A high-volume fine-dining restaurant in Los Angeles tracked performance in a sprawling month-by-column P&L that nobody could read at a glance. I rebuilt it into a one-screen dashboard — net revenue, prime cost (COGS + labor), operating result, cash position and revenue mix — with a month selector and a two-step monthly update routine the owner runs without me.
Net Revenue · Latest Month
$1,416,703
December 2025
Operating Result
$144,181
vs $-361,622 in month 1
Prime Cost
60.3%
down from 108.3% of net revenue
2025 Net Revenue
$16,097,960
full year
2025 Operating Result
$822,906
from heavy losses the prior summer
The leak this dashboard surfaced: in its opening month the restaurant's prime cost was 108.3% of net revenue — every dollar of sales cost more than a dollar in food and labor before rent. Tracking COGS % and payroll % on one line, every month, drove prime cost down to 60.3% and flipped a $-361,622 month into $144,181 — a swing of $505,803 per month.
Prime Cost % of Net Revenue — The Turnaround Line
COGS % + payroll % · 100% line marked — above it, food and labor alone exceed sales
Net Revenue & Operating Result by Month
18 months · bars = net revenue, line = operating result