Sample result
Strategic Diagnosis Builder for Restaurants
The owner asked this:«We sell more than last year and profit will not move. Audit the whole business and tell me what is really failing.»
① Findings by area, with evidence and with a price
| Area | Finding | Evidence | Severity | Profit lost per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profitability | The 12 highest-volume items have no written portion weights | Weighed in service on 3 plates: the Bandeja de la casa runs 14% over its costing | High | 2,600,000 |
| Operations | Location 2 runs lunch staffing during low-occupancy bands | Sales by time band, last 8 weeks | High | 4,100,000 |
| Sales and channel | The delivery platform carries the dining-room price with the commission on top | Platform settlements, 8 weeks | High | 1,700,000 |
| Value proposition | The menu describes dishes in one line; "home cooking, served the way a restaurant serves" appears nowhere | Reading of the menu, the delivery channel and the Instagram profile | Medium | 1,900,000 |
| Team | 5 departures in 12 months across 24 people; replacements start with no written recipe | Payroll and onboarding log | Medium | 1,400,000 |
Total: 11,700,000 a month, close to 5.5 points of margin on sales of 214,000,000. The audit's four remaining findings together add up to less than the smallest of these five.
SUPUESTO: profit lost was calculated with the contribution margin implied by the declared prime cost (62%). If the real margin were 5 points lower, every figure in the last column drops proportionally and the order of the findings does not change, but the prescription goes from 4 weeks to 6.
② The bottleneck, and the chain by which it makes the others
The bottleneck is not the delivery platform. It is that no standard recipe and no per-plate costing exist.
The chain, link by link: with no written portion weights, food cost drifts on its own and nobody knows why → with no reliable cost per plate you cannot set a separate platform price or evaluate a new line → every incoming cook learns by ear, so waste climbs and the year's 5 departures multiply it → and the owner compensates for the profit that never shows up by selling more. That is why sales rise and profit sits still: the business is growing on top of a cost nobody controls.
What happens in 90 days if nobody touches it: with sales growing at the pace of the last 12 months and prime cost frozen at 62%, the goal of moving operating margin from 8% to 14% stays six full points away and the year closes around 8%. More sales, same profit, more exhaustion.
The uncomfortable part, said straight: the problem the owner mentions first —the platform commission— is third in money and first in noise. Fixing it before the portion weights leaves the commission neatly calculated on a cost that is still false.
The full example has 1 more part(s): you see them inside the library, with your account.