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Grow Your Restaurant in 100 Days: 1 Task a Day

You have a room, a team, a menu and a till full of figures nobody has ever laid side by side. Every day you get one task — and only that one.

Start with day 1 See the eight phases
  • 100days
  • 1task a day
  • 8phases, in order
Every square is one day
Thibault Van de Sompele
Thibault Van de Sompele Founder of HappyChef

Why I wrote these 100 days out for you

I am going to make you a big promise, and I mean it. If you do these hundred days — do them, not read them — then on day 100 you will be standing in a business that keeps more of the same turnover, sees more of its guests come back, and runs one full service without you in the building. Not because there is a trick in here that nobody else knows, but because the reason a trading restaurant stops growing is almost never a lack of effort. It is that every evening goes on today's business, and there is never half an hour left for next year's.

This is emphatically not for someone who still has to open. You already have a room, a team, a menu and a till full of figures that have never been laid side by side. That is exactly where this starts: over the first eight days you work out, from data that already exists, what your prime cost is, what your room earns per seat hour and what you yourself earn per hour worked. After that it follows the order the money sits in — your guest, your menu, your room, your demand, your leaks, your team. Some days cost you twenty minutes. Others — raising your prices on a chosen date, calling five guests who stopped coming, walking out of the building for a whole service — are heavy, and that is deliberate.

So start today with something small. Put those hundred half hours in your calendar, pick someone who asks you every month what has changed, and tick day 1 off. That green check looks like nothing and it is exactly what works: after a week you have seven of them and you do not want to break the run. In this trade momentum matters more than motivation, because motivation is not there on the Tuesday after a bad Saturday and momentum is.

And when you get stuck — and you will get stuck — every day has an AI coach standing next to it that knows that day's task. It opens with a question of its own, and it is usually not the question you wanted. Use it precisely then: on the day you have to decide which dish comes off the menu, the day you have to raise your prices and dread the conversation, the day you notice there are four jobs only you can do. Talk it through, decide, tick it off. A hundred times.

Good luck. I mean it.

The eight phases of your hundred days

The order is half the work. You cannot set prices before you know your dish costs, and you cannot redraw a room before you have measured your turn.

Days 1–8 The truth Your place is already trading, so every figure you need to fix it already exists — it has just never been laid side by side. Without these eight days the rest of this route means nothing.
  1. 1Block out the hundred days
  2. 2Pick who you answer to monthly
  3. 3Pick the one figure that proves growth
  4. 4Put twelve months of revenue on one chart
  5. 5Work out your prime cost
  6. 6Work out your revenue per seat hour
  7. 7Work out your own hourly rate
  8. 8Pick your bottleneck and pin it up
Days 9–20 The guest Growth in an independent business is almost always the same people coming more often. This phase decides who those people are — and who you deliberately stop trying to please.
  1. 9Count how many guests came back
  2. 10Describe your best guest exactly
  3. 11Write down who your place is not for
  4. 12Sit through one service as a guest
  5. 13Ask ten regulars why they come
  6. 14Call five guests who stopped coming
  7. 15Draw your guest's route
  8. 16Count the themes in your reviews
  9. 17Fix the most repeated complaint
  10. 18Collect guest details at one moment
  11. 19Pick one reason to come back
  12. 20Pick your weekly guest figure
Days 21–33 The menu Your menu is the only price list your business has, and in most places it has never been costed, ranked or redrawn. That is why the fastest money on this whole route sits here.
  1. 21Pull your sales per dish from the till
  2. 22Cost every dish on your menu
  3. 23Put every dish in the square
  4. 24Cut the dishes that do nothing
  5. 25Fix your hidden winners
  6. 26Deal with your crowd-pleasers
  7. 27Set a food cost target per category
  8. 28Cut a quarter of your menu
  9. 29Redraw your menu for the eye
  10. 30Rework your drinks list on margin
  11. 31Build one offer for every table
  12. 32Raise your prices on a chosen date
  13. 33Write out the kitchen spec sheets
Days 34–45 The room Every empty chair in a full service and every minute a table stands dirty, you pay for to your landlord — whether it earns anything or not.
  1. 34Clock your real table turn
  2. 35Find where the minutes leak away
  3. 36Redraw your room on your real tables
  4. 37Cost four seats up and four down
  5. 38Measure your no-shows in euros
  6. 39Set a no-show policy you enforce
  7. 40Halve the clicks to a table
  8. 41Cost every booking channel
  9. 42Open or fix your shoulder hours
  10. 43Decide about your quietest service
  11. 44Write out your group offer
  12. 45Pick your weekly occupancy figure
Days 46–60 Demand Building reach that is yours instead of renting it by the booking, and being honest about what a new guest is allowed to cost.
  1. 46Fill in your Google profile completely
  2. 47Set up your review engine
  3. 48Answer every review of ninety days
  4. 49Photograph your ten best dishes
  5. 50Rewrite the first screen of your site
  6. 51Count where your bookings come from
  7. 52Build the channel that is yours
  8. 53Send the first message
  9. 54Plan four weeks of content
  10. 55Pick one social channel and drop the rest
  11. 56Approach your first local partner
  12. 57Pitch one real story
  13. 58Set up one recurring evening
  14. 59Build your offer for the low season
  15. 60Cap what a guest may cost
Days 61–72 The leaks The euros that walk out without buying anything: waste, over-ordering, hours against a rush nobody measured, energy, commissions and subscriptions.
  1. 61Count your stock and price it
  2. 62Weigh seven days of waste
  3. 63Renegotiate your biggest suppliers
  4. 64Rebuild your ordering and delivery week
  5. 65Cut the duplicate suppliers
  6. 66Cancel at least one subscription
  7. 67Read your energy bill properly
  8. 68Lay your rota over your demand
  9. 69Work out your overtime per month
  10. 70Count your transaction costs per guest
  11. 71Ask for better payment terms
  12. 72Plan your weekly cost round
Days 73–86 The team Growth stops at your own hours. Nothing from the first seventy days survives if you are the only one who can carry it out.
  1. 73Give away three tasks only you do
  2. 74Write down what good looks like
  3. 75Build your skills matrix
  4. 76Train a second person
  5. 77Write out the open and close rounds
  6. 78Write out your house rules
  7. 79Run the briefing for a week
  8. 80Have a conversation with everyone
  9. 81Make your pay structure explainable
  10. 82Tie the reward to your one figure
  11. 83Recruit before the gap appears
  12. 84Build your induction plan
  13. 85Run one service without you
  14. 86Pin five figures where the team works
Days 87–100 Locking it down Turning ninety-nine days of change into a weekly rhythm, measuring what the effort actually earned, and deciding what the next step is.
  1. 87Recalculate your prime cost
  2. 88Remeasure your seat hour and your return
  3. 89Put one amount on eighty-six days
  4. 90Cut three things that did not work
  5. 91Write out your weekly rhythm
  6. 92Hold your first monthly review
  7. 93Make your cash flow plan for twelve months
  8. 94Divide your profit before it arrives
  9. 95Test one second revenue line
  10. 96Cost a second site honestly
  11. 97Decide what this business owes you
  12. 98Put a value on your business
  13. 99Pick your next bottleneck
  14. 100Run the day-101 review with your team

How it works

No course, no videos, no modules. One task a day, and the next only once you have ticked today's off.

  1. Lock in the 100 days

    Block half an hour a day at a time you are not on the floor, and pick someone who checks in every month.

  2. Do one task a day

    Open today's day, read why it matters, do the three steps and tick it off.

  3. Ask the coach when you stall

    Every day opens with one pointed question from the AI coach; you get ten messages a day.

  4. Measure with your own figures

    Everything comes out of your own till, your own invoices and your own bookings. On day 87 you lay them next to day 5's.

Start with day 1

How this route works

Four principles, and they are built into every single day.

  1. 1

    One task a day, in the right order

    Every day uses yesterday's decision. Your dish costs come before your prices, your table turn before your room layout, your skills matrix before your first service without you. Skip nothing.

  2. 2

    Decide, do not consider

    Every day exists to force one decision. "I am still looking at it" is the answer that keeps a business running exactly the same way for three years. The coach does not accept it.

  3. 3

    Measure with your own figures

    Everything you work out here comes out of your own till, your own invoices and your own bookings. No rules of thumb from another market: your prime cost, your seat hour, your return rate.

  4. 4

    The hard days are in here too

    Raising your prices on a date, calling guests who stopped coming, renegotiating suppliers, leaving the building for a whole service. Those are the days you would skip without a guide, and they are exactly the ones that make the difference.

Frequently asked questions

Do I really have to do this a hundred days in a row?

No, but it works best if you keep the rhythm. The order matters more than the pace: each day uses the previous day's decision. Miss two days and you simply pick up where you left off — do three days at once and you are making decisions without sleeping on them.

Is it free, and do I need an account?

Completely free and account-free. Your progress, your ticks and your favourites are stored in your own browser and go nowhere else. If you want them on another computer you unfortunately start again there — that is the price of no account.

My place has been doing fine for years. Is this really for me?

Especially then. The first eight days consist entirely of figures you already have and that are rarely laid side by side: prime cost, revenue per seat hour, your own hourly rate and the share of guests who come back. In practice almost everyone finds two or three things there that sit differently from how they thought — usually their return rate and which service performs worst per seat hour.

How does the AI coach work, and what does it cost?

Every day it opens with one question about that day's task. You get ten messages a day, free, without an account. It knows today's task, it pushes you towards one action you can still do tonight, and it gives no legal or tax advice — for that it sends you to your accountant, your payroll provider or your trade federation.

Do these hundred days apply outside my country?

Yes. The route itself — figures, guest, menu, room, demand, costs, team — works the same everywhere, and the page exists in twenty-four languages. What differs per country is VAT rates, employment law, the rules around data and deposits, and sector agreements; on those days you get the questions to ask, and the body to ask them of.

Can I print the worksheets?

Yes. Most days come with a worksheet you print or save as a PDF through your browser, carrying that day's task, reason and questions. It is meant to be filled in by hand and kept — you will need those sheets again on days 87 to 89, when you measure what a hundred days actually returned.

Tools you will need along the way

Revenue simulator Recipe cost calculator Covers forecast Restaurant inventory management Review response generator Staff skills matrix

The other two challenges

Standing somewhere else in your story? Then one of these two is your hundred days.

Sell Your Restaurant in 100 Days For the owner who is selling, and only does it once. Take a look Open a Restaurant in 100 Days For anyone with no concept, no site and no company yet. Take a look