Food cost, menu pricing, wastage and the handful of numbers that decide whether a full restaurant is also a profitable one. Worked examples in rupees, not theory.
A busy restaurant and a profitable restaurant are not the same thing, and the difference is usually four or five percentage points hidden somewhere most owners never look. Food cost drifts up because supplier rates moved and the menu price did not. A dish everyone orders turns out to carry the thinnest margin on the card. GST is collected correctly but reconciled badly.
None of that needs an accountant to find. It needs a handful of numbers you can work out from your own sales and purchase records — food cost percentage, contribution margin per dish, prime cost — and the willingness to reprice or drop something once the numbers say so.
These guides work through each calculation in rupees, using the kind of figures an independent Indian restaurant actually deals with. If you have never put a number to your food cost, start there; menu engineering and pricing both assume you already know it.
Every menu has four kinds of dish on it, and only one of them deserves the space it takes. An afternoon with two columns of data tells you which is which.
Most menu prices are set once, by copying the restaurant down the road, and then never revisited. That is how a dish everyone orders ends up being the one losing you money.
Most restaurant billing problems are not accounting problems. They are queue problems at the counter and a tax rate somebody guessed at in year one and never revisited.
A full restaurant and a profitable restaurant are not the same thing, and the gap between them is usually four numbers wide. Here is how to find yours, what a healthy figure actually looks like in India, and which lever to pull first.
Most owners quote a food cost they worked out once, from a recipe sheet. The number that matters is the one your kitchen actually produced last month — and it is almost always higher.
Run a service that holds together on your busiest night.
4 guidesEverything to sort out before you open the doors.
4 guidesBuy the tools that earn their keep, skip the rest.
4 guidesFill tables, and get those guests to come back.
4 guidesHire well, train fast, and keep the good ones.
3 guidesThe few numbers worth checking every week.
5 guidesSet up your restaurant, print your QR codes and take your first order today. Starter is free.
No card required · Nothing to install for your guests
