Notes on restaurant operations
Long-form pieces on the numbers that decide whether a restaurant pays its owner β food cost, break-even, payroll, and the money that leaves without ever appearing on an invoice.
Food cost guide
Food Cost Percentage: The Formula, a Worked Example and What to Do When It Moves
How to calculate food cost percentage for a month and for a single plate, what a normal number looks like for your kind of restaurant, and what to check first when it jumps.
17 min readRead the articleCosts and break-even
Restaurant Cost Structure: Fixed vs Variable Costs and Your Break-Even Point
Which restaurant costs are fixed, which move with sales, and how to turn that split into a break-even number in dollars and covers per day, with a worked example.
7 min readRead the articleSoftware guide 2026
Restaurant Software in 2026: What Each Category Does and Who It Suits
POS, QR ordering, reservations, delivery and back office software for restaurants in 2026: what each category is for, the main players, and what to buy first.
8 min readRead the articleDashboard
Restaurant operations dashboard: why spreadsheets are killing you
The spreadsheet is not the problem. The weeks you skipped because the spreadsheet was a chore are the problem β and those are always the busy weeks.
6 min readRead the articleHidden losses
Hidden losses in restaurant operations: where money disappears
The losses that close restaurants rarely arrive as invoices. They arrive as ten grams, a bin, a comp nobody logged, and a delivery signed for without being weighed.
5 min readRead the articlePayroll
How to control payroll costs without losing good staff
Cutting hours is not a payroll strategy. It is what operators do when they cannot see where the hours are going β and it costs more than it saves.
5 min readRead the articleBreak-even
Restaurant break-even calculator: know your number
Break-even is the most useful number in a restaurant and the one fewest owners can state from memory. It is not an accounting exercise β it is the number that puts a price on every decision you make.
6 min readRead the articleFood cost
How to calculate and reduce food cost in your restaurant
Almost every operator can recite the formula. Far fewer can tell you last weekβs number. That gap is where the money goes β and closing it is worth more than any supplier negotiation.
7 min readRead the article
Stop burning your money!!
Do you track your food cost and break-even regularly? If the answer is no, you are already paying for it.
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