Increase Your Restaurant's Profit in 100 Days: 1 Task a Day
The takings are fine. What is left at the end of the month is not. Every day you get one task that puts money back on the bottom line — and only that one.
- 100days
- 1task a day
- 8phases, in order
Why I wrote these 100 days out for you
There is one sentence I have heard in more kitchens than any other: "We were rammed all weekend and I still cannot pay myself properly." It is not said by people who are lazy or careless. It is said by people who work six days, cook well, are liked in their street, and have never once been shown where the money actually leaks out of a restaurant — because nobody teaches it, and the figures that would show it sit in a bookkeeping file nobody opens between services.
This is not a plan for getting busier. You are busy. It is a plan for keeping more of what already comes through the door, and almost all of it is invisible from the floor: a dish that has been sold at a loss for two years, a sauce that was costed in 2021, four hours a week rostered against a rush that stopped happening, a pour that drifted by 15 ml, a discount policy nobody ever wrote down. None of those is dramatic. Together they are usually the difference between a wage and no wage.
So the first ten days are nothing but measurement — prime cost, food cost, labour cost, and what you personally earned per hour worked. Some of those numbers will be uncomfortable and that is the point: everything after day 10 is judged against them, and on day 91 you put the two side by side. After that it runs in the order the money sits in: your prices, your plate, your bar, your labour, your sales mix, your leaks, and finally the weekly routine that keeps the whole thing from sliding back by March.
Some days are twenty minutes. A few — the stock count, the price rise you have been putting off, the supplier call you dread, the seven-day waste log — are genuinely hard work, and they are in here deliberately, because they are exactly the days you would skip on your own. When you get stuck, the coach beside each day already knows today's task and opens with a question of its own. It is usually not the question you were hoping for.
Do the hundred days and the business will not look different from the street. It will simply keep more. That is the whole promise, and it is worth more than it sounds.
The eight phases of your hundred days
The order is half the work. You cannot reprice a menu before your dishes are costed, and you cannot judge a rota before you know what an hour of labour has to earn.
Days 1–10 The baseline Every number that decides your margin, measured once, so the rest of the plan has something real to aim at. The business is already trading, so these figures already exist — they have just never been laid side by side.
- 1Block out the hundred days
- 2Pick who you answer to monthly
- 3Name the one figure that proves it worked
- 4Chart twelve months of your P&L
- 5Work out your real food-cost percentage
- 6Work out your true labour-cost percentage
- 7Calculate prime cost and check the band
- 8Price your own hour honestly
- 9Benchmark yourself and find the weakest number
- 10Choose your one lever and write it up
Days 11–25 Price and the menu The card re-costed, re-ranked and repriced as the profit machine it actually is. In most independent restaurants this is the fastest money in the whole plan.
- 11Cost every dish from its ingredients
- 12Put every dish on the engineering grid
- 13Cut the dishes that neither sell nor pay
- 14Fix the dishes that pay but nobody orders
- 15Decide on your popular low-margin dishes
- 16Set food-cost targets per category
- 17Redesign the card around where eyes land
- 18Rewrite prices so they read as choices
- 19Place three deliberate anchor dishes
- 20Raise your prices, on a named date
- 21Test one high-margin dish this week
- 22Re-cost your set and lunch menus
- 23Write the kitchen cards for every dish
- 24Set your policy for future price rises
- 25Re-run the grid and see what moved
Days 26–40 The plate Food cost, portioning and waste: the largest single cost line, and the one most exposed to drift that nobody is watching.
- 26Count the stock and value it properly
- 27Log every gram of waste for a week
- 28Fix the single worst waste line
- 29Measure yields on your five biggest buys
- 30Weigh what actually leaves the pass
- 31Make portioning physical, not a reminder
- 32Cost your sauces and preparations once
- 33Find the three suppliers who matter
- 34Renegotiate those three lines today
- 35Rebuild the ordering week around shelf life
- 36Cut suppliers who do the same job
- 37Set par levels for your top twenty lines
- 38Check what really happens at the back door
- 39Calculate the month's food cost properly
- 40Set the weekly rhythm and run the first one
Days 41–50 The bar Drinks margin, usually the highest in the building and usually the most neglected, because it is blended invisibly into food in the owner's own numbers.
- 41Separate drinks from food in your numbers
- 42Cost every pour against the bottle
- 43Decide on your three worst drinks
- 44Rebuild the wine list around margin per bottle
- 45Train the floor on one drinks line
- 46Build one high-margin drink for every table
- 47Check your promotional pricing against cost
- 48Watch pour discipline for one whole service
- 49Put a number on comps and staff drinks
- 50Re-run the drinks margin and compare
Days 51–65 Labour The rota matched to real demand, hour by hour, without cutting the service the room actually needs.
- 51Build the rota against real demand
- 52Cut the two most overstaffed hours
- 53Fix the shift that is genuinely short
- 54Price your overtime and last-minute cover
- 55Fix the root of your biggest overtime driver
- 56Cross-train one person into a second role
- 57Check the rota against the rules
- 58Set a labour target per shift
- 59Simplify your pay structure
- 60Put one incentive on the number that matters
- 61Calculate revenue per labour hour
- 62Fix your least productive service
- 63Price your own scheduling admin
- 64Take the numbers to the team
- 65Re-run labour cost and compare with day 6
Days 66–78 The mix The same covers, spending more, because both the offer and the ask got better.
- 66Pull your real sales mix
- 67Pick the one attach rate to move
- 68Write the exact line the floor will use
- 69Brief the whole floor in five minutes
- 70Make the upsell the easy answer
- 71Track the number daily where they can see it
- 72Reorder the till and the card
- 73Build a special that is priced for margin
- 74Decide what happens to your quietest service
- 75Build a real group and private-dining offer
- 76Check your loyalty mechanism actually pays
- 77Fix the weekly sales-mix check
- 78Re-run attach rate and average spend
Days 79–90 The leaks The small recurring losses — comps, fees, energy, subscriptions, till differences — closed one by one.
- 79Total every discount, comp and void
- 80Find the biggest source and name it
- 81Write the comp and discount policy
- 82Audit every subscription and recurring fee
- 83Read the energy bill properly
- 84Work out card fees per cover
- 85Ask one supplier for better payment terms
- 86Audit the till for a month
- 87Review your insurance and professional fees
- 88Run a week of proper cash-up discipline
- 89Close the biggest leak you found
- 90Total the phase and write the number down
Days 91–100 The habit Turning ninety days of change into a weekly routine that survives after day 100.
- 91Re-run prime cost against day 7
- 92Grade every lever separately
- 93Put one euro figure on ninety days
- 94Write the weekly numbers routine
- 95Design the monthly review and hold it
- 96Book your next price review now
- 97Decide where the extra profit goes
- 98Tell the team what they achieved
- 99Choose the one number you keep forever
- 100Run the day-101 review and set the next hundred
How it works
No course, no videos, no modules. One task a day, and the next only once you have ticked today's off.
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Open today's task
One day, one task, at a time you are not on the floor. Nothing else is asked of you today.
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Read why it matters and the three steps
Every day says what it is worth in money and breaks the work into three things you can actually do.
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Talk it through with the coach
Each day opens with one pointed question from the AI coach; you get ten messages a day.
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Tick it off and come back tomorrow
Mark the day done, keep the worksheet, and the next task is waiting. A hundred times.
How this route works
Four principles, and they are built into every single day.
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1
One task a day, in the right order
Every day uses yesterday's number. Your dish costs come before your prices, your demand curve before your rota, your sales mix before your upsell line. The phases never resume once left, so skip nothing.
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2
The coach only ever sees the day number
Nothing you type reaches its instructions — the server looks today's task up in its own copy of the curriculum. So there is nothing to inject, and nothing you write is used to build a prompt.
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3
Every phase ends in a real figure, not a feeling
Each block closes by re-running the number it started with, so you put the new one straight next to where you began. "It feels better" is not an outcome this plan accepts.
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4
This is a house document, not an accountant
Tax, VAT, employment rules and what you may book where differ per country and per agreement. On those days the plan hands you the question and points you at your own adviser instead of guessing.
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from the plan for growing the restaurant?
That one makes the business bigger: more guests, more covers, more reach. This one makes it keep more of what it already takes in, without a single extra booking. If your room is regularly full and the bank balance still does not move, this is the one you want — and if you are quiet on a Thursday, start with the growth plan instead.
Do I need an accountant to do this?
No. Several days do ask you to read your own figures — purchase invoices, payroll, one closed month of revenue — but the arithmetic is deliberately kept to what an owner can do at a table with a calculator. Day 8 says that plainly: you work out what you earned per hour worked yourself, because that number is the one every later day is judged against. Where something is genuinely country-specific, the day points you at your accountant rather than guessing.
What if I do not hit every target?
Then you hit some of them, and you know exactly which. This plan measures direction, not perfection: on day 91 you put your new prime cost next to the one from day 7 and read it honestly, including when the change is smaller than you hoped. A point and a half off prime cost is a modest-looking number and usually a very large amount of money.
Is this specific to my country?
The method is universal — costing a dish, weighing a portion, matching a rota to demand and totalling your comps work the same everywhere. What differs is your normal cost bands, your VAT, your employment rules and your supplier conventions, so a few days ask you explicitly to check your own market's figures rather than borrowing someone else's.
How much time does one day take?
Most days are twenty to forty minutes. A handful are longer by nature: a full stock count, a seven-day waste log, a supplier renegotiation or a proper menu re-costing will take an evening. Those are also the days that return the most, which is exactly why they are in here rather than left to "when things calm down".
What happens after day 100?
You keep the weekly numbers routine you build in the last phase — which figure gets checked on which day, by whom — plus the monthly review and a booked date for your next price decision. And on day 100 the plan points you at what comes next, depending on where the business now stands.
Tools you will need along the way
The other challenges
Standing somewhere else in your story? Then one of these is your hundred days.