Open a venue with financials that hold up
A free starter kit for the money side of opening a room. What it costs to build, what it costs to run, and how many covers a night it takes before the place pays for itself. The models are the ones you want in front of you before you sign a lease, not after.
The model ships with preview numbers for a 120-seat room so you can see the mechanics working. Every input is editable, and the break-even and runway figures move with them.
Download the model
Pre-opening budget, monthly operating model and break-even, in one workbook. The file downloads immediately.
Download the financial modelNo email required. Opens in Excel, Google Sheets and Numbers.
The problem
Rooms rarely fail on the food
They fail on numbers that were knowable in advance and never got written down. These are the four that do the most damage, in the order they usually bite.
- 01
The build number is not the capital number
A contractor bids the build. Nobody bids the months of rent you pay on a space that cannot serve anyone yet, or the cash you need to cover losses until the room finds its feet. Those two lines are the difference between a budget and a plan.
- 02
Break-even gets discovered, not calculated
Most operators learn what the room has to do on a Tuesday sometime in month four, from a bank balance. It is a number you can know before you sign the lease, and it is the number that tells you whether the rent is survivable.
- 03
The books start unstructured
One Food Cost line and one Beverage line is the default in every accounting package. It is also the reason a supplier price increase on proteins can run for two quarters before anyone sees it in a report.
- 04
The trades get paid before the paperwork exists
Your GC, electrician and sign guy are 1099 contractors. If you pay them before collecting W-9s, you spend the following January chasing tax forms from people who finished the job eleven months ago.
The kit
Four files, no email required
The financial model is the centrepiece. The other three cover the parts of opening that touch money: how the books are structured, and how you pay the people who help you open.
Venue opening financial model
Pre-opening budget across build-out, equipment, licences and pre-opening payroll, a monthly operating model, and a break-even tab that converts your cost base into covers per day. Budget, actual and variance columns so it becomes your settlement file once you are building.
Restaurant chart of accounts
Start structured. A single Food Cost line cannot tell you that proteins moved while produce held, and that is the report you will want by month three.
Concert & event budget
If the room does shows. Full event P&L, a ticket tier calculator that models fee drag, and a break-even engine for the night.
Artist offer sheet
The offer that goes out before a show gets booked. Guarantee, bonus tiers, payment schedule and a scenario calculator.
What it tells you
The number worth knowing before the lease
Fill in the model and it converts your whole cost base into one figure: covers per day to break even. In the preview build that lands at 149 against a plan of 165, a cushion of sixteen covers a night. It also shows what a slow open costs, and how many months your reserve covers it.
Preview figures, not benchmarks. They exist to show the mechanics working. Replace them with your own quotes and the whole model moves.
Questions
Questions about the kit
Is this really free?
What numbers are already filled in?
Why does the model show only about 5% EBITDA?
What is the single line most people forget?
Can I use this in Google Sheets?
What does Cleo Pay have to do with opening a venue?
The build is where your contractor payments start
Cleo Pay collects a W-9 from every trade before they are paid, sends payments on ACH with tracking, and syncs it to QuickBooks. Your first year of books ends up clean instead of reconstructed.