A Restaurant Owner’s Job Includes Budgets
I am a broken record at times, repeating the same messages over and over again. I know it! Certain messages are that damn important. I teach that the two most important systems any restaurant should have in place are a restaurant budget and recipe costing cards.
You know what two systems most restaurants never have in place? Budgets and recipe costing cards! The number one reason I hear is, “They’re too hard.” I usually answer back with, “waaaa, waaaa,” the sound of a crying baby.
It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that it’s an easy excuse to not do a budget and also to set yourself up for failure.
A budget is critical.
In this post I reviewed why a restaurant owner must work on their business rather than in it, outlining three parts of a restaurant owner’s job, which are:
- Working on budgets and the numbers
- Growing your restaurant
- Leading the team
A Restaurant Budget is critical
Here is why a restaurant budget is critical.
- A budget takes you from being a reactive management team to a proactive management team.
- A budget ensures that you know what your financial goals and targets are. This allows you to examine how you are operating, determine what systems you have in place that people are not using and what systems you need to put into place to change your bottom line.
- Budgets are the keystone to being profitable on purpose, rather than just being lucky.
Your job as the restaurant owner is to create and maintain your operating budget. As a member with us here at TheRestaurantExpet.com, if you send us your financials, we will actually do ALL of the hard work and build your budget template for you. And then we will work with you on the phone to finalize your budget targets. Heck, we’ll even help you decide what systems need to be implemented, and our team will teach your management team how to put them into place and use them.
We honestly can’t make this process any easier for you, other than to run your restaurant for you.
Once you have your restaurant budget in place, understand it’s a living, breathing creature. You don’t just do a budget and forget about it. Instead, every month you will enter your actual numbers to see where you hit or missed. This allows you to decide what changes you need to make in your business to make the money you deserve going forward. Next, you will make the appropriate changes to the rest of the year’s budget to keep you on pace.
That which we measure improves
If you don’t have targets to shoot for, you honestly don’t know what success for your restaurant looks like. There’s nothing average about your restaurant, so you shouldn’t be basing your success on industry benchmarks. You need your restaurant’s numbers.
Read about the other two parts of a restaurant owner’s job:
To read more about the importance of budgets read our free special report, Breaking Away from the Insanity: How to easily take control of your restaurant and make more money. Download it here. If you would like to see a demo of our Budget Creator Pro or Restaurant Systems Pro software, schedule a web meeting with this link.
