How to Open a Restaurant in Pakistan, in 8 Steps

Opening a restaurant is a common dream in Pakistan, and a risky one — about a third don't survive their first year. The ones that make it treat it as a business, not just a kitchen. Here is the path, step by step.

1. Do you need a culinary background?

No. Plenty of Pakistani restaurateurs come from business, not the stove. But spend real time on a floor or in a kitchen before you sign anything — you're taking on a seven-day operation, and knowing how a service actually runs is worth more than any certificate.

2. What will you serve?

Follow real demand, then stand out. Desi, BBQ and fast food are on every corner; if that's your lane, you need a clear reason to be chosen over the place that's been there ten years.

Test before you commit

You don't have to bet a full fit-out on an unproven idea. A cloud kitchen, a stall or a short pop-up lets you prove the concept — and the numbers — at a fraction of the risk before you take a lease.

3. Where should you open — and can you afford the rent?

Location is a maths problem before it's a vibe. Rent has to stay near 10% of sales, so a Rs3-lakh rent quietly commits you to roughly Rs30 lakh in monthly sales just to justify the address. Do that sum before you fall for the corner unit.

Established vs emerging

A prime DHA or Gulberg address brings footfall — and a rent that can sink you. A cheaper, up-and-coming street with parking and your actual customers often beats a famous one you can't afford to fill.

4. How much will it cost — and who pays for it?

Fit-out, kitchen, deposit and licences run from a few lakh for a small takeaway to a crore and up for a full-service restaurant. Banks rarely lend against a new restaurant here, so most owners fund it themselves or with family and investors — which makes a clear, numbers-backed plan the thing that actually unlocks the money.

5. What licences and registrations do you need?

Start the paperwork early — it gates your opening date.

1. 1

   FBR registration

   An NTN through the IRIS portal. A sole owner skips SECP; you only need it once you take on partners.

2. 2

   Food authority licence

   PFA in Punjab, SFA in Sindh. Their teams inspect unannounced and seal kitchens on the spot.

3. 3

   NOCs

   Health, fire, and signboard or outdoor-seating clearances from your city.

4. 4

   Sales tax

   Once you cross the turnover threshold — in Punjab, 8% on card, 16% on cash.

6. How do you price the menu to make money?

The menu is a spreadsheet with flavour. Keep food cost at 28–35% of the selling price, and keep prime cost — food plus wages — under about 65%, or there's nothing left. Delivery is a margin decision: foodpanda takes 25–35% of every order it sends you.

7. How do you hire — and keep — staff?

Labour will be a quarter to a third of sales, but the real cost is churn. Kitchens poach, and people vanish after the Eid advance. Write your recipes and service steps down so they don't leave with one person, and pay your key people on time — the cheapest loyalty in a market where many don't.

8. How do you run it so it survives?

This is where most restaurants quietly lose. They get the food right, then run the operation on a paper diary and a personal WhatsApp — which works until you're busy, the exact moment it stops. Four systems keep a full restaurant from falling over. Put them in from day one, in this order — and here's why you need each.

Reservations

A paper book or one overloaded WhatsApp thread means double-booked tables, a regular's usual seat forgotten on the manager's night off, and no record of who keeps no-showing. Seated RMS puts every booking on one live floor plan the whole team can see, with guest history on each name and no-shows tracked automatically. It's the foundation the other three sit on.

Guest messaging

Hand-typing every confirmation and wait-time chains a staff member to a phone through your busiest ninety minutes, and guests who aren't reminded simply don't show. Seated RMS sends confirmations and day-before reminders on its own — the cheapest way there is to cut no-shows — and puts walk-ins on a WhatsApp waitlist that pings them the moment a table is ready.

Your numbers

Guess your covers and you over-staff a dead Tuesday and get caught short on a packed Friday; guess your no-show rate and you either over-book or sit half-empty. Seated Analytics reads your covers, busiest nights, no-show rate and average party size straight off the reservations, so you roster and buy stock to the demand you actually have — across every branch in one view.

Guest sentiment

By the time a complaint reaches Google, the guest is gone and the review is permanent. Seated GSS sends a one-tap survey the moment they leave and alerts you the second someone is unhappy — so a manager fixes it that night, in private — while nudging the happy ones toward the public review your next customer is about to read.

Then: loyalty and the till

Once those four are running, the next pieces bring regulars back and tie it together: a loyalty card that lives in the phone's wallet, and a point of sale built on the same system. Both are rolling out — but they come after the core four, not before them.

There's a lot here, but it's all doable — one step at a time. Start with the reservation book; the rest gets easier once it's out of the diary. When you're ready, see the whole thing running on your own numbers with a demo.