Restaurant and coffee shop financial projections for a bank loan
A café or restaurant forecast comes down to a handful of numbers: how many customers you serve a day, what each spends, how many days you open, and what food, rent and staff cost you. StartupModel turns those numbers into a complete Excel model, with a traffic ramp, payroll, loan, cash flow and a balance sheet that balances in every month. It comes with a low / base / high scenario switch and a Checks sheet. Full costs $349; Light (P&L only) costs $149.
Download the sample café model and inspect every formula before you buy.
The drivers that decide a café's numbers
Our café and restaurant template is built around the drivers an owner actually controls or can research. Each one has a low, base and high value.
| Driver | What to base it on |
|---|---|
| Customers per day at full traffic | Comparable sites, a footfall count at your location, your current sales if you already trade |
| Opening traffic, % of full | Be honest: few sites open at full traffic |
| Months to reach full traffic | The ramp-up lenders will ask about |
| Traffic growth per year after year 1 | Modest unless you have a reason |
| Average ticket | Your menu prices × a realistic basket |
| Price growth per year | Your planned price increases |
| Operating days per month | Your opening schedule |
| Food & beverage cost, % of revenue | Supplier quotes and your recipe costing |
| Rent per month | The lease or the landlord's offer |
| Marketing, % of revenue | Your launch and ongoing plan |
| Utilities & other per month | Quotes and comparable sites |
| Start-up capex (fit-out, equipment) | Contractor and supplier quotes |
On top of these sit the shared drivers every Full model has: headcount and salaries by role, payroll taxes and benefits, wage growth, receivable / inventory / payable days, depreciation, income tax, the owner's equity and the loan (amount, rate, term).
How the revenue build works
The template calculates revenue as customers per day × average ticket × operating days, with a ramp from opening traffic to full traffic over the months you set.
An illustration, with made-up inputs (not benchmarks): full traffic of 150 customers a day, an average ticket of $6.40 and 30 operating days gives $28,800 of revenue in a mature month. If you open at 60% of full traffic and set 6 months to reach full traffic, month 1 revenue is $17,280, and the model steps up evenly until full traffic from month 7. Food and beverage cost, marketing and the rest follow from revenue or from your fixed monthly inputs.
The point of the ramp is credibility. A projection that shows a mature month on day one is the quickest way to lose a loan officer's trust.
What a lender will look at in a restaurant projection
- The ramp and the cash cushion. Opening months usually lose money. The cash flow shows how deep the dip goes and whether the loan plus your equity covers it. If the low case runs out of cash in month 5, you want to find that before the bank does.
- Food cost and labour. These are the two lines a lender with restaurant experience will compare with what they see elsewhere. Put your recipe costing and your rota behind them.
- Rent as a share of revenue. Rent is fixed; revenue isn't. The scenario switch shows what the lease looks like in a slow year.
- Debt service. The model shows interest and principal repayments by month against the cash the business generates.
- Uses of funds. Fit-out and equipment appear as capital spending in the first period and are depreciated over time, so the P&L isn't distorted by a one-off cost.
The SBA's guidance for business plans asks for a five-year outlook with forecasted income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements, monthly or quarterly in the first year (SBA — Write your business plan). Your lender may want less or more; ask. The model supports 1, 3 or 5 years in monthly or annual detail.
What you get
Full — $349
- Dashboard with the low / base / high selector
- Inputs sheet, every assumption in its own labelled cell
- Monthly sheet: revenue build, costs, payroll, working capital, depreciation, loan and equity
- Annual P&L, cash flow statement and balance sheet
- Headcount and payroll plan
- Checks sheet
Light — $149
- Inputs, P&L with period detail and annual summary, Checks sheet
- Good for a first look at whether the concept works, before you spend time on a full loan pack. You can upgrade to Full later by paying the difference.
Every model is a standard .xlsx with live formulas: blue inputs, black calculations, green links between sheets. Before release, every scenario and year is recomputed independently outside Excel and must match the workbook within $1, and the Checks sheet must show no FAIL. That sheet stays in your file, so your banker can see it too.
Sample
The sample is a café model generated by the same engine that builds customer models. It has three years of monthly detail, all three scenarios and the Checks sheet. Open the Inputs sheet, change the customers per day, and watch the P&L, cash flow and balance sheet follow.
Download the sample café model (.xlsx)
Common mistakes in café projections
- No ramp-up. Covered above, and the most frequent.
- Average ticket from the menu, not the basket. A $5 latte doesn't mean a $5 average ticket: food add-ons push it up, and cheaper drinks pull it down. Use the mix you expect.
- Staff costed at salary only. Payroll taxes and benefits are a separate input in our models for a reason.
- Fit-out in the P&L. Capital spending belongs in cash flow and the balance sheet, depreciated over time.
- No downside. The low case is what the lender will think about anyway. Show it first.
Questions
Does it work for a bakery, a juice bar or a small restaurant? Yes, if revenue is driven by customers per day and an average spend. For catering contracts or wholesale, the questionnaire will tell you if the template doesn't fit.
Can I model a second location? Build a model per site, or treat the expansion as a separate model. Multi-site roll-ups are not part of the template yet.
What if the model doesn't fit my business? Write to us within 7 days and we refund the full amount.
See also: SBA loan financial projections · Restaurant pro forma guide · All custom financial models