Restaurant pro forma: how to build one line by line
A restaurant pro forma is a projected income statement for a restaurant or café: expected sales, food and drink cost, labour, rent and other operating costs, period by period, ending in profit. Owners use it to test a concept, negotiate a lease, and as the starting point for a loan application. This guide walks through each line, gives a worked example and lists the checks to run before you show it to anyone.
If you'd rather have one built on your numbers, StartupModel's café and restaurant model starts at $149.
What goes into a restaurant pro forma
A useful pro forma has three layers.
- The drivers. The few numbers that decide everything else: covers or customers per day, average spend, operating days, food cost percentage, rent, staffing.
- The calculation. Revenue and costs derived from the drivers, with the same formula in every period.
- The output. A profit line per month and per year, and ideally a downside and an upside version.
What a pro forma is not: a cash flow forecast. It shows profit, not cash. If you need to show a lender how a loan gets repaid, you also need a cash flow statement and a balance sheet. See financial projections for a bank loan.
Line by line
Revenue
Revenue = customers per day × average ticket × operating days.
- Customers per day. Estimate full-traffic volume from comparable sites, a footfall count or your current trade, then add a ramp: opening traffic as a share of full, and months to get there.
- Average ticket. Not your menu price but what a typical customer spends: menu prices times a realistic mix.
- Operating days. Your opening schedule, net of planned closures.
Add a price increase per year and a modest traffic growth rate after the first year if you have a reason for them.
Food and beverage cost
A percentage of revenue, built from your recipe costing and supplier quotes. Keep it as an input you can change, not a number buried in a formula.
Labour
List roles, headcount and salary for each, and add payroll taxes and benefits as a separate percentage. Leaving these out is one of the most common reasons a pro forma looks better than reality. Add wage growth per year.
Rent
The monthly figure from the lease or the landlord's offer. Rent is fixed while sales vary, so it is the line that hurts most in a slow year.
Marketing, utilities and other
Marketing as a share of revenue or a monthly budget; utilities, insurance, card fees and the rest as monthly amounts.
Below the line
EBITDA, then depreciation of the fit-out and equipment, interest on any loan, and tax. A pro forma that stops at EBITDA is fine for testing a concept but not for a lender.
Worked example
Illustrative inputs only; these are not benchmarks.
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Customers per day at full traffic | 150 |
| Opening traffic | 60% of full |
| Months to full traffic | 6 |
| Average ticket | $6.40 |
| Operating days per month | 30 |
| Food & beverage cost | 32% of revenue |
| Rent | $4,800 per month |
A mature month: 150 × $6.40 × 30 = $28,800 of revenue. Food and beverage cost at 32% is $9,216, leaving $19,584 of gross profit before rent, labour and everything else.
Month 1: 60% of 150 is 90 customers a day, so revenue is 90 × $6.40 × 30 = $17,280. Gross profit is $11,750 (rounded), and rent alone takes $4,800 of that. That gap between month 1 and a mature month is why the ramp has to be in the model.
Add scenarios before anyone asks
A single pro forma answers the question "what if everything goes to plan?" Lenders, landlords and partners will ask the other question. Build three versions of the key drivers:
| Driver | Low | Base | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customers per day at full traffic | lower | your estimate | higher |
| Average ticket | lower | your estimate | higher |
| Food & beverage cost | higher | your estimate | lower |
Note that for cost drivers the low case means a higher cost. Our models check this ordering automatically on the Checks sheet, because a downside case with lower costs is a common and misleading mistake.
The best format is one switch that changes every sheet at once, rather than three copies of the file that drift apart.
Checks before you share it
- Every input in one place, labelled, with its source noted.
- The same formula across every month: no manual overrides in month 7.
- Annual totals equal the sum of the months.
- Switching to the low case changes revenue and profit.
- Margins within sensible bounds: gross margin never negative or above 100%.
Light or Full?
- Light ($149): Inputs, P&L with monthly detail and an annual summary, the low / base / high switch and the Checks sheet. That is a restaurant pro forma, built on your numbers.
- Full ($349): adds the dashboard, cash flow statement, balance sheet, headcount plan, working capital and loan schedule, which is what a lender needs. You can start with Light and upgrade by paying the difference.
Either way you get a standard .xlsx with live formulas, and before release every scenario and year is recomputed independently outside Excel and must match the workbook within $1.
Sample
Download the sample café pro forma (.xlsx), generated by the same engine that builds customer models.
Variations
- Bakery or coffee shop. Same structure; average ticket is usually lower and traffic higher. The same template fits.
- Food truck. Operating days and locations drive revenue more than footfall at one site; use operating days carefully and keep rent close to zero, adding pitch fees under other costs.
- Full-service restaurant. Covers per day × average spend per cover works the same way.
If your concept doesn't fit, the questionnaire will say so before you pay, and if the model still doesn't fit after purchase, write to us within 7 days for a full refund.
Build my restaurant pro forma — from $149 · All custom financial models