Syllabus — 10-Week Quarter
The compressed course. All forty chapters are still assigned, but sixteen of them move to reading with a written deliverable rather than a session. The progressive project survives intact — it is what makes the course work and it is the last thing to cut.
Built for two 75-minute sessions a week (20 sessions), or one 150-minute session with structured independent work.
What is different from the 15-week version
Three structural changes, and they are the ones that preserve the most.
- Two chapters per session becomes the norm, not the exception. Sessions are built around the shared problem in a chapter pair rather than covering both fully.
- The case studies carry the chapters that lose their session. Sixteen chapters are assigned as reading plus a graded case analysis. Students still meet the material; they meet it through the analysis rather than through discussion. This works well for Chapters 3, 16, 21, 23, 26, 30, and 38, which are the most self-contained in the book.
- The business plan checkpoints go from four to three. Concept-and-space, product-and-people, and the complete package. The third checkpoint absorbs the service, channel, and money sections.
What does not change: Chapters 11, 12, 19, 24, 31, 32, and 33 keep full sessions. They are the computational core, they are cumulative, and a student who has not worked them cannot complete the plan.
Assessment
| Component | Weight |
|---|---|
| The Business Plan (three checkpoints: 20 / 30 / 50 of this component) | 50% |
| Midterm examination (after week 5) | 15% |
| Final examination and plan defense (week 10) | 15% |
| Case study analyses (three) | 12% |
| Problem sets (four) | 5% |
| Participation | 3% |
The weekly sequence
Week 1 — The business, the concept, the plan
Chapters 1, 2, 4 · read Ch. 3
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 1. The failure-rate correction. Prime cost. The four themes. |
| 2 | Ch. 2 and 4. Concept as a market question; the competitive set; the plan's structure and the assumptions register. |
Reading: Ch. 3 (brand and atmosphere). Due: concept statement, competitive set of eight, assumptions register started.
Week 2 — Money in, space, and capacity
Chapters 5, 6, 7
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 5 and 6. The capital stack and the personal guarantee; occupancy cost, not rent; rent commencement. |
| 2 | Ch. 7. Floor plan, kitchen layout, equipment, capacity derived from both directions. |
Due: capital stack, lease summary with ten-year exposure, floor plan with the binding capacity constraint identified.
Do not compress §7's capacity work. Everything downstream inherits it.
Week 3 — Law, opening, and the menu
Chapters 8, 9, 10
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 8 and 9. Entity, permits, and the liquor license; then the pre-opening countdown and the ramp. |
| 2 | Ch. 10. Menu development. The menu as an operations document. |
Due: Checkpoint 1 — concept, market, site, lease, floor plan, licensing, pre-opening timeline.
Week 4 — Costing and menu engineering
Chapters 11, 12
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 11. The usage formula. Cost cards. Purchases ÷ sales is not food cost. |
| 2 | Ch. 12. Menu engineering. Contribution over percentage. The two-dish comparison, live. |
Due: Problem set 1. Cost cards for at least eight items.
Full sessions, both. This is the week the course either takes or does not.
Week 5 — Purchasing, kitchen, beverage, and the midterm
Chapters 13, 14, 15 · read Ch. 16
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 13, 14, 15. Par levels and yields; the kitchen and the Friday night; the bar taught as a contrast with food costing. |
| 2 | Midterm examination (Chapters 1–16). |
Reading: Ch. 16 (the wine program). Due: one documented yield test; costed beverage program; Case analysis 1.
Week 6 — People
Chapters 17, 19, 20 · read Ch. 18, 21
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 17. Hiring, the pipeline, turnover cost computed. |
| 2 | Ch. 19 and 20. The labor model built from a schedule; wage and hour, the tip credit, classification — and how reclassification moves the break-even. |
Reading: Ch. 18 (training), Ch. 21 (leadership and culture). Due: org chart, labor model, and schedule.
Week 7 — The room
Chapters 22, 24, 25 · read Ch. 23, 26
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 22 and 24. Service flow; then seat turns, RevPASH, and pricing the room. |
| 2 | Ch. 25. Food safety, the Food Code, the surprise inspection run backwards. |
Reading: Ch. 23 (hospitality), Ch. 26 (technology). Due: Checkpoint 2 — costed menu, matrix, beverage program, org chart, labor model, service standards, revenue model, food safety plan. Problem set 2. Case analysis 2.
Week 8 — Channels and the statement
Chapters 27, 28, 31 · read Ch. 29, 30
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 27 and 28. Marketing built on frequency; channel contribution per order and when a channel is closed. |
| 2 | Ch. 31. The P&L, the chart of accounts, prime cost, the flash report. The cancelling-errors demonstration. |
Reading: Ch. 29 (catering and events), Ch. 30 (trucks, pop-ups, ghost kitchens). Due: marketing and off-premise sections.
Week 9 — Break-even, cash, controls
Chapters 32, 33, 34
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 32. Break-even in dollars and covers; sensitivity. |
| 2 | Ch. 33 and 34. The cash forecast, the trough, working capital sized against it; then controls. |
Due: thirteen-week cash forecast with the trough identified. Problem sets 3 and 4.
Both sessions are full sessions. Chapter 33 is the one students remember, and it is the one that cannot be absorbed from reading.
Week 10 — What comes next, and the defense
Chapters 35, 36, 37, 39, 40 · read Ch. 38
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 35–37 and 39. Growth criteria and the owner-dependency test; the incremental arithmetic of franchising and multi-unit; reading a statement in trouble. |
| 2 | Ch. 40 and the plan defense. Final examination. |
Reading: Ch. 38 (sustainability). Due: Checkpoint 3 — the complete business plan. Case analysis 3.
The sixteen chapters carried by reading
| Chapter | How it is assessed |
|---|---|
| 3 — Brand and atmosphere | Plan section (Checkpoint 1) |
| 16 — The wine program | Plan section (beverage program) |
| 18 — Training | Plan section (Checkpoint 2) |
| 21 — Leadership and culture | Discussion post |
| 23 — Hospitality and guest experience | Case analysis |
| 26 — Technology | Plan section (technology stack) |
| 29 — Catering and events | Plan section, or case analysis |
| 30 — Trucks, pop-ups, ghost kitchens | Case analysis |
| 38 — Sustainability | Discussion post |
Seven further chapters (8, 13, 14, 15, 34, 36, 37) get partial sessions shared with a neighbor. The
per-chapter notes in chapter-notes/ identify, for each, the one section to cover if only fifteen
minutes exist — use them; they were written for exactly this.
What breaks in ten weeks, and what to tell students
Be honest with the class about the tradeoff. In fifteen weeks students revise the business plan between checkpoints and discover their own inconsistencies. In ten weeks there is time to build it once. The revision loop is the single most valuable thing the longer course has, and it is what is being given up.
Two partial compensations that cost nothing:
- Require the one-page reconciliation summary at Checkpoint 2, not only at the end. It forces an early collision between the menu, the schedule, and the revenue projection — which is where the revision loop would otherwise have done its work.
- Peer-review Checkpoint 2 in class. Twenty minutes, structured on the eleven arithmetic ties. Students find in each other's plans exactly what they cannot see in their own.
What not to cut, under any pressure: the capacity derivation in Chapter 7, the two-dish comparison in Chapter 12, the schedule-produces-the-percentage rule in Chapter 19, and the cash trough in Chapter 33. Those four are the course.