Before you sell anything, opening the doors costs a number. Almost no operator can state it, which means every decision about whether to open, how long, and with how many staff is made on instinct.

Opening tonight costs something before a single drink is sold. Staff, light, heat, music, the share of rent and everything else that arrives whether anybody comes in or not.

There is a takings figure at which that is covered and the night starts contributing. Ask an operator what that number is and almost nobody can say — which means every decision about opening, hours and staffing is being made without it.

⚠️ What this page cannot tell you

⛔ How your costs should be classified, what belongs in which category, and what any of it means for tax are questions for your accountant.

⭕ This page is only about a working number for operational decisions — good enough to decide whether to open on a Tuesday, not something to file anything with.

Why nobody has the number

Four reasons, and all of them are structural rather than lazy.

Costs arrive monthly and decisions are nightly

⇒ ⭕ Rent, insurance and subscriptions land as monthly totals. Turning them into a per-night figure is one division nobody has been prompted to do.

Some costs move and some do not, and they are mixed together

⚠️ ⭕ A single bank statement contains both. Separating what is there anyway from what scales with the night is the actual work, and it takes an hour once.

The annual items are invisible in a monthly view

⇒ The Costs That Only Appear In Winter

And nobody wants the answer

⭕ ⚠️ There is a real chance the number says a night you have always opened does not pay. That is uncomfortable, and it is also the most valuable thing the number does.

Building it, roughly, in an hour

Rough is enough. Precision here buys almost nothing.

One: total what arrives whether you open or not

⇒ ⭕ Rent, insurance, subscriptions, standing charges, salaried people, anything on a contract. A monthly figure, from the bank rather than from memory.

Two: divide by nights actually open

⚠️ ⭕ Not by thirty. If you open eighteen nights, divide by eighteen — the closed nights still carry their share and that is the point.

Three: add what tonight specifically costs

⭕ Hourly staff, door, extra light and heat, anything hired for the night. This part is different for a Tuesday and a Saturday, which is why the answer is a different number per night type.

Four: work out what proportion of takings is stock

⇒ ⭕ A rough percentage is fine. If a third of what you take goes back out as stock, then only two thirds of each pound is working against the fixed costs.

⇒ The Pour Nobody Measures

Five: the number is the total divided by that proportion

⭕ Fixed plus tonight's costs, divided by the share of takings that is not stock. One line of arithmetic, and it is the figure you have been missing.

What it changes immediately

Four decisions become answerable rather than instinctive.

Whether a night is worth opening

⇒ ⭕ A night that consistently lands below the line is a decision, not a fact of life. It may still be worth opening for other reasons — but now that is a choice.

⇒ The Slow Tuesday You Keep Open

When to open and when to close

⚠️ ⭕ The first hour and the last hour have their own version of this number. Opening two hours earlier adds cost that has to clear before it adds anything.

How many people to roster

⭕ Each extra person moves the line up by a known amount. That converts a staffing argument into arithmetic, which is a much shorter conversation.

⇒ The Average Spend That Is Not An Average

And what a quiet month actually means

⇒ ⭕ How far below the line, and for how long. Without the number, a quiet month is a mood; with it, it is a distance.

⇒ The Profitable Month That Runs Out Of Cash

Where people get it wrong

Four errors, each of which produces a number that misleads.

Dividing the monthly fixed costs by thirty

⚠️ ⭕ The nights you are closed do not pay rent for themselves. Dividing by calendar days rather than trading nights understates the line, sometimes by a third.

Forgetting the annual items

⇒ ⭕ Insurance, servicing, licences, the things that arrive once. Divide the year's worth by the year's trading nights and add it in, or the number is quietly too low.

⇒ The Year You Never Planned

Treating all staff as variable

⭕ ⚠️ Some people are there whether or not it is busy. Putting them on the variable side makes quiet nights look better than they are.

And using one number for every night

⇒ ⭕ Tuesday and Saturday have different costs and different staffing. One venue-wide figure hides exactly the differences you would act on.

The other side of the line

Being above it is not the same as being finished.

Above the line is not profit

⚠️ ⭕ It means the night paid for itself. What is left over still has to cover everything the rough version left out, which is why this is an operational number and not an accounting one.

The distance matters more than the direction

⭕ Just above and comfortably above are different businesses. Track how far above, not whether.

A busy night below the line is the important finding

⇒ ⭕ Full and not clearing costs is a pricing or a cost problem, not a demand problem — and it is invisible without this number.

⇒ The VIP Room That Earns Less Than the Floor

And a quiet night above it is worth keeping

⇒ ⭕ Some quiet nights clear comfortably because the costs are small. Those are the ones instinct tells you to cut, wrongly.

Keeping it current

The number moves, and a stale one is worse than none.

Rebuild it twice a year

⭕ Wages, rent and energy all move. Twice a year is enough and takes twenty minutes once the first version exists.

Redo it after any significant change

⇒ ⭕ A refit, a staffing change, a new rent, a change of hours. All of these move the line and none of them prompt anybody to recalculate.

Keep the workings, not just the answer

⚠️ ⭕ The next version is an edit rather than a rebuild — but only if the first one was written down rather than done in somebody's head.

⇒ The Report You Open Every Monday

What good looks like

The number test

Ask what tonight needs to take to cover its costs. ⇒ A figure means this is known. A pause means every opening decision is instinct.

The per-night test

⚠️ Ask whether the figure is the same on Tuesday and Saturday. One number for both means the differences you would act on are hidden.

The distance test

Working     — you know roughly how far above or below the line last month was
Not working — you know whether it felt busy

Three to hold

1  Divide fixed costs by nights open, not by calendar days
2  Only the non-stock share of each pound works against the line
3  A busy night below the line is the finding — and it is invisible without the number

Where the record has to sit

The fixed monthly total, the nights actually open, tonight's own costs by night type and the stock proportion — written down with the workings, beside the takings. Kept there, twenty minutes twice a year keeps a live number, and every question about opening, hours and staffing has an arithmetic answer. Kept nowhere, the most basic figure in the business is one nobody can state, and the decisions that depend on it get made on how the room felt.