If you are planning to open a restaurant or are currently in your restaurant ownership journey, a restaurant business plan is a blueprint that outlines your vision. It's a framework that guides you through planning and forecasting every aspect of opening a restaurant, from deciding the location, designing the space, finalizing the menu, managing customers, and understanding their needs to finding investors and training the employees. Having a restaurant business plan keeps you focused and helps you operate effectively.
A restaurant business plan is essential for securing potential business owners, investors, stakeholders, and leaders. It shows the investors how you have conceptualized your ideas to turn your vision into a successful reality, ensuring that nothing is overlooked as you grow your business. When you are building, licensing, staffing, and carrying out other operational activities, a well-planned business outline will act as a roadmap, and investors will be confident that you have a concrete plan for success.
The Critical Components of a Restaurant Business Plan
Suppose you are new to the restaurant game or considering expanding your business to a new level. In that case, a well-designed template can help you highlight the key elements you need to include while creating a successful restaurant business plan.
Below are the key elements of designing an effective restaurant business plan:
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Creating an impressive cover page.
The cover page is the first stage and introduction to your business for investors to notice. It says a lot about your brand and its vision. Incorporate your branding with a simple yet impressive cover page that features your logo, the brand's motto, and all other relevant information, including contact details. By looking at the cover page, the reader can get a quick idea about the purpose of your overall business plan.
2. Include an executive summary.
The executive section is the next section that summarizes the entire business plan. Your investors get an overview of the key elements, execution plans, potential costs and risks, and possible investment returns. It's the section where you can mention the mission statement, core values, and strategies to help investors feel confident about their investments. This is the crucial stage where investors and stakeholders get a rough idea of whether to fund your project.
3. Brief details about the company.
In this section, you begin to unfold how you plan to act on your proposal. Here, you can briefly describe the basic information about the type of restaurant, ownership structure, location, and the vision of customer experience. In addition, you can discuss the ambiance of the restaurant, layout, capacity, hours of operation, and customer engagement programs. You delve into how to hire the right resources and plan to keep the staff engaged and create a supportive environment.
Finally, you can talk about what message you want to give your customers through your restaurant and how to make a successful online presence.
4. Know your customers.
The food and restaurant industry is highly competitive and constantly changing with customer preferences and habits. Understanding your target customers and potential competitors through solid market research will give your restaurant business plan a competitive edge.
As you gather data and insights into your target customer, you need to focus on the following things:
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Identify the type of customers you may attract based on the restaurant's location.
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Prepare the list of the best recipes to serve.
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Analyze and predict an approximate revenue amount.
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Look for the most effective marketing channels.
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Find the best hours when the crowd would be the most and prepare the list of items to serve during that period.
The next task is determining and finalizing attracting and retaining your customers. It would help if you worked out the marketing strategies your direct and indirect competitors adopt.
5. Know your competitors.
The easiest way to assess your target market is to pay an in-person visit and dine at competitors' restaurants. Get to know other types of businesses run in that area, cars parked on the street, and customers that may prefer your restaurant. Area demographics can also be found online, in economic departments, local libraries, and local business improvement districts. Pay attention to the experience for later analysis.
It would help if you carried out a couple of research:
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Check if the market is saturated or not. You can proceed with your restaurant business plan if the market is not saturated.
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Check if there's a lack of decent eateries in the area or city where you want to set up your business.
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Analyze if the local market is big enough to support the arrival of a new restaurant. It will also help you to identify the type of customers that aren't yet adequately catered for. In this way, you can come up with a menu or concept that suits the right demographic, helping your business to curve the path to success.
Your market research aims to determine if your restaurant is a good fit and how your concept fits into your area's existing pool of restaurants. Figure out what makes them unique and what signature recipe customers like the most. You can craft an online survey to collect locals' dining preferences and habits using Google Surveys, Fieldboom, and SurveyMonkey. Knowing your peers will give your restaurant business plan that extra edge to serve better and stand out in the market.
The following sites will help you to conduct your market research on the restaurant industry within US and UK:
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Statistical institutes such as the Census Bureau (US), Eurostat (EU), and the Office for National Statistics (UK).
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Specialized consulting firms
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Research institutes
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The economic and specialized press
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The website of the FDA and the UK health and Safety Executive
Check if your location is easy to find and access and has the advantage over your peers—research social media reviews to learn more about their food, menu, and concept. Lastly, you can always take recommendations from your customers if they want to try something new or see some improvements soon.
6. Operation plan.
Daily operations are one of the crucial factors that you need to focus on in your restaurant business plan. Whether it's a café or a fine dining restaurant, customers usually want their food within as minimum time as possible. The menu for your restaurant should be appealing and easy to order, and the payment process should be smooth. In this section, you can discuss how to deliver your orders as quickly as possible without compromising the food or the service.
You must strategize enough workers on the floor and in the kitchen and schedule extra workers in the busiest hours. In addition, you can also mention cross-training staff so they can lend a hand in the kitchen and manage the floor when peak hours arrive.
Using a thoughtfully planned operational template, you can determine how you would want your restaurant business to run well. It is also important to mention how you will track sales and inventory, provide takeout and delivery, process payroll, and accept various payment methods. Download the free template to write precise and in-depth operational plan guidelines that will help you significantly.
7. Financial analysis.
Now, it's time to talk about money. Writing a restaurant financial plan is vital to evaluate whether your business plan will succeed. Before you spend any money on your restaurant equipment, it's essential to assess all the predictable costs to ensure your menu and the concept aligns with your customer's preferences.
This section outlines the restaurant's current monetary position, long-term financial goals, and strategies to use your investor's money wisely. It helps to ensure whether the economic blueprint is feasible for your business –from your start-up costs to your estimated sales projections and break-even point.
Here are a couple of essential elements to consider:
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You should clearly define the company's structure and the start-up costs involved.
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Determining restaurant licensing fees or the cost of the lease.
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Cost of utilities and equipment for the kitchen and the bar.
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Cost of the furniture, interior, and exterior designing.
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Expenditures for marketing and advertising.
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Initial working capital.
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Securing loans and estimating profits and margins.
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Setting ideal pricing for various menus and drinks.
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Employee cost and management charges.
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Music and entertainment costs, if any.
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Insurance charges.
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Break-even analysis.
You need to outline in your template how much you need to sell to ensure all your expenditures are covered. Determine the margin above which the profit will be calculated. In addition, operational profit and loss statements should be worked out for maintaining long-term cash flow projections, growth plans, investment opportunities, and repayments.
The cash-flow analysis will help investors determine if your restaurant can support itself even in the less fruitful months without requiring additional investments.
Use this template for a comprehensive financial analysis to reduce risk and help you become a successful restaurateur.
Present Your Restaurant Business Plan to the Investors
Once you are ready with your restaurant business plan, it's time to learn it inside and out. Your business template is the final word that will communicate with your investors for you. Investors look for profitable businesses and entrepreneurs who know their business in and out and can manage any risks and uncertainties in the future. It's the confidence they seek in the business owner who can pull it off no matter what happens.
If you cannot make your presentation, it's a good idea to go with business templates to present a simple and organized business plan. Using templates is the easiest and quickest option to get a professional-looking business format without wasting much time. A visually appealing template makes it easy to read and understand information.
Numerous templates available over the internet can be overwhelming to choose from. You can customize them by adding text, changing fonts, or adjusting images according to your preferences. Thankfully, WPS offers a wide selection of themes for business cards, business plans, and presentations. Hence, we have outlined some of the best templates for you in the below paragraphs.
Template Recommendations for a Well-Organized Restaurant Business Plan
Once you have the entire blueprint planned, it’s time to prepare and write your business plan visually appealing finally. Decide the number of years that you want to include as a timeframe to cover your commercial and financial objectives.
Try to impress your investors with your restaurant business plan and how you knit and design your information, so they don’t have to make much effort to understand your ideas. Business templates are the best options for doing so.
Check out the simple yet more powerful features and high-quality templates for your restaurant business plan below：
This WPS template can be used as the cover page of the business plan. You can add text, logo, and format other necessary items to make it look more appealing.
2. Business card template for your restaurant
WPS offers a range of business cards suitable for business plans. The above template has options to add, remove, and customize text, pictures, and logos according to your needs. Check out more such options on the above link.
3. Financial analysis template for your business
Up next are a couple of examples of templates from WPS that you can use to incorporate important financial breakdowns, investments, and expenditures. You can click the links below for more detailed template options for your restaurant business plan.
The following template is ideal for elaborating the budget and the expenditure report of all departments working under your restaurant. It helps to bring the entire picture altogether in one place. You customize the columns and the rows according to your preference.
Boost Your Productivity with WPS Office
Check out a wide range of business templates on the WPS website to help you create and design a great presentation for your restaurant business plan. You can download all of the above-mentioned templates for free. Moreover, we recommend downloading WPS Office if you face challenges in managing your data and workload. It’s free software that can help manage important files and documents.
