How many covers before you make a penny? Work back from your fixed costs and average spend to a nightly target the floor can actually aim at.
| Contribution per cover | £0 |
| Contribution margin | 0% |
| Covers / day to hit target profit | 0 |
| Revenue / week to hit target profit | £0 |
Anything that arrives regardless of trade: rent, business rates, salaried management, insurance, software subscriptions, standing utility charges, accountancy. If it doesn't fall when you close for a quiet Monday, it's fixed.
Because it changes the shape of the answer. Salaried staff raise your break-even point; hourly staff reduce your contribution per cover. Lumping them together hides which lever actually helps — cutting shifts, or renegotiating the fixed base.
It means you need a consistently busy room just to stand still, with no cushion for a quiet week, a heatwave or a tube strike. It isn't fatal, but it makes the business fragile — and it usually points at either rent, average spend, or a GP problem rather than a marketing one.
It's a single-week model that assumes an even spread of trade and one average spend per head. Real venues have Tuesday and Saturday, lunch and dinner, and a drinks mix that shifts the GP. Useful for direction and for sanity-checking a plan; not a substitute for a proper forecast.