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Sell Your Restaurant in 100 Days: 1 Task a Day

You have decided you have had enough, or you are still weighing it up. From today you get one task a day — and only that one — until your place is sold and handed over.

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 — you will sell your business to somebody who knows what they are buying, at a price you can defend with paper. Not because there is a secret in here that nobody else knows, but because almost every hospitality sale in Europe goes wrong for the same three reasons: the owner puts the place on the market before knowing what it is worth, the books do not survive a stranger reading them, and what is being sold is a business that depends entirely on the owner. All three are avoidable, but only in that order and only beforehand.

That is why this route gives you exactly one task a day. One. Not a chapter, not a list of fourteen things to consider, but one task with three steps and the reason it lands on precisely this day. Some days cost you twenty minutes. Others — the conversation with your landlord, the day you work out what is really left after repayments and tax, the day you have to speak to an employee who would put a buyer off — are heavy, and that is deliberate. You sell once in your life; the adviser on the other side of the table does this every week. You do not close that gap with talent, but you do close it with preparation.

So start today with something small. Put the hundred days in your calendar, pick the one person who will carry this with you, 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. Momentum matters more than motivation here, because motivation is not there on the day a buyer takes ten per cent off your price a week before signing, 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 cannot bring yourself to fix your floor price, the day you have recalculated your result three times hoping for a prettier figure, the day you are unsure whether to tell your chef yet. It gives no legal or tax advice — for that it sends you to your accountant, your solicitor or your trade federation — but it will make you decide. Talk it through, decide, tick it off. A hundred times.

One last thing. This is not a celebration, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. For most people reading this it is the end of ten or twenty years in which that place was their life, and these hundred days occasionally feel like clearing out your own house. Do it well anyway: a business that passes over cleanly, into the hands of somebody who understands what they are taking on, is the best thing you can still do for those twenty years. Put day 1 in today. I mean it.

The eight phases of your hundred days

The order is half the work. You cannot defend a price before you know your value, and you cannot let a buyer into a file that is not clean yet.

Days 1–8 Deciding Nothing is settled yet. This week you fix why you are selling, what you need out of it and who is allowed to know. An owner who is still in two minds cannot negotiate — and every buyer can smell it.
  1. 1Block the 100 days in your calendar
  2. 2Write down why you are selling
  3. 3Work out what you need to clear
  4. 4Set your end date and your plan B
  5. 5Pick the one adviser
  6. 6Decide who is allowed to know
  7. 7Decide exactly what you are selling
  8. 8List what stays, and what leaves with you
Days 9–21 What it is worth You rebuild the profit the way a buyer reads it, value it three ways, and end up with a figure you defend with paper instead of with feeling.
  1. 9Put three years of figures side by side
  2. 10Rebuild your result the way a buyer reads it
  3. 11List your add-backs, with the proof
  4. 12Work out what a working owner takes out
  5. 13Value it on earnings
  6. 14Value it on turnover and read the gap
  7. 15Value your equipment at what it is worth now
  8. 16Put a price on your lease
  9. 17Work out the price a buyer can finance
  10. 18Fix three figures: asking price, target and floor
  11. 19Find three comparable sales
  12. 20Name the six things that hold your value down
  13. 21Decide: sell, hand over or close
Days 22–34 Cleaning up the file The books, the lease, the contracts, the licences and the open files — everything a stranger is about to read. Whatever you do not fix now the buyer finds later, and then it costs you price instead of time.
  1. 22Bring your books up to this month
  2. 23Take your private spending out of the business
  3. 24Make till, bank and returns agree
  4. 25Turn your debtors into money or into zero
  5. 26List every debt and every live commitment
  6. 27Get every contract into one folder
  7. 28Read your lease for assignability
  8. 29Talk to your landlord before a buyer does
  9. 30Get every licence and certificate straight
  10. 31Get your staff records in order
  11. 32Put your name and your online property straight
  12. 33Settle every dispute, or put a price on it
  13. 34Have your advisers read the file
Days 35–48 Lifting the value The last fortnight in which work still changes your price: your margin, your trend, how indispensable you are, your team and the state of the building.
  1. 35Work out what one point of margin is worth
  2. 36Re-cost your menu and take the easy margin
  3. 37Cut the fixed costs that earn nothing
  4. 38Do something about your revenue trend
  5. 39Make the business less dependent on you
  6. 40Write down how the place runs
  7. 41Make sure a buyer wants to keep your team
  8. 42Tie in your key people
  9. 43Clean up how you look online
  10. 44Fix the ten small things that look neglected
  11. 45Make the state of your kitchen provable
  12. 46Turn your guest data into a transferable asset
  13. 47Get recurring revenue on paper
  14. 48Re-value after two weeks of work
Days 49–60 The sale pack The teaser, the figures, the inventory and the answers to the ten questions every buyer asks — written properly once, instead of improvised on each phone call.
  1. 49Write the one-page anonymous teaser
  2. 50Write the description behind the NDA
  3. 51Build the numbers pack
  4. 52Write your honest reason for selling
  5. 53Make the inventory of what is included
  6. 54Get the place photographed properly
  7. 55Write the staff summary
  8. 56Write the property and lease summary
  9. 57Answer the ten questions every buyer asks
  10. 58Get your NDA ready
  11. 59Build your data room and stage what is released
  12. 60Let somebody else pull your file apart
Days 61–73 Finding buyers How you sell, who is already standing nearby, how you filter enquiries — and how the place keeps running perfectly well in the meantime.
  1. 61Decide how you sell
  2. 62Speak to two brokers, ask for their terms
  3. 63List the buyers within twenty kilometres
  4. 64The buyer nobody thinks of: your team
  5. 65Approach suppliers and colleagues, carefully
  6. 66Write your advert and pick your channels
  7. 67Publish, and start the clock
  8. 68Filter every enquiry before you tell anyone anything
  9. 69Test a candidate's money
  10. 70Hold the first viewing outside service hours
  11. 71Prepare the three questions that decide everything
  12. 72Keep the business running well meanwhile
  13. 73Review your pipeline after two weeks
Days 74–88 The deal Offers, structure, heads of terms, due diligence, the last-minute price cut, the contract. This is where a good business most often gets badly sold.
  1. 74Decide what you never give away
  2. 75Read the offer: six terms, not one
  3. 76Assets or shares: know the difference
  4. 77Negotiate the price, then the payment
  5. 78Cap the earn-out
  6. 79Get the heads of terms right
  7. 80Prepare for due diligence before it starts
  8. 81Survive due diligence
  9. 82Prepare for the last-minute price cut
  10. 83Settle stock, cash, deposits and gift vouchers
  11. 84Negotiate the non-compete
  12. 85Agree your handover period
  13. 86Know what the sale costs you in tax before you sign
  14. 87Read the contract, clause by clause
  15. 88Sign
Days 89–100 The handover Staff, suppliers, guests, systems, the completion statement, the money — and the honest question of what you do on the Monday after.
  1. 89Tell your team, in person and first
  2. 90Tell your suppliers, then your regulars
  3. 91Transfer the lease, the utilities and the licences
  4. 92Transfer the staff properly and in writing
  5. 93Hand over systems, accounts and every password
  6. 94Work two full services alongside the buyer
  7. 95Pass on what only you know
  8. 96Do the final count and the completion statement
  9. 97Close your old structure down properly
  10. 98Collect what you are still owed
  11. 99Write the letter to your guests, and mean it
  12. 100Decide what you do for the next hundred days

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 in your calendar and pick the one adviser who carries this with you.

  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. Build on what is already there

    Each day uses yesterday's decision. Skip nothing — the order is the point.

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 builds on yesterday's decision. Your value comes before your asking price, your clean file before the first buyer, your walk-away figure before the first offer. Skip nothing.

  2. 2

    Decide, do not consider

    Every day exists to force one decision. "I will see what a buyer offers" is precisely the attitude that lets good businesses go under their worth. The coach does not accept it.

  3. 3

    Paper beats feeling

    To you this is twenty years; to a buyer it is a return. Everything you claim — your profit, your trend, the state of your kitchen — has to be something you can show with a document. What you cannot prove, nobody pays for.

  4. 4

    What differs per country, you ask somebody

    Tax, staff transfers, assigning a lease and warranties differ per country and per contract. These hundred days tell you which question to ask and who to ask it of — your accountant, your solicitor, your trade federation — never what the answer is.

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, which in a sale is the most expensive way there is to save time.

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 — so there is no list anywhere of owners who are selling up. If you want them on another computer you unfortunately start again there; that is the price of no account.

Will my team or my landlord find out?

Not through us: nothing is sent, nothing is published and nothing is shared. Confidentiality is a task in its own right, which is why it is in the route: on day 6 you decide who hears it and when, on day 29 you have the conversation with your landlord yourself, and on day 89 you tell your team before anybody else does. In this trade a sale almost always leaks through the owner.

What if I already have a buyer at the table?

Then the temptation is to jump straight to phase seven, and that is exactly where it goes wrong. Do days 9 to 21 first: anybody who negotiates without knowing their own floor ends up accepting the figure the other side names. After that you can tick off the phases you are already ahead on quickly — but do read them, because almost everyone finds two or three decisions in there they never explicitly made.

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 decision you can still make tonight, and it gives no legal, tax or accounting advice — for that it sends you to your accountant, your solicitor or your trade federation.

Do these hundred days apply outside my country?

Yes. The route itself — deciding, valuing, cleaning up, lifting the value, the pack, buyers, the deal, the handover — is the same everywhere, and the page exists in twenty-four languages. What differs per country is the tax on a sale, the rules around transferring staff, whether your lease can be assigned and which licences have to be reapplied for; on those days you get the question to ask and the person to ask it of, never an answer that might not hold where you are.

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 literally need those sheets again at your valuation, in due diligence and at your completion statement.

Tools you will need along the way

Restaurant valuation Cash flow forecast Daily cash-up sheet Restaurant inventory management Staff handbook generator Restaurant startup costs

The other two challenges

The same approach, a different point in your working life: a hundred days, one task a day.

Open a Restaurant in 100 Days For anyone with no concept, no site and no company yet. Take a look Grow Your Restaurant in 100 Days For the owner who is already open and keeps too little. Take a look