A business plan for your restaurant: what goes in it and who reads it

What a business plan does, and who reads it

A restaurant starts with a lot of money up front. Fit-out, kitchen and first stock are paid for before the first guest orders, and the margin afterwards is thin. You want to know whether the sums work before you sign.

That is the plan’s first job: getting what is in your head onto paper. The story that most places fail in their first year has no source, as our piece on survival figures shows. It is still business risk, and a plan puts a figure and a buffer against it.

Its second job is persuasion. According to the Chamber of Commerce (KvK), a bank or investor looks at you as an owner as well as at your numbers. Each reader asks a different question.

Already running a place and want to expand or borrow? Then you prove that you trade well: steady sales, a margin that holds and a plan for the extra money. Starting from nothing, your concept carries the plan.

Answer five questions first

Do not write yet. Put the answers to five questions on one sheet.

1. Concept: what makes your place different from the three nearest ones?
2. Guests: who comes, and do they sit down, collect or have it delivered?
3. Money: what does the start cost, who puts it in, and what does the place turn over each month?
4. Work: who runs the kitchen and the floor, and how do you keep standards up on a packed Friday?
5. Growth: how do new guests find out you exist, and how do they come back?

The plan works those answers out. The KvK splits a business plan into four parts: you as an owner, your business, the marketing plan and the financial plan. Use that layout and a bank recognises it at once.

It keeps working after you open. Compare your budgets with your real figures regularly, which is also KvK advice, and adjust them. A plan in a drawer helps nobody.

The summary, the concept and your legal form

The summary

Write the summary last and put it first, on one page. Someone who stops reading there should know four things: what kind of place it is and why you are doing it, what sets it apart from its neighbours, which guest it is for, and what the start costs and brings in.

The concept

The concept is the long version: name, address, phone number and opening hours; how you serve (dining room, collection, delivery, your own ordering site); the layout in seats and square metres; the atmosphere, down to how it shows on your site and menu; and the food you cook.

Your legal form

You register your business with the KvK, and you can do that before you open. Your legal form belongs in the plan.

Settle this before you apply for permits. If you change legal form later, a permit can lapse, the KvK warns. Which form fits depends on your risk and your expected profit. Ask your accountant.

Guests, competitors and menu

Lenders read this part most closely, so be concrete: the age, household, income and eating habits of the people who will come. Office workers at lunch, families collecting on Friday, students? Say what they care about and how they choose between eating in, collecting and delivery.

Use the free figures. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) publishes key figures per district and neighbourhood on residents, households and income. The free KvK Marktscan shows how many businesses in your trade sit in your area and how that is changing, without names.

You find competitors’ names yourself. Order from the four places closest to your plan and read their Google reviews. Note what they sell, what they charge and what guests complain about. That is your room.

Then show that your menu suits that guest with a draft: main dishes with prices, and real descriptions of the dishes your business has to live on. How to build one is in our piece on making a menu.

Put a sum next to it. Prices on a Dutch menu include VAT: 9% on food and soft drinks, 21% on alcohol. Say a main course of €18.50 brings in €16.97 after VAT. If the ingredients cost €5.50, your food cost is about 32%. Carry on with the sums in our piece on menu pricing.

The marketing plan

Here you show how the first guest arrives and how they come back. Against each goal, write what you do, what it costs and how you will know it worked. A longer walk-through is in a marketing plan for your restaurant.

For marketing by email or text you need permission (the GDPR, called the AVG in the Netherlands), with an unsubscribe link in every message.

Be honest about the platforms. Thuisbezorgd and Uber Eats bring you guests who do not know you yet. Your own ordering channel is where regulars order, where you know who they are and can invite them back. Count platform fees as an ordinary cost line.

Let whatever repeats run by itself, so you keep your time for the kitchen.

Your team and the house rules

Start with yourself: your role, your experience in kitchen, floor or management, and why you can do this. Then the key roles, with names if you have them, and their duties: kitchen, floor, buying, admin, online orders.

Put the team in euros. According to Ondernemersplein, the government’s business portal, staff costs run about 30% above gross wages. Trade body KHN says the hospitality collective agreement (Horeca-cao) is generally binding, so its wages are the floor. With your first employee you draw up a risk assessment (RI&E). Staff who serve alcohol must be 16 or older.

House rules

Set out how the place runs when it is busy. A lender sees that you have thought it through.

• Bookings, walk-ins and waiting times.
• Complaints and refunds: who decides and what you offer.
• Behaviour and dress of your team.
• Safe working in the kitchen, following the hygiene code covered below.

The premises and the lease

The premises fix your biggest fixed cost. Write down the monthly rent, what share of sales that is, how long the contract runs and what you agreed with the landlord about fit-out and renewal.

According to Ondernemersplein, hospitality counts as retail-type commercial space (middenstandsbedrijfsruimte), a unit the public can walk into. The first term is five years, renewed automatically for five more. A contract of two years or less gives no tenant protection. The rent cannot rise during the term unless the contract allows it, for example by indexation to the CBS consumer price index. Have a lawyer read it first.

Check the zoning plan before you sign. The KvK says your business must fit the municipality’s omgevingsplan, which since the Environment and Planning Act of 1 January 2024 succeeds the bestemmingsplan. Some municipalities add a horecagebiedsplan, a hospitality zoning map: a snack bar may be allowed where a shawarma shop is not.

Answer these as well. Is a terrace allowed? Where do guests park, and where do you load and unload? Can you cancel the lease if your licence is refused? Ask your lawyer about a clause for that.

Permits and registrations

Order matters: the KvK warns it can take weeks or months, and you pay for an application even if it is refused. Put the lead time in your schedule. Amounts come from the KvK’s hospitality permit page and differ per municipality.

Alcohol: age, diploma and register

For an alcohol permit you must be 21, hold the Sociale Hygiëne diploma or certificate and be listed in the Register Sociale Hygiëne, run since 1 July 2023 by the Lcsh, the national social hygiene body. If you were listed before that date, you confirm your details by 1 July 2028. With several owners, each must qualify, and someone who qualifies must be present during opening hours, which a manager can be. You will also hear the name Verklaring Sociale Hygiëne: ask your municipality which proof it wants.

The Bibob check

The municipality can run a Bibob check on an application, an integrity check meant to stop a permit being used for crime. You fill in a questionnaire, and that is compulsory. The municipality can ask the justice authorities, the police and the tax office for information, and if in doubt the national Bibob bureau advises, which can take up to twelve weeks. Whether and when your municipality does this is set out in its own policy. A financing plan showing who puts in what makes the questionnaire easier.

Hygiene, allergens and insurance

You must work from a food safety plan based on HACCP. Writing your own is allowed, but the food safety authority (NVWA) calls it easier to use the approved Hygiënecode voor de horeca, the hospitality hygiene code from trade body Koninklijke Horeca Nederland. The KvK gives its January 2026 price as €110 excluding VAT, or €40 for KHN members. Follow the code and you meet your legal duty.

Register with the NVWA yourself as well. You must tell guests about the fourteen allergens on the European list, even for unpackaged food. Saying it out loud is allowed, as long as it is clearly displayed that guests can ask.

You must also separate business waste, take a licence from BumaStemra and Sena for background music or live acts, and pay a levy (precario) if you use municipal ground for a terrace.

Insurance

Most insurance is not compulsory, apart from health insurance, says the KvK. Hospitality still usually looks at business liability, contents and stock, business interruption, buildings cover if you own the property, and disability cover for yourself, because a self-employed person otherwise has no sickness benefit. Put the premiums in your operating budget as a fixed line.

Investing and financing

According to the KvK, the financial plan has four budgets, in this order: investment, financing, operating and liquidity. Many owners add a private budget: what do you need at home? Everything has to agree with what you wrote earlier.

The investment budget

Everything you must buy or pay for in order to open. Below, invented round figures excluding VAT, for a small place with thirty seats.

The buffer is not a luxury: without it you pay the first months from the till of guests who have not arrived yet. VAT on your investments you pay first and get back through your return, so you pre-finance it for a while.

The financing budget

How you raise that amount:

If the bank wants more security, ask whether the government’s credit guarantee for small businesses (BMKB) can be used. Your bank applies for it, not you. For smaller amounts there is Qredits, with a microloan of up to €50,000. A loan becomes a fixed cost, so include interest and repayment.

What the place earns: operating and cash flow

The operating budget

Expected sales minus expected costs in an ordinary month when the place is running. Work excluding VAT, says Ondernemersplein, and include depreciation. An invented month for the same place:

Purchases plus staff come to €29,250, 65% of sales. That sum is called prime cost, and our piece on prime cost explains how to track it.

Work in three versions: cautious, expected and generous. If sales slip by a tenth to €40,500, purchases shrink with them but staff and rent do not. The result falls to €1,650, nearly two thirds less. How to read that as a margin is in our piece on profit margin, and where the money goes is in where your money goes.

Your break-even is your fixed costs divided by what is left of each euro of sales after purchases. Here that is €26,700 divided by 0.70, roughly €38,100 a month.

The cash flow budget

Profit and money in the bank are not the same thing. The cash flow budget sets out month by month what comes in and goes out, including VAT, and watches the timing of rent, wages, suppliers, VAT returns and repayments. The same place, first three months, without VAT for simplicity and with €1,000 repayment a month:

That €9,000 comes out of the buffer. Without a buffer you are at the bank’s door in month two. How to keep up with VAT, admin and cash afterwards is in restaurant bookkeeping.

The plan as a template, and what to do on Monday

Lay the plan out like this, section by section.

A plan is finished when someone else reads it and sees the same place.