Syllabus — 15-Week Semester
The full course. All forty chapters, the complete progressive project, four graded checkpoints, a midterm, and a final defense. Built for two 75-minute sessions a week (30 sessions) or one 150-minute session a week with the second half of the material assigned as structured independent work.
If you are teaching this book once, teach it this way.
Course description
An operations-and-finance course in independent restaurant management, taught in the sequence an operator actually meets the decisions: concept, capital, space, menu, cost, people, service, channels, money, and what comes after. Students build a complete restaurant business plan across the term, one section per chapter, and defend it in the final two weeks.
Prerequisites: none. A calculator is required and is used in nearly every session.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the course a student can:
- Build a costed menu — write a cost card that foots, compute food cost percentage and contribution margin, and price a menu from contribution rather than from a percentage target.
- Build a labor model from a schedule — positions, hours, rates, and burden — and explain why the labor percentage is an output rather than an input.
- Read a restaurant P&L, compute prime cost, and identify which of its lines are controllable on what timescale.
- Compute break-even in dollars and in covers, and perform a sensitivity analysis on the inputs most likely to be wrong.
- Build a thirteen-week cash forecast, identify the trough, and size working capital against it.
- Derive capacity in both directions — from the room and from the kitchen — and use the binding constraint to bound a revenue projection.
- Apply the FDA Food Code's core provisions to a working kitchen, and explain where local jurisdiction governs.
- Analyze a wage-and-hour, classification, or tip-credit question and trace its effect through to the operating statement.
- Assemble and defend a complete restaurant business plan whose numbers agree with one another.
- State, for any technique in the course, what it cannot tell you.
Assessment
| Component | Weight |
|---|---|
| The Business Plan (four checkpoints: 15 / 25 / 20 / 40 of this component) | 50% |
| Midterm examination (after week 8) | 15% |
| Final examination and plan defense (weeks 14–15) | 15% |
| Case study analyses (four of the student's choosing, one per assigned part) | 10% |
| Problem sets (six, drawn from the chapter exercises) | 5% |
| Participation and professional practice | 5% |
Rubrics for the plan, case analyses, and participation are in rubrics/.
The weekly sequence
Each week lists its chapters, the session split, the deliverable, and the one thing to be sure of. The
per-chapter teaching notes in chapter-notes/ carry the timing, misconceptions, and board demonstrations
for each session.
Week 1 — Why restaurants fail, and what a concept is
Chapters 1–2 · Part I opens
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 1. The failure-rate correction. Prime cost introduced as the course's spine. The four themes. |
| 2 | Ch. 2. Concept as a market question, not a cuisine question. The competitive set. |
Deliverable: concept statement and a competitive set of at least eight establishments, with check average, capacity, and what a guest gives up by choosing you.
Be sure of: that the failure-rate correction lands as a method, not a fact. See common-struggles.md
§1. This is the week the course's posture toward numbers is established or lost.
Week 2 — Brand, and the plan itself
Chapters 3–4
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 3. Brand, identity, atmosphere. Why the room is an argument about price. |
| 2 | Ch. 4. The business plan's structure. What a reader is actually looking for. |
Deliverable: business plan outline with the assumptions register started.
Be sure of: students understand that the assumptions register is graded and will be graded harder each checkpoint. Install the habit now.
Week 3 — Money in, and the space
Chapters 5–6
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 5. The capital stack: owner injection, TI allowance, equipment finance, bank debt. Personal guarantees. |
| 2 | Ch. 6. Location and lease. Occupancy cost, not rent. Rent commencement. |
Deliverable: capital stack and lease summary with total ten-year occupancy exposure as a single number.
Be sure of: every student has computed the full-term lease exposure. Most have never done it and it is usually the largest number in their plan.
Week 4 — Designing the room, and the law
Chapters 7–8
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 7. Floor plan, kitchen layout, equipment, and capacity derived from both directions. |
| 2 | Ch. 8. Entity, permits, liquor license, insurance. |
Deliverable: floor plan with seat count, station map, and a capacity derivation from the room and from the kitchen, with the binding constraint identified.
Be sure of: the two capacity derivations disagree and the student says which one governs. This is the
most consequential single skill in Part II — see common-struggles.md §6.
Week 5 — Opening, and the menu
Chapters 9–10 · Part II closes, Part III opens
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 9. The pre-opening countdown, the soft open, the first ninety days, the ramp. |
| 2 | Ch. 10. Menu development. Menu as an operations document. |
Deliverable: Checkpoint 1 due — concept, market, site, lease, floor plan, licensing, pre-opening timeline. Graded on Dimensions B, C, and E only.
Be sure of: the ramp is understood before Part VII needs it. A student who thinks a restaurant opens at plan volume will build a cash forecast that cannot be salvaged.
Week 6 — Costing
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 margin over percentage. The 2×2 as a diagnostic. |
Deliverable: Problem set 1 (costing). Cost cards for at least eight menu items.
Be sure of: the two-dish comparison is done live. See common-struggles.md §8 — ninety seconds on
the board, and the room never confuses percentage with contribution again.
Week 7 — Purchasing, inventory, and the kitchen
Chapters 13–14
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 13. Purchasing, par levels, yields, receiving, the physical count. |
| 2 | Ch. 14. Kitchen operations, stations, prep, the pass. The Friday night, first pass. |
Deliverable: one documented yield test.
Be sure of: the yield test is actually performed. Twenty minutes of real work permanently changes how a student reads an invoice.
Week 8 — Beverage, and the midterm
Chapters 15–16 · Part III closes
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 15 and 16. Bar, pour cost, and the wine program. Taught as a contrast with food costing. |
| 2 | Midterm examination (Chapters 1–16). |
Deliverable: costed beverage program.
Be sure of: the midterm is weighted toward computation. See exam-bank/midterm.md.
Week 9 — Hiring and training
Chapters 17–18 · Part IV opens
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 17. Hiring, the pipeline, and the cost of turnover, computed. |
| 2 | Ch. 18. Training, onboarding, and what a trained employee actually costs to produce. |
Deliverable: Checkpoint 2 begins. Organizational chart.
Be sure of: the annual turnover cost is computed for the student's own plan, not just read. It is the number that reframes Part IV as economics.
Week 10 — The labor model and the law
Chapters 19–21 · Part IV closes
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 19. Scheduling, the labor model, fixed versus variable labor. The schedule produces the percentage. |
| 2 | Ch. 20 and 21. Wage and hour, the tip credit, classification, overtime — then culture and leadership. |
Deliverable: Checkpoint 2 due — costed menu, cost cards, menu-engineering matrix, beverage program, org chart, labor model and schedule.
Be sure of: Chapter 20's demonstration that reclassifying one salaried position moves the labor line, the break-even, and the covers-per-night requirement. Compliance is an input to the model.
Week 11 — The room
Chapters 22–24 · Part V opens
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 22 and 23. Front of house, service flow, service recovery, reviews, frequency and lifetime value. |
| 2 | Ch. 24. Revenue management, seat turns, RevPASH, pricing the room. |
Deliverable: Problem set 2 (RevPASH and capacity).
Be sure of: RevPASH is worked hour by hour for a single night. The 5:30 hour and the 7:30 hour are different businesses, and that is not visible from a daily average.
Week 12 — Safety, technology, and channels
Chapters 25–28 · Part V closes, Part VI opens
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 25 and 26. Food safety, the Food Code, the surprise inspection run backwards; then the technology stack and what it costs. |
| 2 | Ch. 27 and 28. Marketing built on frequency; delivery, takeout, and off-premise contribution. |
Deliverable: Checkpoint 3 due — service standards, revenue model, food safety plan, technology, marketing, off-premise.
Be sure of: the inspection findings are traced back to the decisions that produced them. Four of five trace to the schedule or to training.
Week 13 — Channels close, the money opens
Chapters 29–32 · Part VI closes, Part VII opens
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 29 and 30. Catering and events; food trucks, pop-ups, ghost kitchens. Contribution per order, and when a channel is closed. |
| 2 | Ch. 31 and 32. The P&L, the chart of accounts, prime cost, the flash report; then break-even in dollars and covers. |
Deliverable: Problem set 3 (the P&L and break-even).
Be sure of: the cancelling-errors demonstration from Chapter 31's teaching notes. It is the best fifteen minutes in Part VII and it teaches a general principle — a model validated only at its calibration point is untested — that transfers well beyond this course.
Week 14 — Cash, controls, and what comes next
Chapters 33–37
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 33 and 34. Cash flow, the trough, working capital sized against it; then financial controls. |
| 2 | Ch. 35, 36, 37. Growth decisions, franchising, multi-unit. The incremental arithmetic. |
Deliverable: thirteen-week cash forecast with the trough identified and working capital sized against it. Problem set 4.
Be sure of: students find the trough themselves rather than reading where the book's is. Almost every student expects it in the slowest month and finds it in an early payroll cycle instead.
Week 15 — Sustainability, trouble, and the defense
Chapters 38–40 · Part VIII closes
| Session | Content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ch. 38 and 39. Sustainability as an operating question; then reading a statement in trouble. |
| 2 | Ch. 40 and the plan defense. The assembled plan is submitted and judged; the room takes the lender's side. |
Deliverable: Checkpoint 4 due — the complete business plan, plus the final examination.
Be sure of: the defense is adversarial in substance and generous in tone. Students should be asked the hardest question about their own weakest assumption — ideally the one they flagged themselves, which is the outcome the assumptions register was installed in week two to produce.
Problem sets
Six, drawn from the chapter exercises. Each is a selection, not a chapter's full set — the sets in this book run 25–35 items and are meant to be sampled.
| # | Due | Source chapters | Focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Week 6 | 11, 12 | Cost cards, the usage formula, contribution margin |
| 2 | Week 11 | 19, 24 | The labor model, capacity, RevPASH |
| 3 | Week 13 | 31, 32 | The P&L, prime cost, break-even |
| 4 | Week 14 | 33 | Cash forecasting and the trough |
| 5 | Week 14 | 20, 25 | Wage-and-hour and food safety applied to a working operation |
| 6 | Week 15 | 35–37 | The incremental arithmetic of growth |
The daggered (†) exercises in each chapter are the ones with worked answers in
appendices/answers-to-selected.md. Assign a mix of daggered and undaggered so students have some
self-check and some genuine assessment.
If you fall behind
You will. Three compressions in order of least damage:
- Merge Chapters 15 and 16 into one session and assign the wine program as reading. The wine chapter is excellent and is the most self-contained in the book.
- Merge Chapters 29 and 30 and assign one as a case-study analysis instead of a session.
- Move Chapter 38 to reading with a discussion post. It is genuinely important and it is the one chapter whose material students can absorb without a session.
Do not compress Chapters 31, 32, or 33. They are the course. A student who leaves without being able to read a P&L, compute a break-even, and find a cash trough has not taken this course, whatever the transcript says.
Do not skip Chapter 39. It is what makes the other thirty-nine honest.