Estimate the Yearly Sales of a Restaurant You Know Well
Company: Google
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product / Decision Making
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Pick a restaurant you know well, such as a favorite place or one you order from often, and estimate how much revenue it takes in over a year. Walk the interviewer through how you break the problem into parts, the assumptions you choose and why, the arithmetic, and how you would check that the final figure is believable.
```hint Build from what you can observe
Think about what you would notice on a visit: how many people the room holds, how busy it gets at different meals and on different days, what a typical bill comes to, and how much food leaves as takeout. Each of those can become one factor you estimate separately.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Does "revenue" mean the total sales the restaurant takes in, or what remains after paying for ingredients, staff and rent?
- Should tips and sales tax count, given that tips usually go to staff and tax is passed on to the government?
- Should takeout, delivery-app orders and private events be included alongside dine-in sales?
- Should the estimate describe a normal trading year rather than one disrupted by a long closure or a renovation?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A precise definition of revenue agreed before calculating: gross sales versus profit, and how tips, tax and delivery-app commissions are treated.
- A short description of the chosen restaurant (format, size, price level, opening days) that grounds every later assumption.
- An equation that separates dine-in sales by meal period and type of day from takeout, delivery and other income.
- Round-number assumptions labeled as assumptions, with the arithmetic carried correctly through to a yearly total.
- A sanity check from a second angle and a view of which assumptions move the answer most.
### Follow-up Questions
- Which single assumption has the largest effect on your total, and how would you pin it down with one visit to the restaurant?
- Part of the takeout volume arrives through delivery apps that keep a commission. How would you adjust the estimate if the interviewer wants the money the restaurant actually receives?
- How would you turn this revenue estimate into an estimate of the restaurant's yearly profit?
Overview: A product manager estimation exercise: choose a restaurant you know and estimate how much revenue it brings in over a year. It tests how you define revenue, break the estimate into drivers, state round-number assumptions, carry the arithmetic through cleanly and sanity-check the final figure.