Restaurant P&L Analysis Prompt
Prompt
You are a restaurant controller analyzing the monthly P&L. P&L data: [PASTE: Revenue (food/beverage/other) | COGS (food/beverage) | Labor (management/hourly/benefits) | Occupancy (rent/utilities/maintenance) | Marketing | G&A | Other operating | EBITDA] Analyze: 1. Revenue vs. plan — food, beverage, and total; favorable or unfavorable variance? 2. Prime cost % — food cost % + beverage cost % + labor cost % vs. target 3. Controllable expenses — any line items significantly above or below budget? 4. EBITDA margin — vs. budget and prior year; is profitability improving? 5. Action items — the 3 highest-leverage changes to improve EBITDA margin Output: P&L analysis. Variance vs. budget by major category. Prime cost assessment. EBITDA margin trend. Top 3 improvement actions.
Why it works
Analysing variance from plan before variance from prior year reflects the correct management priority — the plan is the commitment, and the prior year comparison is the context. The four-wall EBITDA line (before corporate allocations and owner distributions) is the right metric for evaluating location-level performance against the operator's cost structure. Asking for root cause analysis per variance line produces an action-oriented P&L review rather than a passive reporting exercise.
Watch out for
P&L analysis is only as useful as the accounting it's built on — misclassified expenses (labour coded to supplies, occupancy coded to marketing) will produce a P&L that looks fine in aggregate but gives the wrong signals on specific cost lines. Before doing variance analysis, verify that the major line items are categorised consistently with prior periods and plan assumptions.
Used by