Most restaurants that close did not close because the food was bad. They closed because food cost drifted four points and nobody noticed for a quarter, because the schedule was written to a feeling instead of a forecast, because a profitable business ran out of cash in February, or because the lease carried a personal guarantee nobody read. Restaurant Management: Behind the Pass is a free, open textbook about those things — the business of running a restaurant, written for people who know food but not business, and for people who know neither yet.
Forty chapters across eight parts follow a restaurant from idea to steady state. Part I covers why restaurants fail, developing a concept and brand, writing a business plan, and finding funding. Part II handles the physical realities: choosing a location, reading a commercial lease, designing the space, specifying equipment, navigating licensing and inspections, and opening the doors. Part III is the product — menu development, recipe costing, menu engineering, purchasing and inventory, kitchen operations, the bar program, and wine. Part IV covers people: hiring, training, scheduling and labor cost management, employment law, and the kind of leadership that keeps a team through a second summer.
Part V runs the room, covering front-of-house systems, the craft of hospitality, revenue and reservation management, health and safety, and restaurant technology. Part VI addresses the channels that now decide margins — marketing and social media, delivery and off-premise, catering and events, and food trucks and ghost kitchens. Part VII is the money: restaurant accounting from the ground up, break-even analysis, cash-flow management, prime cost, and the financial controls that catch theft and drift before they compound. Part VIII covers what comes next — growth, franchising, multi-unit operations, sustainability, closing a restaurant with dignity, and the shape of a career in the industry.
Every chapter includes graduated exercises, a self-check quiz with answers, two worked case studies, a one-page takeaways card, and annotated further reading. Fourteen appendices supply formulas and industry benchmarks, a recipe cost-card library, a complete business-plan workbook, law and licensing references, worked financial examples, and a glossary. A full instructor guide with syllabi, teaching notes, an exam bank, and rubrics accompanies the book for classroom use.