Twelve empty chairs a week cost £13,645 a year
No-Show Cost Calculator
An empty chair costs the contribution, not the menu price, and a kept deposit recovers less than the tin says once the VAT comes off. Priced honestly here.
No-Show Cost Calculator
What the empty chairs cost across a year, and what a deposit policy honestly recovers once the VAT on kept deposits is counted.
The honest arithmetic
An empty chair does not cost the menu price. It costs the contribution: the ex-VAT spend times the GP, £21.85 on the demo, because the food never left the fridge.
Kept deposits are not free money: HMRC treats a retained no-show deposit as payment for a supply, so it carries VAT. A £10 kept deposit recovers £8.33.
The deposit's real work is deterrence, not recovery. The table it saves is worth £21.85; the deposit it keeps is worth £8.33, which is why the deterred percentage matters more than the deposit amount.
Take the workbook
The same arithmetic in Excel, before and after a policy, with the VAT on kept deposits handled.
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