Surely it is a basic principle of creating a company or product?

But they never seem to say 'How much will it cost to produce X, and how many can we sell in X amount of hours?'.

And that's why Mr Notebook-Calculator has a very good chance of winning.

Helen did...

Helen did it, she was talking about margins about midway through.

Did she? I missed that bit. I know she got the service right.

Sorry... Tom.... did the Figures.
But I'm sure Helen helped....she was sorting the ingredients.

Sugar did show the Papers to the losers, that they had done costings.

tom probably did most of the calculations because thats his area, but they did show helen talking about the cost of the steak so she was clearly conscious of it too.

Perhaps because it was a fake restaurant that was open for two days! Why would you need to work out costs for that? It will shut down on day three.

I'm being a bit sarcastic but it's possible Jim's team looked at it like that. They didn't see it as a long term business although Sugar mentioned something about that at the beginning.

Nick pointed out in the recent Final Five show that Tom is meticulous in his planning & costings and how essential this is. And all of a sudden a plan makes a Boardroom appearance

Given that normally they just run into things with no clue, a la Jim with his 60 customers over 2 hours bring in over £4K....what on earth was going on in his head to come out with that That poor woman on her own in the kitchen too - imagine how it might have turned out if she'd not ranted at him? Can't believe he's still there - and can't help but believe he's only still there because of being required for interview entertainment

We reap what we sow, and wow is Jim about to have a bumper harvest

Well it is, but not in those tasks when it isn't judged. In others it becomes crucial without much warning. in others, its seen as fatal to get it wrong and and something that can't be fixed - wheras all sorts of related problems are deemed fixable for the long term.

The thing we learn with this task ,and there's been hints watching Tom on others, is that they do seem to have the necessary data - at least sometimes.

Curiously Jim asked the right qustions about throughput and preparation time - but still had no idea about what to do with the data . He probably should have gone home for that - Natasha and Susan didn't even have that information to work on.