Réunion · MauritiusProfitability is my trade
In Réunion, food cost can't be run the way it is in mainland France: imports, the octroi de mer tax, supply shortages, soaring energy, a season that swings hot and cold. This ground, I know it: 15 years in the kitchen and front-of-house. Quantified diagnostic, concrete action plan, and you stay in charge.
Placeholder image · to be replacedYour point of contact
Mickael Cabodi
Profitability & optimization consultant
15 years in restaurants · Réunion Island
15 years
of hands-on restaurant experience
1 day
for an on-site profitability audit
15 days
to receive your detailed audit report
Let's talk straight
"Watch your food cost, optimise your menu." Sound advice… but written for mainland France. Nearly 9,000 km from the métropole, a Réunion restaurateur faces the same challenges as everyone else, plus constraints you won't find anywhere else. Here they are, backed by the numbers.
≈ 80%
The island depends on the outside world for most of its food. Every product has travelled thousands of kilometres before reaching your kitchen: sea freight, delays, supply shortages, and a starting price already inflated.
+37%
Prices are on average 9% higher than on the mainland; on food, the gap climbs to 37%. Your food cost starts with a structural handicap that no "mainland" method fixes on its own.
Octroi de mer
It is added to VAT on a large share of imported products. A cost specific to the overseas territories that weighs directly on the price of every purchase you make.
Yo-yo
Footfall and cash flow swing from full to empty between high and low season. Tuning your payroll and purchasing to that rhythm demands a level of steering mainland regularity never requires.
Price gaps: INSEE, spatial price comparison survey, 2022.
If even one of these sounds like you, let's talk for 15 minutes. Free, no commitment, and no off-the-shelf recipes.
Request a discovery callYour questions
Calculating margins, food cost, the most profitable formats, opening… The full guide answers the questions every restaurateur asks, reframed for Réunion. Click yours.
How we work
Whether you want a snapshot, an optimization engagement, or lasting monthly support.
In most cases the problem isn't a lack of customers, but poorly controlled costs and invisible day-to-day losses. I analyze your restaurant the way an investor would study a business before acquiring it: every cost line, every process, every metric. One day on-site, then a detailed report ranking the levers with the strongest impact on your profitability.
Format
1 day on-site · detailed report within 15 days
Price
from €490 excl. VAT
A restaurant performance expert by your side all year long. Profitability is built month after month: each month we review your results, target the priority actions and adjust. You're no longer alone with your numbers.
Growing revenue isn't enough: what matters is what's left in your account at the end of the month. The engagement starts with a full audit of your restaurant, then we work together on the real drivers of profitability for measurable results: more margin, more cash, fewer losses.
Format
Audit included · based on size, challenges & length
Price
from €1,500 excl. VAT
Placeholder image · to be replacedIn the field
Operational standards turned into margin.
Placeholder photo · to be replacedWho I am
Profitability and optimization consultant for restaurants
Mickael Cabodi learned the restaurant trade where it forgives nothing: in the kitchen, in the rush, from Michelin-starred fine dining to the fast-food counter. Fifteen years in the business, on every front.
He starts in fine dining, in starred houses where the standard is absolute: precision of every move, consistency on the plate, total respect for the product. That is where he forges his discipline and his eye for the detail that separates a kitchen that runs from a kitchen that makes money.
Then he switches worlds and opens sushi concepts. Here everything comes down to freshness, knife work and millimetre-perfect handling of the product: two grams wasted per piece, times a thousand covers, and the margin is gone. He learns profitability down to the gram.
Fast food teaches him volume and pace: sizing a team to real footfall, optimizing every inch of the line, holding a food cost when it all comes down to the cent. The decisive battle is organization.
With bistronomy, he reconciles both worlds: product quality and cost control, pleasure in the dining room and margin in the kitchen. It is this rare synthesis that he now puts to work for independent restaurateurs.
That path is his strength. He can read any restaurant, fine dining, sushi, fast food or brasserie, and speak the language of every team. He never forces a single method: he adapts to your menu, your constraints, and those of Réunion Island.
My job isn't to teach you how to cook. It's to make sure your kitchen makes you money.
What I change
Not generic advice copied from the mainland: concrete levers on your purchasing, your costs and your menu, calibrated for Réunion's constraints.
01
Imports, octroi de mer, supply shortages: I rework your sourcing, your recipe sheets at real prices and your waste management to recover every point of margin the island costs you.
02
Payroll matched to real footfall, a menu refocused on your high-margin dishes, a streamlined kitchen: we go find profitability where it hides, without cutting quality.
03
I reason with the realities of the Indian Ocean: real purchase prices, seasonality, import constraints. "Mainland" methods don't hold up here; mine are built for Réunion.
04
15 years in the kitchen and front-of-house: I speak your team's language, not a spreadsheet's. I hand you the data-backed read and the action plan, and you decide what to apply.
The real thing
A sushi restaurant that was packed out front, yet whose margins were melting away. Here's how the mission unfolded, from diagnosis to results.
Great footfall, a solid reputation… and yet a tight cash flow. Fish was expensive, sourcing unpredictable, the menu had grown over the years, and the owner no longer knew where the margin was going.
How the engagement unfolded
A day spent watching the rush, going through recipe sheets, purchasing and schedules, to find where the margin was leaking, numbers in hand.
Recipe sheets recalculated at real prices (imported fish, octroi de mer included), portions recalibrated, cutting waste reclaimed to the gram, and suppliers diversified to limit shortages.
Menu tightened around the items that sold and paid off, high-margin dishes pushed forward, a few prices readjusted, and whatever burdened production without earning anything removed.
Kitchen stations reorganised to smooth service, schedules matched to real footfall: more hands during the rush, fewer hours lost in quiet services.
What it changed
« In a single day, Mickael saw what I'd been looking for over months. We reworked the purchasing and the menu without losing any quality, and the margin came back. »
The owner · venue kept anonymous
What's in it for you?
An audit isn't an expense, it's a lever. Take a restaurant doing €30,000 in monthly revenue and let's look, line by line, at the money sitting idle in your venue today.
Assumption: €30,000 monthly revenue
+€600/ month
Recalculated recipe sheets, controlled waste, renegotiated purchasing: recovering 2 points of food cost means €600 staying in your pocket every month instead of going in the bin.
≈ €7,200 a year
+€300/ month
€1 to €2 more margin on each signature dish, multiplied by your covers: highlighting your high-margin dishes and readjusting a few prices lifts the margin at every service, without selling a single extra cover.
≈ €3,600 a year
+€300/ month
Schedules tuned to actual footfall mean the quiet hours no longer go up in smoke: the equivalent of one point of payroll recovered, month after month.
≈ €3,600 a year
All in, potentially
≈ €1,200 / month
that's nearly €14,400 a year staying with you.
Your €490 excl. VAT audit? Paid back in under two weeks. Everything after that is margin you keep, every month, all year long.
Illustrative calculation only, on an assumption of €30,000 monthly revenue. Your results depend on your restaurant.
You're wondering…
Your accountant records the numbers after the fact. I work in the kitchen and front-of-house, on what produces them: food cost, schedules, organization, menu. I don't read your balance sheet, I work on the levers that move it.
No. I start by observing and understanding how you operate before suggesting anything. You stay in control: you choose what to apply, and at what pace. I advise, I don't run the place.
Often even more so. In a small operation, every point of margin counts double and adjustments show fast. The audit adapts to your size and your budget.
Some adjustments (menu, pricing, organization) are felt within the following weeks. The monthly follow-up then locks in those gains over time and keeps you on course.
I work across the whole Indian Ocean: Réunion Island today, Mauritius soon. Sourcing, seasonality, import constraints: I reason with the realities of the island, not with mainland references.
I take the time to understand your situation before recommending anything. The discovery call is free, no strings attached.
To guarantee the quality of my support, I only work with a limited number of establishments each month.
Let's talk
Tell me about your restaurant and your main pain point. I call you back within 24 business hours to tell you honestly whether I can help, or not.
Réunion Island · Mauritius