Know Your Number. Own Your Business.

Know Your Number. Own Your Business.

Your bank account tells the story. Your prime cost explains it.

There is a number that explains why your bank account looks the way it does at the end of

the month.

It is not your revenue. It is not your food cost alone. It is not your labour cost alone.

It is both of them together. That blend is called prime cost. And if you do not know yours, you are not running a business. You are running a very expensive hobby that is bleeding your bank account and stealing your soul.

65% is the survival threshold. Not the goal. The floor.

If your prime cost sits at or below 65% of revenue, there is a buck or two left over at the end of the month. Something to work with. Something to build on. Push past that number and you start operating in the red without understanding why.

But survival is not the goal.

Get your prime cost down to 58% and now you can buy the pizza oven you have been putting off. The one that boosts productivity, improves food quality, and gets more covers out the door. Higher output, better margins, and now you are trending toward 55%.

You have to spend money to make money. You cannot spend money you do not have.

And you will never have it if prime cost is already eating it before you see it.

What Happens When You Don't Know

No money for labour and you are the one walking the floor yelling cut labour. Morale takes a hit. Your best people start looking around.

Can't pay your suppliers. Groceries don't show up. You can't serve guests. No food plus less service equals no business. That is not a metaphor. That is the sequence.

I will be honest. Writing this triggers something in me. When I was starting out I loved the people, I loved the food, and I did not quite understand how the business actually worked. I thought revenue fixed everything.

Revenue fixes 90% of restaurant problems. I still believe that.

But I have sat across from operators doing 125K a month, 175K a month, 225K a month, and watched them look at me with genuine confusion when I asked why the money was not there. They did not know their numbers. That is not a cash flow problem. That is an information problem.

The Unfair Advantage

Knowing your prime cost is the unfair advantage most operators never pick up.

It tells you where the leak is before the flood. It tells you whether a busy Saturday actually

made you money. It tells you whether that catering contract is worth taking at the price you

quoted.

If you do not know how to calculate yours, start here. Pull up your AI assistant and send this prompt:

"As a [style of restaurant] restaurant, help me calculate our prime cost. Tell me what

information you need so we can do this together. I don't have the cleanest books so go

easy on me."

That is it. One prompt. You will get a framework, a question list, and a starting point.

There is no shame in asking for help. The greatest athletes in the world have performance

coaches. The best singers have vocal coaches. Top-tier anything has someone in their corner pushing them to perform at a higher level. Put the shame away and start putting in the reps today.

Know your number. Own your business.