Every restaurant sale gets an accountant's review — revenue, expenses, tax filings, the numbers a lawyer will insist on. Almost none get the operational audit that actually decides whether those numbers survive the handover. A seller's P&L shows what happened under their pricing, their relationships, their staff. It says almost nothing about what happens the week after you take over.
Get the real food cost from invoices, not the P&L line
A P&L food-cost line is only as honest as the recipe costs behind it, and those are frequently stale — costed once, years ago, against prices nobody has re-checked since. Pull twelve months of supplier invoices and recompute the top twenty sellers yourself, ingredient by ingredient. The gap between the seller's stated food cost and what the invoices actually show is the single most common surprise in a restaurant sale, and it's the fastest number to catch before you sign anything.
Ask for the fiches techniques. If there aren't any, the margin is an opinion
A fiche technique — ingredient, quantity, cost, yield, one per dish — is what turns a claimed margin into a provable one. If the seller can hand you spec sheets for the top sellers, the numbers are probably real. If there aren't any, every margin claim in the sale is an estimate built on memory, and memory tends to round in the seller's favor. No fiches means you're buying a story, not a number.
Read the lease like it's the whole business, because it might be
Term remaining, renewal options, rent escalation clauses, and whether the lease actually transfers to you or has to be renegotiated from zero — a great restaurant on a lease expiring in eighteen months, with no renewal guarantee, is a much shorter business than the sale price implies. Ask a lawyer to read the lease before you read the P&L.
Find out whether the value is in the walls or in one person
Some restaurants run on a system; some run on a chef or bartender the regulars actually come for. Ask directly whether key staff know the sale is happening and whether they're staying. A venue that loses its head chef the month after the handover isn't the business you paid for — it's a riskier one wearing the same sign.
Check equipment age before it becomes your capex bill
A walk-in on its last compressor, a hood system due for replacement, a dish machine held together by a favor from the repair guy — none of it shows up on a P&L, and all of it becomes your problem in month two. Ask for service records, not just a walkthrough; a clean-looking kitchen can still be a year from a five-figure repair.
The audit list
- 12 months of supplier invoices, cross-checked against the stated food cost
- Fiches techniques (or their absence) for the top 20 sellers
- Full lease terms: remaining length, renewal options, rent escalation, transferability
- Staff dependency — who the business would struggle to replace, and whether they're staying
- Equipment service records and realistic remaining life on major kitchen assets
- POS sales history by item, not just the summary, to sanity-check the seller's best-seller claims
None of this replaces the accountant's review — it runs alongside it. The financial audit tells you what the business made; the operational one tells you whether it can keep making it under you. Once the numbers are real, the next question is what they're actually worth — covered in what a restaurant is worth. The full method for the takeover, diligence through the first 90 days, is in the buying a restaurant guide.
