Starting a Food Business
What order to do things in, which numbers to run before you commit, and the costs that catch people out.
Why these guides don't tell you what it costs
Search for what it costs to open a restaurant and you'll get a confident number. Ours doesn't, because the honest range runs from taking over a fitted unit with working extraction to converting a shell, and those two are barely the same order of magnitude. A figure that averages them is worse than no figure, since it feels like information while telling you nothing about your situation.
So instead these guides give you the sequence, the arithmetic, and a list of the cost lines people forget. Every stage links to the calculator that answers it, so you finish with a number that describes your business rather than someone else's.
The order matters more than any single decision
The common thread across every format is that people do things in the wrong sequence. They find a site they love and work backwards to a business that might fit it, when the cheap version is to cost the menu, build the break-even model, and then walk into viewings knowing within a minute whether the rent is survivable.
Once you're trading
Compare your numbers against the published benchmarks for your kind of business, and check what staff cost where you operate on the labour costs pages. The calculators handle the arithmetic throughout.
Waiting is the only time a customer stares at their phone because of you
Every format here hits the same wall on its first busy day: more people wanting served than room to hold them. Bzz puts those people on a live tracker, and the tracker carries your offer — a drink, a side, next week's special — while they watch their place in the queue. Then it buzzes them when you're ready.