Restaurant Start-Up Costs Revealed: How Much Does it Cost to Open a Restaurant?

So you’ve chosen to open a restaurant and you’re eager to learn how to navigate the difficult and costly dance between creating something unique yet economical.

It’s all about having the right strategy, of course. According to a recent New York Times report, “Whether a restaurant opens in hyper-competitive Manhattan or in California’s gold-rush dining scene, it has to make the same equation work: The costs of real estate, labor and food should add up to about 75 percent of its projected sales, leaving a profit margin of roughly 10 percent once smaller expenses are figured in.”

This doesn’t include the expanse of overhead costs, of which there are plenty. And it’s usually miscalculation in the early phase of opening that sets a restaurant up for failure. It’s easy to underestimate start up costs and overextend when there’s not yet any revenue to offset expenses.

Thus, essential to success is getting started on the right foot. In this post, we answer your most…