is very important if you ever want to present your project to investors. They will be very attentive to the profitability of your project.
Often, a business plan can be in the form of two files:
- A word file that explains the key stages of the company’s development gives economic and strategic explanations of the project.
- An excel file that traces all the company’s financial flows gives an economic explanation of the project.
In our model, we focused on the excel file.
How does our restaurant business plan model work?
Our model is, therefore, an excel file. We considered it relevant to build it from 2022 to 2024 with monthly results. Our document consists of five sheets:
- Tab 1 traces all the income and expenses of the business (for example, the insurance of your restaurant )
- Tab 2, in which you can calculate your cash flow. You have nothing to fill in on this sheet. It is dependent on the others.
- The salaries tab where you fill in the different possible salaries according to the other positions with possible changes
- The assumptions tab is necessary to construct the business plan to evaluate the expenses.
- The depreciation policy tab to calculate the depreciation expense (monthly)
What are the fields of our catering business plan model?
In this business plan, the values you must enter are in the cells highlighted in blue. All other cells are blue-dependent and therefore adapt accordingly to your choices. You have to be careful because sometimes you have to fill in values for each month of each year, sometimes for each year, and finally, in some cases, it is a single value for the three years. It would help if you, therefore, filled in all the following fields:
- Opening rate, which corresponds to the number of restaurant openings during the corresponding period
- Gross turnover
- Purchase of stored raw materials: this expense occurs only when opening a new restaurant
- Rent per restaurant
- Property maintenance, per restaurant
- Accounting fees, quarterly
- Marketing and communication: you fill in the percentage of turnover that this expense represents. If, for your activity, this expense is not calculated in this way, you can enter other values manually for each month.
- Bank charges
- Temporary staff costs (when the staff is made available by a quick employment company)
- Employer contributions (between 25 and 42% of gross salary)
- Wages. You can modify the names “post 1” and “post 2″… If you want to alter the dates, please write them from the nearest to the furthest (in the first AC3 line closest, then the second furthest). Close…). Finally, you also have the option of specifying any increases. Sometimes there is “n/a” because if the position was created in 2023, for example, there could not be an increase in year 2 (so 2025 compared to 2023). After all, the business plan ends in 2024.
- Travel & travel
- Life at the restaurant, in general, and not for each restaurant; otherwise, it goes into the category of “property maintenance.”
- Purchase of restaurant supplies, these expenses are activated as soon as a new employee arrives (thus depends on the dates of arrivals filled in the “salaries” sheet)
- Machine prices as well as the amortization period
- Price of developments, works, permits, as well as the amortization period
- Price of computer equipment as well as the depreciation period
- Price of furniture as well as the depreciation period
These last four expenses fall into the category of fixed assets, so they must be depreciated. We have given you guidelines for the amortization periods.
If you want to add information, you will have to modify the formulas (add one more line to a sum, for example) so that your values remain true.
What are the key values of the business plan?
One of the objectives of the business plan is to calculate key values that are supposed to be representative of the health of your business. If you present your business plan to investors, they will be particularly attentive to these indications. Some of these key values are highlighted in green (if positive) or red (if negative). Here are the interesting aggregates calculated by our model:
- EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) and EBITDA margin (equal to EBITDA / CA). EBITDA is an indicator close to EBITDA (gross operating surplus), with the only difference being that EBITDA does not take into account allocations to operating provisions.
- EBIT (earnings before interests and taxes) or REX (operating result), which translates the margin achieved by the company on its industrial and commercial activity and EBIT margin (equal to EBIT / CA)
- End-of-month cash and accumulated cash
What are the specificities of a business plan for a restaurateur?
Catering is an attractive environment that attracts new entrepreneurs every year. However, it’s a very competitive environment where you have to have done some analysis before starting. In the slightly more strategic part of your business plan, we recommend that you detail your market research by specifying your target. The location is also an essential element of the strategy of a restoration project.
Entrepreneurs who embark on this kind of project often have prior experience in the environment or a nearby sector (bars, events) because the human aspect is essential beyond technical skills. You have to manage your teams a lot, manage them in the right way… This isn’t easy to quantify in a business plan but is essential for the project’s success. click here read for more articles.
