How to Verify a Feasibility Study or Pitch Deck

Published July 11, 2026 · Verified July 2026 · Sources linked inline

Someone has handed you a document, and it is beautiful. Clean charts, a rising revenue line, a confident conclusion. Maybe it is a friend's pitch deck, maybe a study you paid for yourself. Either way, a lot of money is about to move on the strength of it, and you have a quiet feeling you are not qualified to judge it. You are more qualified than you think.

A feasibility study is only as honest as its weakest assumption. Four omissions turn a study into a sales document, and you can find all four in about ten minutes without a finance degree. Here is what a real study must contain, the tells of an inflated one, the conflict of interest almost nobody names, and the five questions that break a bad deck.

What a real study must contain

A credible study is falsifiable. Every number traces to a stated source or assumption you could argue with. At a minimum it has all of the following, and the absence of any one is a signal on its own.

A demand analysis built from the ground up. A defined catchment, real footfall by daypart, and named competitors with their actual performance, not a national average and a hopeful percentage.
A uses-of-funds table that includes working capital. Fit-out, kitchen, licence, pre-opening, and a cash reserve for the loss-making ramp. The reserve is the line bad studies leave out.
Three statements, not one chart. A profit-and-loss, a cash-flow, and a balance sheet across three to five years. A single revenue graph is a picture, not a model.
A ramp curve. Revenue that climbs from roughly 40 to 60 percent of mature levels toward steady state over the first year, because no restaurant opens full.
An assumption ledger. Average spend, covers per day, seat turns, food cost, labour, and rent shown as line items you can each challenge.
A sensitivity and break-even section. A base case, a downside case, and the month the business stops losing money. No downside case means it is not a feasibility study.

The four tells of an inflated study

1. Full occupancy from month one. If revenue is high and flat from the opening month, the model skipped the ramp. Real restaurants stabilise traffic over three to six months and reach steady state later. A flat-high line is the most common inflation of all.

2. No working capital line. Read the funding table. If it stops at the build cost and there is no reserve to survive the months before break-even, the plan is underfunded on paper. This single omission kills more restaurants than bad food, because the business runs out of runway within sight of the crossing point.

3. Delivery booked at full menu price. If a third of covers come through the apps but no commission appears in the costs, the margin is overstated by roughly ten points. Gulf platforms take 15 to 35 percent of every delivery order. That haircut has to be in the model.

4. Rent understated for a prime unit. Global guides say rent should be five to ten percent of sales. In prime Gulf malls the reality is often 15 to 30 percent. A study showing a premium mall unit at six or seven percent is using a rent that does not exist to make the numbers work.

Two more live in pitch decks specifically. The hockey-stick, a revenue line that shoots up with no assumptions on the same page, and the top-down market claim, the famous line about capturing just one percent of a huge market. Both are shorthand for the same thing: the author did not build the number from the bottom up. A serious deck sizes the market as seats times turns times spend times days, not as a global figure times an arbitrary slice.

The conflict of interest nobody names

Here is the uncomfortable part. In the Gulf, feasibility studies are very often produced by the same business-setup and advisory firms that also sell the company formation, the trade licence, the fit-out, the visas, and the annual audit. Their real fees arrive only if the answer is proceed. That is a textbook financial conflict of interest: the author expects to gain from one particular outcome. Disclosure alone does not cure it. The person who profits from the yes should not be the sole author of the yes. When you read a study, find out who paid for it and what else they sell you if you go ahead. The mitigation you are looking for is independent sign-off, a reviewer with no stake in the decision.

Five questions that break a bad study

Show me the assumption ledger. Where did average spend, covers per day, and seat turns come from, and which specific venues did you benchmark?
Walk me through months one to twelve of the cash-flow. When does the account go negative, how deep, and which line funds that gap?
What commission did you assume on delivery, and what share of covers is delivery? Show it as a line.
What is rent as a percentage of projected revenue, and is that the actual signed or quoted lease for this unit?
Run the downside: covers 20 percent below plan, food cost up three points, rent as quoted. Does it still survive, and for how many months?

Then one more, the honest one: who paid for this study, and do you also earn fees from the licence, fit-out, or setup if I proceed?

This page is methodology and general market context, not financial advice. A study for a specific site deserves its own review.

Frequently asked questions

What is the single most common thing missing from a bad study?

The working capital line. Most weak studies fund the fit-out and the licence but not the months of losses before break-even. If the uses-of-funds table stops at the build cost and there is no cash reserve for the ramp, the business is underfunded on paper before it opens, and the study is hiding its hardest number.

How do I sanity-check the revenue number?

Rebuild it from the bottom up: seats times turns per day times average spend times trading days. Then compare the result to the ramp. A credible model starts around 40 to 60 percent of mature revenue in the first months and reaches steady state only by months seven to twelve. If the study shows full revenue from month one, or the top-down claim of capturing a small percent of a huge market, the number was written to impress, not to hold.

Is a study from my setup company trustworthy?

Read it with the conflict in mind. Many Gulf feasibility studies are produced by firms that also sell the licence, the fit-out, the visas, and the audit, so they earn their real fees only if the answer is proceed. Disclosure alone does not fix that. Look for independent sign-off from a party with no stake in the yes, and treat any study written by the people who profit from the yes as a starting point, not a verdict.

What rent percentage should I expect to see?

Rent should sit in the low double digits as a share of revenue, and in prime Gulf malls it often runs 15 to 30 percent in reality. A study that shows a prime mall unit at 6 to 8 percent of revenue is using a fantasy rent to make the margin work. Cross-check the rent line against the actual signed or quoted lease, not against a global ideal.

Can I verify a study myself, or do I need help?

You can catch the four big tells yourself in ten minutes: no working capital line, full revenue from day one, delivery booked at full menu price, and understated rent. Beyond that, a proper review rebuilds the model and runs a downside case, which is worth paying for when the cheque is large. The cost of a second opinion is trivial next to the cost of a wrong yes.

The quiet conclusion

A feasibility study should survive being argued with. If it cannot, it was written to be sold, not to be true. If you want a study or a deck tested against real Gulf benchmarks by a party with no stake in your yes, that is exactly what we do: see a sample study here, from $6,999, delivered in 7 days.