UnExplainable

There are 3 things that make up the financial side of a business. All put together, this term is prime costs. Prime cost is made up of 3 components: Food Cost, Labor and LBW (Liquor, Beer, Wine). Food cost meaning the amount of money put towards buying the food to have in the restaurant. Every individual ingredient adds up over the course of one purchase and orders can range anywhere from $300 to $3,000. Labor includes all labor put towards helping the business run. Any hourly rate or salary rate is included in that number and that’s how you determine labor. LBW just includes the cost of any purchases specific to liquor, beer or wine. These three percentages are compared to your monthly net sales. Net sales is many that you actually take in for the business. If your bill is $22.44 and you tip $7.26 to make it an even $30, the restaurant takes the $22.44 and the tip goes to the employees. 

The 3 categories put together should fall anywhere between 60% and 75%, 75% being for restaurants with higher food costs due to higher priced items like steaks or seafood. The goal for Table 33 was around 68%, knowing we had ground to cover in terms of long term debt and TCP was 65%.

January and February had strong patterns to go off for Table due to being open longer. We (Deja, Jeff and myself) put projections together based on previous years sales and then made a budget for how we wanted our numbers to fall for the month.

In our first 2 months at Table, we cleared $50,000 in debt paid off and by the end of March, we cleared $75,000 in debt. 

It was monumental. Truly a wild experience to watch how numbers work and when you pay attention to them, they truly don’t lie. And yes, I am a nerd when it comes to math and numbers. I like spreadsheets……fight me. This was a turning point for me in my career. I realized that for the first time, I did know what was going on in every small detail of the business. I hadn’t spent time looking at numbers as much as I had but it was rewarding to see the progress we had made in just 3 months. 

By the end of February, I saw that it had worked but wanted to see how March would play out. On February 27th, I was invited to dinner with some close friends of mine who I had taken care of at Table 33.

This was the on ramp.