Restaurant profit and loss is the monthly report of what the shop sold, what it spent, and what was left. An income statement for a restaurant is the same report. If you searched income statement for restaurant, this is that paper: sales on top, expenses in the middle, profit or loss at the bottom, for a period you can name.
This post reads the lines. It does not build next month's plan, and it does not chase one industry margin. Planning ahead is how to budget a restaurant. Why a published average will not run the shop is average restaurant profit margin. The fee lines are the part online ordering changes. A plan fee, a percentage on your storefront, and a marketplace fee of 15 to 30% do not belong inside food. Whether that own-site door should exist is online ordering for restaurants.
What a restaurant profit and loss is for
A restaurant profit and loss covers a period, usually a month. The dates should be printed on the page.
It is not the bank balance. Card batches, marketplace deposits, and a vendor you pay on Friday can make cash and the statement disagree for a few days. Read the statement for the period. Read the bank for cash. If the bottom looks fine and the account is thin, the question is timing, not the recipe.
Compare this month with last month, and with the same month last year if you have it. A holiday week against a snow week is not a trend.
Start at sales, and split the doors
The top line is sales. One number for the whole building shows that the month was busy and hides which door paid for it. Split it when the paper or your notes allow: dining room, pickup on your site, delivery on your site, marketplace orders, catering, and anything else.
Restaurant admin shows orders, revenue, average ticket, and best-sellers for the storefront. That figure is the own-site pile, not the restaurant. The dining room still lives on the register. Marketplace sales live on that company's statement. Add the piles. If the admin number stands in for the month, the statement looks like a website with a kitchen attached.
Use the same labels every month. A new name each time is how catering disappears into a bucket called other. The fee lines below need a sales number to sit beside.
Net sales, after comps and refunds
Under gross sales, take off discounts, comps you meant, voids, and refunds. What remains is net sales. On a MicroSky Food plan with a percentage, that percentage applies to net sales. Pricing describes them as storefront orders after refunds and voids. Use the same idea on every channel.
A void is not food cost. A comp you intended is not a marketplace fee. If those dollars sit on the wrong line, every line below them looks slightly wrong. Note a large comp in the margin. You will not remember it in March.
Cost of goods is food, not fees
Cost of goods is what you bought for the plate and the cup: food, beverage, and packaging you can tie to an order. The evidence is invoices. If you count inventory, use beginning inventory, plus purchases, minus what is still on the shelf. If you do not count, say so. Purchases are then a rough stand-in. Either habit is fine. Switching every month is not.
Do not drop ordering fees into this line. A marketplace percentage is not an ingredient. A software subscription is not a case of tomatoes. A food line that hides app fees will send you into the walk-in to fix a menu that was fine. Packaging you bought can sit with food. A fee the marketplace kept before the deposit cannot.
Labor is people, and only people
Labor is wages, payroll taxes, and benefits if you pay them. Keep salaried managers here if that is where your accountant already puts them. A family draw might sit lower. Ask once, then leave the line alone so months can be compared.
Food plus labor is what many operators call prime cost. It is a subtotal in the margin, not a new bill, and this page does not give it a target. Add your two lines. That sum is the number you have.
Where online ordering fees belong
Below labor, most statements list operating expenses: utilities, repairs, supplies, marketing, software, and fees. Rent is often its own group further down. Follow your accountant's groups. The job is to see the ordering dollars, not to invent a new chart of accounts on a Tuesday.
Marketplace fees on their own line
Third-party marketplace fees often land in a band of 15 to 30% of that channel's sales. Your contract beats the band. Use the band only while the statement is still missing, then replace it. Put the dollars on a line named for that channel. Do not file them under marketing unless you bought an ad on purpose. A toll on Friday's regular is not an ad.
More than one marketplace can share a line with a note, or take a line each if the totals are large. A blended online number that mixes their fee with yours always looks medium. That is how a high fee hides.
First-party fees are two lines, not one
Your own site has two costs. Do not smear them together. The monthly plan does not grow because Friday was busy. On Standard, choose $249 per month plus 5% of net sales, or $499 per month flat. Growth is $499 per month plus 7% of net sales. Growth Plus is $999 per month plus 10% of net sales. Growth and Growth Plus require 3 months on Standard. Write the subscription on a software line. It is there in a slow week. Pricing is where that choice is written, including the $499 Standard option.
The percentage moves with storefront net sales. Put it on a fee line beside the marketplace line. Same kind of cost, different door. This arithmetic is an illustration, not a forecast and not your margin: on a $40 storefront order, 5% is $2, 7% is $2.80, and 10% is $4. A marketplace fee of 15% on that $40 is $6, and 30% is $12. The monthly plan is additional. The margin guide is where regulars on the high-fee door get the longer look.
A $500 one-time hardware package, a mini PC print server and a receipt printer, is not a monthly fee. Skip it if a printer you trust already takes the tickets. If you buy it, ask whether that month expenses it once. Do not copy $500 onto every month.
Occupancy, then the bottom line
Rent, and whatever else sits with the building, usually comes next. Then interest, depreciation, or a repair that will not repeat. Read them so they do not shock you. A one-time repair is not proof the restaurant is failing. Leave it out of the argument about food cost.
The bottom is profit or a loss for the period named at the top. Read it last. If the lines above are misfiled, the bottom is a mood. A loss is a fact about that period. Find the line that moved before you change the menu, the hours, or the staff.
Thirty minutes, once a month
On a quiet morning, set out the statement, the marketplace report, and the storefront total from admin. You are checking that the lines sit in the right places.
A missing fee line is this month's work. Targets before the month starts are how to budget a restaurant. This read asks whether the month matched that paper. Note which door grew, and whether its fee grew with it.
- Confirm the period printed on the statement.
- Split sales by door if the paper or your notes allow it.
- Check that food is invoices, not fees.
- Check that labor is people.
- Find the marketplace dollars, the own-site subscription, and the own-site percentage.
- Read the bottom only after those lines look honest.
What this statement will not do
A restaurant profit and loss will not tell you which dish to cut. That takes invoices and a conversation with the cook. It will not dispatch drivers or draw a fence around the block. Delivery on your site is a zone, a radius, and a fee you set. MicroSky Food does not offer driver dispatch or geofencing. It also will not replace the bookkeeper who decides where rent sits.
If own-site sales are zero because the site is not live, the statement cannot invent that door. How it works is the setup. Whether the door is worth opening is online ordering for restaurants. Restaurants already on the platform are on clients. Questions go through contact. The live demo is a storefront on a phone. Plan math is on pricing: Standard is $249 per month plus 5% of net sales, or $499 per month flat. Growth is $499 per month plus 7% of net sales. Growth Plus is $999 per month plus 10% of net sales, after 3 months on Standard. There is a 30-day free trial and no long-term contract. Start 30 Day Free Trial. Call (888) 960-1359.