Cash runway for restaurant owners: how many months do you really have?

Runway turns money stress into a plan. For restaurant owners the calculation has one twist worth knowing.

Guide · Brandon Grutkowski ·

02 / The guide
The worked example

Ember & Oak, a full-service restaurant, holds $22,800 in cash against a monthly burn of $6,000, everything included: rent, gear, software, and the owner draw. That is 3.8 months of runway at current burn. Under the four-month line, so the watchlist stays lit.

The method, plainly

Runway = cash on hand ÷ monthly burn, using your heaviest recent burn month rather than your cheapest. The full reasoning, including what to do at each runway level, lives in the main runway guide; the calculator runs it with your numbers in your browser.

The twist for restaurant owners

Restaurant burn is lumpy: rent and payroll are fixed but food cost rides revenue, so compute burn from your heaviest recent month. A slow January against December burn is how 3.8 months becomes 2 in practice.

03 / Keep reading
  1. 01How many months of cash does your business actually have?
  2. 02Cash runway calculator with a thin-months warning
  3. 03How much should restaurant owners pay themselves?
04 / Counsel

Counsel does this math on your real numbers.

Connect Square, Stripe, Shopify, Etsy, QuickBooks, or your bank. Every answer carries a receipt: the method, the sample size, and the confidence. When the math is not conclusive, it says so.

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Counsel's rule, applied to its own content: every figure above is computed, sourced from our demo businesses or your own inputs, never invented. This is cash math, not tax or legal advice. Written and maintained by the founder.