Venue-Level Cost & Margin Modelling

This use case explains how to build a venue-level P&L for restaurants, cafés and bars in Model Reef.

You will use:

• Branches to represent each venue.

• Driver-based revenue for food, beverage, delivery and functions.

• COGS, staff and operating costs per venue.

• Consolidated views across the group.

The goal is to understand venue profitability and margin structure without relying on fragile spreadsheets.

When to use this pattern

Use this pattern when:

• You operate one or more venues and want clear P&L visibility per site.

• You want to model covers, average spend and mix rather than just top line percentages.

• You need to compare venues and test changes in labour, pricing or menu mix.

If you manage many venues across entities, combine this with the Multi Entity Group Model pattern.

Architecture overview

The structure has three layers:

• Branch structure

  • One branch per venue.

  • Optional central branch for head office and shared costs.

• Venue variables

  • Revenue variables per stream (food, beverage, delivery, functions).

  • COGS per category.

  • Staff and operating costs per venue.

• Outputs

  • Venue-level P&L.

  • Consolidated group P&L, Balance Sheet, Cashflow and Cash Waterfall.

  • Margin dashboards focused on gross margin and prime cost.

1

Set up the venue branches

Create a model with branches such as:

• Group (root).

  • Venue - City Centre.

  • Venue - Suburb A.

  • Venue - Suburb B.

  • Head Office (optional).

Guidelines:

• Name branches in the same way the business refers to its venues.

• Use one branch per trading location, not per cost centre, for clarity.

• Keep Head Office or Central for non venue specific costs.

Branches roll up automatically to Group, providing consolidated numbers.

2

Build venue revenue drivers

Hospitality revenue is usually driven by:

• Covers (guests served).

• Average spend per cover.

• Service mix (lunch, dinner, drinks only).

• Seasonal patterns and day-of-week effects.

In the Data Library, create drivers such as:

• Covers - Venue City Centre.

• Average Spend per Cover - Venue City Centre.

• Covers - Lunch Share.

• Covers - Dinner Share.

In each venue branch, define Revenue variables, for example:

• Revenue - Food - Venue City Centre.

• Revenue - Beverage - Venue City Centre.

• Revenue - Delivery - Venue City Centre.

Use formulas like:

• Revenue - Food = Covers × Average Food Spend per Cover.

• Revenue - Beverage = Covers × Average Beverage Spend per Cover.

You can introduce seasonality by applying monthly or weekly multipliers to covers or spend drivers.

3

Model food and beverage COGS

For each venue, create COGS variables that reflect:

• Food ingredients.

• Beverage costs (beer, wine, spirits, soft drinks).

• Packaging and disposables for delivery or takeaway.

Common patterns:

• COGS as a percentage of revenue per category:

  • COGS - Food = Revenue - Food × Food COGS Percentage.

  • COGS - Beverage = Revenue - Beverage × Beverage COGS Percentage.

• Or more detailed unit cost modelling if you have robust data.

Make sure COGS variables are typed as COGS so they affect gross margin correctly.

For menu level costing, see Menu Pricing & Recipe Costing.

4

Add staff costs per venue

Staff costs are usually a major driver of venue profitability. In each venue branch, create Staff variables for roles such as:

• Front of house (servers, hosts).

• Back of house (chefs, kitchen hands).

• Bar staff.

• Venue managers.

Use drivers and Staff variables to represent:

• Hours per week or per service.

• Hourly rates or salaries.

• Oncosts such as superannuation or payroll tax.

You can link hours to revenue or covers where appropriate, for example:

• Casual Hours = Base Hours plus Hours per Cover × Covers.

This ensures labour moves with volumes in your scenarios.

For more detail, see Retail Workforce and Roster Forecasting which applies similarly to hospitality venues.

5

Capture venue operating costs

Create Opex variables per venue for items such as:

• Rent and outgoings.

• Utilities.

• Cleaning and linen.

• Licences and compliance fees.

• Local marketing and promotion.

• Repairs and maintenance.

Implement timing and delays to match how invoices and payments occur, for example:

• Monthly rent with no delay.

• Utilities billed in arrears with a one-month delay.

Place group-level or head office costs in the Head Office or Group branch, not inside individual venues.

6

Build venue-level margin views

With revenue, COGS, staff and Opex per venue in place, use reports and dashboards to show:

• Revenue per venue over time.

• Gross profit and gross margin per venue.

• Staff cost as a percentage of revenue.

• Prime cost (Food COGS plus Labour) as a percentage of revenue.

• EBITDA per venue.

You can build custom reports grouped by branch to compare venues side by side and identify:

• Underperforming venues.

• Venues with good revenue but poor margin.

• Venues with healthy margin but low volumes.

7

Use scenarios for menu, pricing and labour changes

Because scenarios are independent models, you can clone the venue model to test changes such as:

• New menu pricing.

• Adjusted portion sizes or recipes.

• Different roster patterns.

• Venue specific promotions or discounting.

Compare scenario models using:

• P&L and Cashflow at venue and group level.

• Prime cost and gross margin trends.

• Cash Waterfall impacts.

You can then decide which changes to implement operationally.

Check your work

• Revenue drivers reflect how the venues actually operate (covers, average spend, mix).

• COGS percentages or unit costs are realistic for the cuisine and beverage mix.

• Staff roles and hours match current rosters or planned changes.

• Venue P&Ls roll up cleanly to the consolidated group view.

Troubleshooting

Venue P&Ls do not reconcile to accounting reports

Confirm that any imported revenue and COGS lines are properly allocated to the correct venue branches, and that mapping from the ledger or source files is accurate.

Prime cost looks unrealistically low or high

Revisit both COGS percentages and staff hours or rates. Restaurant margins are very sensitive to these assumptions.

Venue comparison is noisy

Use averages per cover, per seat or per square metre as complementary KPIs to simple totals.

Related guides

• Build a Staffing Cost Model

• Build a KPI Dashboard

• Model Level Permissions

• Economic Driver Fields