Year-ahead planning in one afternoon

Every year, the owner means to plan the next one properly. Every year, January arrives with a broken fridge and a short-staffed weekend, the spring menu is written in a hurry in March, the summer offer is invented in July and the festive bookings open late because nobody remembered to plan them. The year happens to the venue instead of the venue planning the year.

Year-ahead planning does not need a retreat or a consultant. It needs one afternoon, the right three or four people, last year's figures and a single calendar on which everything that matters is decided: the seasons, the holidays, the menus, the offers, the closures, the staff holidays, the marketing and the budget. An afternoon spent in December saves weeks of improvising through the year.

This guide covers how to run that afternoon: who should be there, what to bring, the order to decide things in, what goes on the calendar and how to keep the plan alive through the year. Every venue and figure in it is an example.

A year's plan sounds like a large project, but most of its decisions are simple once the facts are on the table. When is the venue busy and quiet? When do the menus change? When are the holidays, the events and the closures? When does the marketing go out? Each takes minutes to decide when everyone who knows the answers is in the same room.

What takes time is gathering the facts and getting the people together. Do that in advance, and the afternoon itself is a matter of filling in a calendar.

Hold the afternoon in December, before the festive rush, or in the first quiet days of January, before the new year gets busy. Both give enough time to act on the plan before the first decisions fall due.

Book it in the diary weeks ahead, like a booking for an important guest. An afternoon that is left until "when things calm down" never happens.

Bring the people who make the year happen: the owner, the head chef, the general manager and, in a larger venue, whoever runs the marketing and the accounts. Three or four people are enough; more makes it a meeting rather than a decision.

Each brings their own knowledge: the chef knows the seasons and the menus, the manager knows the team and the guests, the owner knows the money and the goals. The plan needs all three.

Bring last year's figures: sales and covers by month and by week, the busiest and quietest days, the results of last year's offers and events, the holidays and what they did to trade, and the costs that changed. Bring the calendar for the year ahead, with the public holidays and the local events already marked.

Bring the budget too, or the figures to build one. Our guide to a restaurant budget for the year ahead covers how to build the restaurant budget itself.

Start the afternoon with an hour of end of year reporting: what happened last year, month by month. Which months beat the plan and which fell short? Which offers and events worked? Which costs grew faster than sales? What surprised everyone?

Keep it to the few reports that answer those questions. Our guide to restaurant reporting: six reports, no more covers which reports matter. The aim is not to admire last year but to learn from it before planning the next.

Next, map the seasonal trade for the year ahead: the busy months, the quiet months and the weeks in between, from last year's figures and what you know about this year. Mark the school holidays, the public holidays, the events nearby and any changes to the area, such as a new office building or road works.

Our guide to seasonal trade: mapping your own restaurant year covers how to build the map. Everything else on the calendar is planned around it.

Put every public holiday and every known local event on the calendar, with a note of what each did to trade last year. Some fill the room; others empty it. Some need extra staff, others a shorter day.

For holidays that move each year, such as those set by a lunar calendar, check this year's dates and plan for the season they fall in. A holiday that fell in a busy month last year may fall in a quiet one this year.

Decide when the menus will change and what each change will be: the spring menu, the summer menu, the autumn menu, the festive menu. Give each a launch date, a date for the chef to finalise it and a date for the new menus to be printed and loaded.

A menu change planned in December is tested, costed and printed in good time. One planned in the week it launches is none of those things.

Plan the offers and events for the year: the supper clubs, the tastings, the set menus for quiet months, the festive packages and the celebrations. Put each on the calendar where the seasonal map shows it will help most: in the quiet weeks, not the busy ones.

Decide the price and the purpose of each offer when you put it on the calendar, and check its margin. An offer planned for a quiet February Tuesday has a clear job; one invented in February to rescue a bad week rarely does it.

Decide when the venue will close, if at all: for holidays, for a deep clean, for repairs or a refurbishment. Plan the maintenance that needs a quiet week: servicing the extraction, the refrigeration and the coffee machine, painting, replacing furniture.

Put each in the quietest week that suits it. A deep clean in the quietest week of the year costs far less in lost trade than one forced on the venue in a busy month by a failed inspection.

Plan the team's holidays around the seasonal map. Ask everyone for their main holiday wishes early in the year, agree them against the busy and quiet months and mark them on the calendar.

A team that knows its holidays in January plans its year with confidence. A team that has to fight for every day off, week by week, does not stay long.

Mark when the venue will need more people: before the summer, before the festive season, before any new service. Plan the recruitment a few weeks ahead of each, and the training before the busy weeks begin.

Plan the training for the quiet weeks too: the new menu, allergen refreshers, service standards and the skills that are impossible to teach in a busy week.

Plan the marketing against the calendar: an email calendar of the messages to send to guests who agreed to hear from you, the social media themes for each month, the announcements for each menu change, event and festive season.

Our guide to an email calendar for a venue with no marketer covers how to plan a year of emails in an hour. Send each message early enough to fill the event it announces: the festive email in September, the January offers in December.

Turn the plan into the restaurant budget: the sales expected each month, from the seasonal map and the offers; the costs, including the extra staff in busy months, the menu launches, the maintenance and the marketing; and the profit each month should leave.

A budget built from the calendar is far more realistic than one that divides last year's total by twelve. It also shows, in advance, the months when cash will be tight, so the venue can plan for them.

Add the dates that are easy to forget: licence and permit renewals, insurance, leases and their review dates, contracts with suppliers and service providers, tax deadlines and the dates the accountant needs information.

A renewal missed because nobody remembered it can close a venue or cost a fine. On the calendar, it becomes a simple task with a date.

Put everything on one calendar that everyone who needs it can see: the seasons, the holidays, the events, the menus, the offers, the closures, the team's holidays, the recruitment, the marketing, the budget milestones and the deadlines.

One calendar, shared, is the plan. Five separate lists, kept by five people, are not.

Give every item on the calendar an owner: the person who makes sure it happens. The chef owns the menu changes, the manager the rota and the training, the owner the budget and the renewals, the marketer the emails.

An item with no owner is an item everyone assumes someone else is doing. A name beside each one turns the calendar into a set of commitments.

Review the plan every quarter, in an hour: what happened against the plan, what needs to change and what is coming in the next three months. Update the calendar, the budget and the owners.

A year rarely goes exactly to plan. A quarterly review keeps the plan useful instead of a document from December that nobody reads by March. Our guide to a weekly review that takes thirty minutes covers the weekly rhythm beneath it.

The plan is only useful if it is used. Keep it simple: a calendar with dates and owners, a budget with monthly figures and a short list of the year's goals. A plan that takes a day to read will not be read.

Strategic planning in large companies can take months. A restaurant needs far less: the few decisions that shape the year, made together, written down and reviewed.

A group with several venues can plan in the same way, with one calendar per venue and a shared one for what is common: the group's marketing, the shared menu changes, the central training and the budget.

Hold the afternoon for each venue with its own team, then bring the plans together. Each venue's seasons, events and guests are its own, and its plan should be too.

Before filling the calendar in detail, agree three or four goals for the year: a sales figure, a margin, a number of regulars, a new service or a refurbishment. Goals give the calendar a purpose and the quarterly reviews something to measure.

Keep the goals few and specific. "Grow the business" is a wish; "lift weekday lunch covers by a fifth" is a goal the calendar can be built around.

Name the risks too: a lease renewal, a key person who may leave, a new competitor, a supplier whose prices are rising, a road closure planned nearby. For each, note what the venue will do if it happens.

A risk written down in December is a risk the venue can prepare for. One discovered in June is a crisis.

Look at the cash, not only the profit. A venue can be profitable over the year and still run short in a quiet month, especially after a busy December's bills arrive. Our guide to cash flow: profitable and still short in January covers why.

Mark the months when cash will be tight: the quiet months, the months with large payments such as rent, licences or insurance, and the months after big investments. Plan for them in advance, so a tight month is managed rather than feared.

Plan the year's investments: new equipment, furniture, a refurbishment, a new menu system or a training programme. Put each in the month it makes most sense, usually a quiet one, and in the budget.

Plan the repairs you know are coming: the equipment that is ageing, the furniture that is wearing out. A replacement planned for a quiet month costs less than one forced on the venue by a breakdown in a busy one.

Set the marketing budget for the year and divide it across the calendar: the emails, the social media, any advertising, the events and the partnerships. Spend most where the seasonal map shows the most to gain, usually just before the quiet months and the big seasons.

Our guide to a marketing budget a single venue can defend covers how much to spend and how to judge it.

Share the parts of the plan that affect the team: the menu changes, the busy and quiet months, the holidays, the training and the goals. A team that knows the year's plan can help deliver it, and can plan their own lives around it.

A short briefing in January, with the calendar on the wall, takes half an hour and makes the whole year easier.

The calendar is a plan for the people as much as the venue. Mark the busiest weeks, when nobody should take holiday, and the quiet weeks, when holidays, training and rest fit best. Note any team member's planned leave that is already known.

A team that can see the year can plan its own: holidays booked early, family events kept free and the busy weeks prepared for. That is good for retention as well as for the rota.

Not everything belongs on the year's calendar. Weekly tasks, daily routines and small decisions are better kept in the weekly review. The year's plan is for the decisions that shape the year: seasons, menus, offers, closures, people, marketing and money.

A calendar crowded with every task becomes unreadable. Keep it to the few dozen dates that matter, and it will be used.

A venue in its first year has no figures from last year to plan from. Use the months it has, the patterns of similar venues nearby and the calendar of holidays and events, and plan more cautiously.

Hold a second planning afternoon six months in, when the venue has real figures. The plan made before opening is a guess; the one made at six months is the venue's first real plan, and the next year's is far more accurate for it.

An invented bistro holds its planning afternoon on the first Monday of December, with the owner, the head chef and the manager. The first hour reviews last year: a strong autumn, a poor February, an offer in March that worked and one in July that did not. The second hour builds the seasonal map and marks the holidays, events and school breaks.

The rest of the afternoon fills the calendar: four menu changes with their dates, a supper club in each quiet month, a deep clean in the second week of January, the team's holidays, recruitment in April and October, a monthly email plan and the licence renewal in June. The budget follows the next day. Each quarter, an hour's review keeps it current, and the year is the first in which the festive bookings open on time.

servearound has no planning calendar, so the plan itself lives in your own calendar or document. What it holds is the history the afternoon starts from. Reservation analytics show covers by day and by day and hour, and payment analytics show what was collected, for any custom date range, so last year's months and holidays can be looked up by their dates; there is no automatic comparison with last year, so compare the ranges by hand. Bills for a date range can be downloaded as a CSV.

Menus can be scheduled for the dates they run, and campaigns can be scheduled up to 90 days ahead or set to send every week or month, so the menu changes and the email calendar can be set up as each quarter approaches. See Analytics, or get in touch with questions.

In December, before the festive rush, or in the first quiet days of January.

The owner, the head chef and the manager, with marketing and accounts in a larger venue.

Last year's figures by month and week, the results of offers and events, the calendar and the budget.

Seasons, holidays, events, menus, offers, closures, the team's holidays, recruitment, marketing, budget milestones and deadlines.

Simple: dates and owners on one calendar, monthly budget figures and a few goals.

Every quarter, in an hour.

A calendar for each venue, planned with its own team, and one for what they share.

Adjust at the quarterly review. The plan is a guide, not a promise.

Year-ahead planning takes one afternoon with the owner, the chef and the manager, last year's figures and a single calendar. Start with an hour of end of year reporting, map the seasonal trade, then place the holidays, events, menus, offers, closures, the team's holidays and recruitment where the map says they belong.

Plan the email calendar and the marketing against it, build the restaurant budget month by month from the calendar, add the renewals and deadlines and give every item an owner. Share one calendar, keep it simple and review it every quarter, so the year is planned instead of improvised.