Cash Flow Forecast Template for Restaurants

Restaurants handle a lot of cash but keep very little of it. With food, drink and labour taking 60 to 70 percent of sales, a slow fortnight, a broken fridge or a delivery app paying late can turn a profitable month into a cash crunch. A weekly cash flow forecast is how restaurant owners see those weeks coming.

Why restaurant cash flow is different

• Costs follow sales, fast. Food and beverage purchases are ordered weekly, so food cost rises and falls with covers. The forecast needs costs tied to sales, not fixed amounts.
• Money arrives in different ways. Card sales settle in a day or two, delivery platforms pay weekly or fortnightly after commission, and catering deposits come weeks before the event.
• Payroll and tips are weekly. Labour is the biggest controllable cost, and tips paid out through payroll add to it.
• Seasons swing hard. Summer terraces, December parties and quiet Januaries can move sales by 30 percent or more.
• Surprise repairs. Refrigeration, dishwashers and extraction don’t fail on schedule, so a small monthly repair allowance is safer than none.

A worked example

A 70-cover restaurant takes about $110,000 a month. Food cost is 29 percent of food sales, drink cost 24 percent of bar sales, and delivery apps keep 20 percent of what they collect.

Food cost falls with sales in January, but labour and rent barely move. The owner who sees this in October can plan January rotas, hold back cash from December’s strong month and avoid ordering at summer volumes.

How to build a restaurant cash forecast

1. Forecast sales by channel (dine-in, bar, takeout and delivery, catering) using last year’s weeks as a base.
2. Tie food and beverage purchases to sales as a percentage, paid in the week you order.
3. Add weekly payroll including tips, then rent, utilities, licences and card fees.
4. Deduct delivery app commission from delivery sales, and pay it in the week the platform settles.
5. Set a cash buffer of at least two weeks of payroll plus rent.

The 13-week cash flow forecast guide explains why weekly detail matters when margins are this thin.

Common mistakes

Treating gift card sales as income you can spend (they are future meals you owe). Forgetting annual licence renewals and equipment servicing. And basing next summer on this winter’s sales.

What the template gives you

The Restaurant template includes a Food & Card Costs tab that calculates food, drink, delivery commission and card fees as a percentage of the sales they come from. Change your food cost percentage once and every week updates. Best and worst case scenarios show what a 20 percent drop in covers would do to your bank balance.

Key assumptions built into the Restaurant template

• The Food & Card Costs tab calculates food cost at 29% of dine-in sales, takeout and delivery app payouts and catering and private events, beverage cost at 24% of bar sales, delivery app commission at 20% of takeout and delivery app payouts and card processing fees at 2.5% of dine-in sales and bar sales. Change a percentage once and every month of the forecast updates, so costs rise and fall with the sales that drive them.
• 5 cash in lines and 9 cash out lines are already named for restaurant businesses, and every one can be renamed or extended.
• The example figures follow a typical restaurant year, busiest in July and June and quietest in January and February, so the tight months show up where they usually fall.

Every assumption sits in a yellow input cell, so you replace the example with your own numbers in minutes. The same figures flow through a 13-week weekly view, a 12-month monthly view and a 3-year outlook, and a dashboard shows your lowest balance, the weeks that fall below your minimum buffer and your cash runway.

Free or premium?

If you only need the basics, the free 12-month template or the free 13-week template will get you started today. The premium Restaurant template saves the setup time and adds the tabs above, best and worst case scenarios, and an actual vs forecast tracker that shows where your forecast was wrong, so next month’s is better.

Restaurant cash flow forecasting: questions

What is a good food cost percentage for a restaurant?

Many full-service restaurants aim for food cost of 28 to 35 percent of food sales and beverage cost of 18 to 24 percent of drink sales, but it varies widely by concept.

Should a restaurant forecast cash weekly or monthly?

Weekly. Payroll, supplier orders and delivery payouts all run on weekly cycles, and a monthly view hides the week you are short.

How do I include delivery apps in a cash flow forecast?

Enter delivery sales net of commission, or gross with commission as a separate cost, in the week the platform actually pays you, not the day of the order.