Running a Restaurant or Cafe Profitably in the UAE

A unit-economics course for owners, managers and investors in UAE restaurants, cafes and cloud kitchens. It teaches how each dish, each shift and each channel makes or loses money, using made-up venues with every figure recomputed. It states no food-safety rule, municipal licence, labour rule or delivery-platform commission: those are blanks to fill from your own contracts and authorities.

What is inside

• 7 lessons of 1,200 or more words: the restaurant P&L and the numbers that run it (food, prime and labour cost, occupancy, break-even covers); recipe costing and menu pricing with VAT-inclusive prices (5%: net = gross x 100 / 105); menu engineering with a worked 12-item analysis; purchasing, stock and waste with theoretical versus actual usage variance; labour, scheduling and productivity, including an end-of-service gratuity accrual; dine-in, delivery and catering channel economics; and controls, cash-up and decisions, with a 30-day profit plan.
• An Excel workbook with 8 sheets (Instructions, Worked Example, Recipe Costing, Menu Engineering, Channel Margin, Break-even, Daily Flash, Checks) and 461 formulas, recalculated and checked. Example inputs are made up and labelled.
• Opening, closing, receiving, stock count and cash-up checklists (Word).
• 42 workbook tasks with model answers (Word and PDF), 42 quiz questions with an explained answer key, a completion checklist (no certificate) and an 8-day plan of about 18 hours.

Facts it states 5% VAT arithmetic and the gratuity tiers from the labour law summary (21 and 30 days of basic wage, one-year minimum), with the daily rate described as a choice your accountant confirms. Rules of thumb are labelled as such, not as UAE benchmarks.

Who it is for Owners and managers who want to know their real margin per dish and per channel, and investors who want to question a restaurant's numbers.

What it is NOT: it is not legal, tax, immigration or accounting advice, it does not tell you what any rule, fee or deadline is for your case, it promises no result, and it leads to no exam or certificate. UAE rules change, so every rule outside a small set of well-established VAT and employment points is sent to the official source or your adviser. All companies and figures are made up. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by any government body, bank or platform.

Requirements: a PDF reader, Word or a compatible editor, and Microsoft Excel 2016 or later (or Google Sheets) for the workbook. Version 1.0, written November 2026. Single business use.