Sample result
Leadership Agenda Builder for Restaurants
The owner asked this:«Location 2 has missed break-even for 5 months. Do I close it, shrink it, or give it 6 more months?»
① Deliberation record
| Path | What it involves | Investment | Effect on margin | Main risk | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A. Close location 2 | Hand back the lease, let go of that site's 7 operations people and concentrate the kitchen in location 1 | ~48,000,000 COP exit cost (assumption) | +3.1 points over 12 months | 34% of sales walks out, along with the kitchen that carries Sunday midday; the 6 admin people now sit on one location | NO |
| B. Shrink location 2 to lunch and own delivery | Close nights and Mondays, a short 18-dish menu, 4 of the 7 people move to location 1 and to the delivery pass | ~11,000,000 COP (assumption) | +4.6 points over 12 months | The brand reads as «retreating» if the guest message lands after the hours change | YES |
| C. Give it 6 more months untouched | Hold the dinner shift and wait for the area to mature on its own | ~20,000,000 COP in cash (6 months of deficit, assumption) | −0.4 points over 12 months | Reaches December with no cash for high season and the same problem on the table | NO |
| D. Raise the menu 8% | Reprice the whole menu across both locations at once | 0 COP | +2.2 points over 12 months | That is 3,840 COP more on a 48,000 COP average check, and it breaks the goal of reaching 14% without touching menu prices | NOT NOW |
Basis of this record: location 2 bills ~73,000,000 COP a month —34% of the 214,000,000 COP across both locations— and closes ~3,400,000 COP short of break-even. Points are consolidated operating margin over the declared 8% base, already net of each path's investment. Every figure above is an assumption built from the data you provided, not a projection: confirm it against the last 8 weeks of closings, location by location.
② Reversibility against cash
The committee's question is not which path sounds best, but which one can be undone if next month contradicts the assumption. Each path in its quadrant:
| Frees cash within 90 days | Consumes cash within 90 days | |
|---|---|---|
| Undone in 3 weeks or less | B. Shrink to lunch and own delivery: 11,000,000 COP of investment and the site turns cash-positive around month 2 (assumption). If lunch does not answer, dinner reopens with the same crew. | C. Give it 6 more months: 3,400,000 COP of deficit every month. You can stop it whenever you want, true, but each month of waiting takes two weeks out of December's cash. |
| Not undone this year | D. Raise the menu 8%: cash arrives from week one with no investment. A price set on the table does not come back; walking it down later costs credibility, not money. | A. Close location 2: 48,000,000 COP out the door before you see the first peso of savings, and that lease will not be signed again at a two-year-old price. |
One path only lands in the quadrant you want to be in while half the figures are still assumptions, and that is B. Granted: if location 2 had 24 months of measured history instead of 5, the quadrant would weigh less and the number would weigh more.
③ The decision
Path B. Location 2 does not have a demand problem: it has an hours problem, and the record says so with figures — Tuesday-to-Friday lunch and Sunday midday carry the sales while dinner pays rent, power and payroll to serve tables that never arrive. What gets done: location 2 runs lunch Tuesday through Sunday plus own delivery, on a short 18-dish menu, with 4 of its 7 people reassigned to location 1. What gets released, and this is the half almost nobody writes down: the entire dinner shift, all of Monday, the delivery platform at that site —it charges its commission on the same dish your own delivery hands over whole— and the idea of raising the menu this half of the year, because price is your last card and not your first, and you set that constraint yourself.
The signal that would review it: if by week 6 lunch at location 2 is not reaching 55 covers a day Tuesday through Friday —the house average today is 74 per location per day— it stops being an hours problem and path A comes back to the table that same week.
The full example has 2 more part(s): you see them inside the library, with your account.