How many meals a small restaurant...

Depends on where you are located.
Lots of traffic, easy in and out, maybe lots of sales. Forty miles from the nearest paved road with no sign, maybe none.

Yeah I know its an ambiguoous question dependant upon many factors, I was just wondering if there is a rule of thumb or generalization that the industry uses for a small self service operation like a subway, Quizno's, etc. I think thats a business model that translates well to a small barbecue operation, especially with Cookshack commercial equipment.

Anybody else have any comments?

Preston

I can't give you an answer. but maybe some ideas.... Qdoba restaurant --- Jack in the Box's Mexican offshoot --- requires car traffic of 30,000 vehichles or people daily to pass a potential restaurant.

well, there is no fixed figure or formula for the industry. its up to each corp. to decide what they require. most small mom and pops go with hoeps and prayers. and good food, of course.
i would think going in, there has to be some calculations involved. before we opened our place i calculated what we need for income and worked backwards to give me a 'survival customer count'. in my case, i figured my daily customer count would be low(due to location), so i opted to sell bigger portions. the idea being that i could turn one customer into two, by selling half pounders instead of quater pounders....
a corporate place like sub shops, would most likely expect 200 guest a day during the week, and 3-4 hundred on the weekends, giving them average weekly sells of 10-15 thousand.

Thanks for the information and thought there...I appreciate it.
Regards,
Preston D