Before you sign the lease,
meet the math.
Most first-time operators fall in love with the concept months before they meet the rent, the labor model, and the cash it actually takes to open. Five minutes here gives you the honest read — what works, what's tight, and what would have to be true for this to pencil out.
Three tiers. All free during beta.
The free check answers whether the concept is worth thinking about. The full Pro Forma is the document you walk into a lender meeting with — written in plain English so a first-time operator can actually read it. Everything is open and free while we're in private beta.
The full operating model, in fourteen sections
- 7-year pro forma with 24-month month-by-month P&L
- Volume + cost sensitivity, plus a credit-committee stress test
- Time-to-payback chart with ramp-burn explainer
- Four capital stack scenarios with month-12 cash position
- Staffing model with owner-as-staff credit
- Risk-flag panel with plain-English diagnosis + action steps
- Personal-guarantee explainer for any loan
- Sequenced launch checklist tuned to your market
- Glossary + plain-English toggle on every section
The concept can work. Here's where it usually breaks.
Most first-time operators don't fail on the menu. They fail on the six things below — the things you don't feel until month four. Get these right early, and the rest of it's a lot easier.
Rent is the silent killer
Keep rent under 10% of your revenue. The trap: most leases also add 25-40% on top of base rent for NNN — that's taxes, insurance, and common-area maintenance. Easy to miss in a tour, brutal once you've signed.
Labor is heavier than you think
Your shift coverage drives labor cost more than your wage rate does. About 70% of labor is fixed — the floor still needs staffing on a slow Tuesday. That's why a 15% revenue dip hurts more than the spreadsheet says.
Food cost is set by the menu
Recipe yields, product mix, and pricing lock your food cost in long before you turn on the line. Once doors are open, you're operating inside a number you already chose. Get the menu math right first.
Buildout almost always overruns
Custom kitchens, code upgrades, HVAC — they routinely push ground-up restaurant builds past $500 a square foot. The model shows low, mid, and high so you can stress-test the budget before you sign the GC contract.
Break-even is a daily number
You don't break even in a quarter. You break even on a Tuesday at lunch. Knowing your daily target changes how you plan the menu, the staff, and the marketing calendar — every week, not just every quarter.
The ramp is the trap
Most new restaurants take 4 to 9 months to find their stride. The model bakes a real ramp curve into your opening-cash need — usually 2-3x what first-time operators budget. The trough month is when bankers stop returning calls.
Five minutes. A clear answer.
No spreadsheets, no jargon, no judgment. Pre-filled defaults so you can start fast. Visible math so you can challenge anything.
- 01
Start with the Quick Check
Six questions, sixty seconds. Business type, market, footprint, average ticket, daily volume, and days open. Just enough to tell you whether the concept is even worth thinking about.
- 02
Run the Full Check for the real read
Thirty inputs. Dine-in vs takeout split, lease type and NNN load, concept-specific labor model, and optional capital structure. Same math engine, much more accurate. About five minutes.
- 03
Generate the Pro Forma when you are serious
3-year pro forma, sensitivity, staffing, rent affordability, risk flags, launch checklist. The deliverable you walk into a lender meeting with.
Try a sample concept and see what the report looks like
Pre-loaded scenarios. Each one is tuned so the math lands somewhere useful. Click one to jump straight to the snapshot.
The kinds of things you won't see in a spreadsheet
Three sample readouts, generated from the same engine you'll run. Real math, real assumptions you can challenge — not testimonials, just the work.
Opening with $42k vs the model’s $187k ask
The free check converts your ramp curve, opening cash, and Year 1 burn into a single readable number. A $145k gap between dream and reality is the kind of finding that doesn’t kill the concept — it tells you what to raise.
The trough month is when banks lose patience
A 24-month cash position projection finds the deepest point of negative cash and labels the month. That’s the picture you bring to a CDFI loan officer — not the rosy Year 3 number.
Three dayparts seven days a week is top-decile execution
The model reads your service pattern against benchmarks and flags the assumptions that only experienced operators with a deep bench tend to pull off. Better to see it before the lease is signed.
Ready for an honest gut check?
The free tool answers one question: is this even remotely worth exploring?