How to create a financial forecast for a dark kitchen?

Creating a financial forecast for your dark kitchen, and ensuring it stays up to date, is the only way to maintain visibility on future cash flows.
This might sound complex, but with the right guidance and tools, creating an accurate financial forecast for your dark kitchen is not that hard.
In this guide, we'll cover everything from the main goal of a financial projection, the data you need as input, to the tables that compose it, and the tools that can help you build a forecast efficiently.
Without further ado, let us begin!
Why create and maintain a financial forecast for a dark kitchen?
In order to prosper, your business needs to have visibility on what lies ahead and the right financial resources to grow. This is where having a financial forecast for your dark kitchen becomes handy.
Creating a dark kitchen financial forecast forces you to take stock of where your business stands and where you want it to go.
Once you have clarity on the destination, you will need to draw up a plan to get there and assess what it means in terms of future profitability and cash flows for your dark kitchen.
Having this clear plan in place will give you the confidence needed to move forward with your business’s development.
Having an up-to-date financial forecast for a dark kitchen is also useful if your trading environment worsens, as the forecast enables you to adjust to your new market conditions and anticipate any potential cash shortfall.
Finally, your dark kitchen's financial projections will also help you secure financing, as banks and investors alike will want to see accurate projections before agreeing to finance your business.
Need a convincing business plan?
The Business Plan Shop makes it easy to create a financial forecast to assess the potential profitability of your projects, and write a business plan that’ll wow investors.

What information is used as input to build a dark kitchen financial forecast?
A dark kitchen's financial forecast needs to be built on the right foundation: your assumptions.
The data required to create your assumptions will depend on whether you are a new or existing dark kitchen.
If you are creating (or updating) the forecast of an existing dark kitchen, then your main inputs will be historical accounting data and operating metrics, and your team’s view on what to expect for the next three to five years.
If you are building financial projections for a new dark kitchen startup, you will need to rely on market research to form your go-to-market strategy and derive your sales forecast.
For a new venture, you will also need an itemised list of resources needed for the dark kitchen to operate, along with a list of equipment required to launch the venture (more on that below).
Now that you understand what is needed, let’s have a look at what elements will make up your dark kitchen's financial forecast.
The sales forecast for a dark kitchen
The sales forecast, also called topline projection, is normally where you will start when building your dark kitchen financial forecast.
Creating a coherent sales projection boils down to estimating two key drivers:
- The average price
- The number of monthly transactions
To do this, you will need to rely on historical data (for an existing business), market research data (for both new and existing dark kitchens), and consider the elements below:
- Location: The location of your dark kitchen plays a crucial role in determining the average price and number of monthly transactions. A prime location with easy accessibility and high foot traffic can potentially drive up your average price and increase the number of monthly transactions. On the other hand, a remote or less accessible location may result in lower average prices and a decrease in the number of monthly transactions.
- Menu: The menu offered by your dark kitchen can also have a significant impact on your average price and number of monthly transactions. A diverse and unique menu with high-quality ingredients can justify a higher average price and attract more customers, resulting in an increase in the number of monthly transactions. Conversely, a limited or unappealing menu may lead to lower average prices and a decrease in the number of monthly transactions.
- Online Presence: With the increasing trend of online food delivery, having a strong online presence can greatly affect your average price and number of monthly transactions. A well-designed and user-friendly website or app can attract more customers and potentially increase your average price. Additionally, investing in online marketing and promotions can help increase your brand visibility and lead to an increase in the number of monthly transactions.
- Customer Reviews: Positive customer reviews and ratings can greatly impact your average price and number of monthly transactions. Good reviews can increase customer trust and attract new customers, potentially leading to an increase in your average price. On the other hand, negative reviews can deter potential customers and result in a decrease in the number of monthly transactions.
- Competition: The level of competition in your area can also affect your average price and number of monthly transactions. If there are many similar dark kitchens in your location, you may need to adjust your prices to stay competitive and attract customers. Additionally, offering unique and high-quality dishes can help differentiate your business and potentially increase your average price and number of monthly transactions.
After the sales forecast comes the operating expenses budget, which we will now look into in more detail.
Need a convincing business plan?
The Business Plan Shop makes it easy to create a financial forecast to assess the potential profitability of your projects, and write a business plan that’ll wow investors.

The operating expenses for a dark kitchen
Once you know what level of sales you can expect, you can start budgeting the expenses required to operate your dark kitchen on a daily basis.
Expenses normally vary based on how much revenue you anticipate (which is why, from experience, it is always better to start your forecast with the topline projection), and where your business is based.
Operating expenses for a dark kitchen will include some of the following items:
- Your staff costs, including salaries, benefits, and training expenses
- Accountancy fees for managing your financial records and taxes
- Insurance costs to protect your dark kitchen from potential hazards
- Software licenses for your kitchen management software and other necessary programs
- Banking fees for managing your business bank accounts and transactions
- Marketing and advertising expenses to promote your dark kitchen and attract customers
- Utilities such as electricity, water, and gas for cooking and operating your kitchen
- Supplies and ingredients for your dishes and beverages
- Rent or lease payments for your kitchen space
- Waste disposal fees for proper disposal of food waste and other materials
- Cleaning and maintenance expenses for keeping your kitchen clean and functional
- Delivery fees for transporting orders to customers
- Packaging materials for packing and delivering orders
- Permits and licenses required for operating a dark kitchen
- Consulting fees for seeking professional advice and guidance on managing your dark kitchen
This list will need to be tailored to the specificities of your dark kitchen, but should offer a good starting point for your budget.
What investments are needed to start or grow a dark kitchen?
Your dark kitchen financial forecast will also need to include the capital expenditures (aka investments in plain English) and initial working capital items required for the creation or development of your business.
For a dark kitchen, these could include:
- Kitchen Equipment: This includes all the necessary equipment for cooking, food storage, and food preparation in a dark kitchen such as ovens, stovetops, refrigerators, freezers, and prep tables.
- Furniture and Fixtures: This includes tables, chairs, shelving units, and other necessary fixtures for the front-of-house and back-of-house operations in a dark kitchen.
- Technology and Software: This includes computers, tablets, POS systems, and other necessary software for order management, inventory tracking, and customer communication in a dark kitchen.
- Delivery Vehicles: If your dark kitchen offers delivery services, you may need to invest in delivery vehicles such as bikes, scooters, or cars to ensure timely and efficient delivery of food orders.
- Building and Renovations: Depending on the location and size of your dark kitchen, you may need to invest in building and renovation costs such as rent, leasehold improvements, and permits to ensure a functional and compliant space for your operations.
Again, this list will need to be adjusted according to the size and ambitions of your dark kitchen.
Need a convincing business plan?
The Business Plan Shop makes it easy to create a financial forecast to assess the potential profitability of your projects, and write a business plan that’ll wow investors.

The financing plan of your dark kitchen
The next step in the creation of your financial forecast for your dark kitchen is to think about how you might finance your business.
You will have to assess how much capital will come from shareholders (equity) and how much can be secured through banks.
Bank loans will have to be modelled so that you can separate the interest expenses from the repayments of principal, and include all this data in your forecast.
Issuing share capital and obtaining a bank loan are two of the most common ways that entrepreneurs finance their businesses.
What tables compose the financial plan for a dark kitchen?
Now let's have a look at the main output tables of your dark kitchen's financial forecast.
The projected profit & loss statement
The projected profit & loss shows how profitable your dark kitchen is likely to be in the years to come.

For your dark kitchen to be financially viable, your projected P&L should ideally show:
- Sales growing above inflation (the higher the better)
- Profit margins which are stable or expanding (the higher the better)
- A net profit at the end of each financial year (the higher the better)
This is for established dark kitchens, there is some leniency for startups which will have numbers that will look a bit different than existing businesses.
The projected balance sheet
The projected balance sheet gives an overview of your dark kitchen's financial structure at the end of the financial year.
It is composed of three categories of items: assets, liabilities and equity:
- Assets: are what the business possesses and uses to produce cash flows. It includes resources such as cash, buildings, equipment, and accounts receivable (money owed by clients).
- Liabilities: are the debts of your dark kitchen. They include accounts payable (money owed to suppliers), taxes due and bank loans.
- Equity: is the combination of what has been invested by the business owners and the cumulative profits to date (which are called retained earnings). Equity is a proxy for the value of the owner's stake in the business.

The cash flow forecast
Your dark kitchen's cash flow forecast shows how much cash your business is expected to consume or generate in the years to come.

It is best practice to organise the cash flow forecast by nature to better explain where cash is used or generated by the dark kitchen:
- Operating cash flow: shows how much cash is generated by the operating activities
- Investing cash flow: shows how much will be invested in capital expenditure to maintain or expand the business
- Financing cash flow: shows if the business is raising new capital or repaying financiers (debt repayment, dividends)
Keeping an eye on (and regularly updating) your dark kitchen's cash flow forecast is key to ensuring that your business has sufficient liquidity to operate normally and to detect financing requirements as early as possible.
If you are trying to raise capital, you will normally be asked to provide a monthly cash flow forecast in your dark kitchen's financial plan - so that banks or investors can assess seasonal variation and ensure your business is appropriately capitalised.
Need a convincing business plan?
The Business Plan Shop makes it easy to create a financial forecast to assess the potential profitability of your projects, and write a business plan that’ll wow investors.

Which tool should you use to create your dark kitchen's financial forecast?
Using the right tool or solution will make the creation of your dark kitchen's financial forecast much easier than it sounds. Let’s explore the main options.
Using online financial forecasting software to build your dark kitchen's projections
The modern and easiest way is to use an online financial forecasting tool such as the one we offer at The Business Plan Shop.
There are several advantages to using specialised software:
- You can easily create your financial forecast by letting the software take care of the financial calculations for you without errors
- You have access to complete financial forecast templates
- You get a complete financial forecast ready to be sent to your bank or investors
- You can easily track your actual financial performance against your financial forecast, and recalibrate your forecast as the year goes by
- You can create scenarios to stress test your forecast's main assumptions
- You can easily update your forecast as time goes by to maintain visibility on future cash flows
- You have a friendly support team on standby to assist you when you are stuck
- It’s cost-efficient and much cheaper than using an accountant or consultant (see below)
If you are interested in this type of solution, you can try our projection software for free by signing up here.
Calling in a financial consultant or chartered accountant
Outsourcing the creation of your dark kitchen financial forecast is another possible solution.
This will cost more than using software as you can expect as your price will have to cover the accountant’s time, software cost, and profit margin.
Price can vary greatly based on the complexity of your business. For a small business, from experience, a simple three-year financial forecast (including a balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement) will start at around £700 or $1,000.
Bear in mind that this is for forecasts produced at a single point in time, updating or tracking your forecast against actuals will cost extra.
If you decide to outsource your forecasting:
- Make sure the professional has direct experience in your industry and is able to challenge your assumptions constructively.
- Steer away from consultants using sectorial ratios to build their client’s financial forecasts (these projections are worthless for a small business).
Why not use a spreadsheet such as Excel or Google Sheets to build your dark kitchen's financial forecast?
You and your financial partners need numbers you can trust. Unless you have studied finance or accounting, creating a trustworthy and error-free dark kitchen financial forecast on a spreadsheet is likely to prove challenging.
Financial modelling is very technical by nature and requires a solid grasp of accounting principles to be done without errors. This means that using spreadsheet software like Excel or Google Sheets to create accurate financial forecasts is out of reach for most business owners.
Creating forecasts in Excel is also inefficient nowadays:
- Software has advanced to the point where forecasting can be done much faster and more accurately than manually on a spreadsheet.
- With artificial intelligence, the software is capable of detecting mistakes and helping decision-making.
Spreadsheets are versatile tools but they are not tailor-made for reporting. Importing your dark kitchen's accounting data in Excel to track actual vs. forecast is incredibly manual and tedious (and so is keeping forecasts up to date). It is much faster to use dedicated financial planning tools like The Business Plan Shop which are built specially for this.
Need a convincing business plan?
The Business Plan Shop makes it easy to create a financial forecast to assess the potential profitability of your projects, and write a business plan that’ll wow investors.

Use our financial forecast templates for inspiration
The Business Plan Shop has dozens of financial forecast examples available.
Our templates contain both a financial forecast and a written business plan which presents, in detail, the company, the team, the strategy, and the medium-term objectives.
Our templates are a great source of inspiration, whether you just want to see what a complete business plan looks like, or are looking for concrete examples of how you should model financial elements in your own forecast.

Takeaways
- Having a financial forecast enables you to visualise the expected growth, profitability, and cash generation for your business over the next three to five years.
- Tracking actuals vs. forecast and keeping your financial projections up-to-date is the only way to get a view on what your dark kitchen future cash flows may look like.
- Using financial forecasting software is the mordern and easy way to create and maintain your forecasts.
This is the end of our guide on how to build the financial forecast for a dark kitchen, we hope you found it useful. Don't hesitate to contact us if you want to share your feedback or have any questions.
Need a convincing business plan?
The Business Plan Shop makes it easy to create a financial forecast to assess the potential profitability of your projects, and write a business plan that’ll wow investors.

Also on The Business Plan Shop
- Example of financial forecast
- How to project revenues for a business?
- Sample financial forecast for business idea
Know someone who owns or is thinking of starting a dark kitchen? Share our forecasting guide with them!