How much capital do you need to open a restaurant

Anyone planning a restaurant asks the same question first: how much money do I need? There is no universal answer, but there is a universal method. Split the budget into three parts and you can produce a number for your own city and format in a single day.

Capital has three parts

1. One-off costs

Everything spent before the doors open: fit-out, equipment, furniture, paperwork. Most people budget only this part, and that is exactly where the plan breaks.

2. Working capital

A restaurant does not feed itself on day one. The first three or four months usually run at a loss: the guest base is not built, the team is still slow. You have to fund that period.

3. Contingency

Unplanned spending. In practice it is 10-15% of the one-off budget, and it will be needed: the fit-out uncovers a problem, equipment is delayed, a permit drags on.

Worked example: a 60-seat restaurant

The figures below are an illustrative example. Replace them with quotes from your own city and contractor — the structure stays the same. Floor area 200 m², 60 seats.

• Rent deposit and prepayment (3 months at 120,000 UZS per m²) — 72M
• Fit-out and engineering (ventilation, water, electrics) — 400-600M
• Kitchen equipment (range, oven, refrigeration, prep tables) — 250-400M
• Dining room furniture (60 seats × ~1.2M) — 72M
• Tableware and smallwares — 40M
• POS, printers, network — 20-25M
• Permits, licences, paperwork — 15M
• Signage, frontage, opening marketing — 30M
• Opening food order — 40M

One-off total: ~940M - 1.3B UZS, plus contingency and three months of working capital.

Calculate your fixed monthly cost

This number matters more than the investment total, because it repeats every month:

• Rent — 24M
• Payroll (12 staff) — 54M
• Utilities, internet, waste — 12M
• Marketing — 8M
• Other (repairs, supplies, banking) — 10M

Fixed cost: 108M UZS per month. Three months of that is your working capital reserve — around 325M UZS.

Total capital required: 940M + 115M contingency + 325M working capital = ~1.4B UZS.

Break-even revenue

The real question is how much you must sell to cover costs. The formula is short:

Break-even revenue = fixed costs ÷ (1 − food cost ratio)

At a 32% food cost:

108M ÷ (1 − 0.32) = 108 ÷ 0.68 = 159M UZS per month

That is roughly 5.3M per day. With an average check of 70,000 UZS it means 76 guests a day. This is where a business plan meets reality: decide honestly whether a 60-seat room can deliver 76 guests every day.

Payback period

Say the restaurant settles at 220M UZS in monthly revenue:

• Food (32%) — 70.4M
• Fixed costs — 108M
• Net profit — 41.6M UZS per month

Payback = 1,400 ÷ 41.6 ≈ 34 months, about three years. For restaurants, two to three years is a normal horizon. If someone promises payback in eight months, the model has left out working capital or tax.

The order of steps

1. Fix the format and the average check first. Decide who you sell to, then look for a site — not the reverse.
2. Pick the location and count the footfall. Standing on the pavement counting passers-by at different hours is the cheapest research there is.
3. Read the lease carefully. Aim for five years minimum with a renewal option: the fit-out is yours, the building is not.
4. Write the menu before the fit-out. The menu determines the equipment list. Doing it the other way round is expensive.
5. Cost every dish with a recipe card. This is the step that makes your break-even number accurate.
6. Run the paperwork in parallel. Permits take longer than construction.
7. Hire two weeks before opening. Training and closed test evenings protect the first impression.

The three most expensive mistakes

1. Overspending on the fit-out. The interior brings a guest in once; the food brings them back. When more than half the budget goes into construction, kitchen equipment and working capital get cut — money is taken away from precisely the parts that earn.
2. Opening with no working capital. The most common cause of closure. The money runs out on opening day, and by month three there is nothing left to buy ingredients with, so the menu starts shrinking.
3. Not reading the lease. Spending 500M UZS on a fit-out under a one-year lease means investing in someone else's building. Write in a renewal right and a cap on rent indexation.

Where to start

Open a spreadsheet with three columns: one-off costs, fixed monthly costs, expected revenue. Calculate break-even. If it exceeds what your dining room can physically seat, change the format rather than the plan — shrink the space, raise the average check, or add delivery.

Once you are open, these numbers need checking daily, not monthly: is today above or below the break-even line. A POS system normally does this for you — daily revenue, average check and ingredient usage on one screen, so the owner is not waiting for month end to find out.