Restaurant startup cost calculator: what it really costs to open

Add the costs of opening: the lease, build, kitchen, furniture, systems, licences, branding, pre-opening wages and stock, then working capital and a contingency. The calculator totals them and, if you enter seats or floor area, shows a cost per seat and per area.

Replace every example figure with your own quotes. The starting numbers are only there so you can see how the tool works.

• Figures are a planning total in one currency, not a quote for your city.
• Currency symbols do not convert amounts.
• Working capital is estimated as a number of months of running cost, which you can change.
• The largest cost lines are usually where a better quote helps most.
• Planning estimate. Check classifications with your accountant.

I trained as a chef and later ran a restaurant floor, including a year on a hotel rooftop in Bangkok. The pattern I still see is not that owners cannot add. It is that the budget is missing whole categories until it is too late.

The lease

The monthly rent is not the opening cost. The opening cost is the deposit and any rent you have to pay before you take a penny of sales, plus key money or a premium if the site carries one. Ask the landlord or agent to put the months, the amount and any key money in writing. People forget the months the contractor is in the room and you are already paying rent.

Fit-out and construction

This is usually the largest cheque. It should come from an itemised contractor quote, not a round number you hope is “enough.” What gets forgotten is work that is not glamorous and is sometimes treated as a surprise: extraction and the hood, a grease trap, fire suppression, gas, drainage, accessibility, and the landlord’s reinstatement rules. If those are not in the quote, they are not in the budget.

Kitchen equipment

List the line from the menu backwards. Every piece of kit should exist because a dish needs it. Second-hand equipment can be a good save, but only after you have checked the condition and the installation cost. A cheap oven that needs a new flue is not cheap.

Furniture, décor and smallwares

Furniture is what guests see. Smallwares are what the kitchen and the floor cannot work without: pans, plates, glasses, cutlery, containers, cleaning kit. In kitchens I have worked in, the smallwares list is the one that was left until last and then ballooned. Cost it from the menu and the rotas, not from a single shopping trip.

POS, tech, licences and legal

Price the hardware, the software setup and the payment terminal together, and ask how you get your data out if you leave. Licences, permits, company paperwork, and the lawyer and accountant who keep you legal belong here. They vary by country and by the address of the site. Get a written fee quote rather than assuming they are “small.”

Design, branding, website and pre-opening marketing

Guests will look you up before they visit. Budget a website that shows a text menu, the hours and a way to book or order, plus photography of the actual room and dishes, and a Google Business Profile set up before you open. Pre-opening marketing is not optional if you want anyone to know the doors are about to open. It does not have to be expensive, but it has to be planned and paid for.

Pre-opening wages and opening stock

Teams need days, sometimes weeks, of paid training and a simulated service before the first paying guest. If those wages are not in the opening budget, they come out of working capital in the worst week to be short. Opening food and drink stock should come from par levels on the actual menu, including the items that sit in the dry store and the bottles that sit behind the bar, not from a guess at “a few thousand.”

Contingency and working capital

A contingency is a percentage on top of the subtotal for the things that will overrun or appear late. I usually start at 10 to 15 percent, and go higher if quotes are still rough. Working capital is not a contingency. It is the cash that pays rent, wages, food and utilities in the first months, when the room is not yet full. The calculator asks for months of runway times a monthly running cost. Be honest about how slowly a new restaurant fills, and do not count on a perfect first month.

Look at the total first, then at cost per seat, then at the three largest items. If one line dominates, that is where a better quote or a smaller scope helps most. If the total only works if every quote is perfect and the first months are busy, the budget is too tight. Go back to the quotes before you sign the lease.

The calculator cannot tell you whether the restaurant is a good idea. It can tell you whether the cash you have, and the cash you can raise, covers the list of things you actually have to pay for.