Series: From Financial Statements to Operating Decisions “Improve profitability.” It sounds like a reasonable instruction. It is also nearly useless as an operating instruction. A restaurant manager cannot walk into a shift and directly increase profit. A chef cannot prep profit. A server cannot sell profit. A purchasing manager cannot order profit. An owner cannot
Author Archives: Corey Lord
From Financial Statements to Operating Decisions — Part Five A restaurant’s income statement usually presents operating expenses as a list of numbers. Repairs and maintenance. Utilities. Credit-card processing fees. Cleaning supplies. Smallwares. Technology. Marketing. Insurance. Professional fees. Each account tells leadership how much the restaurant spent during the period. That is useful for financial reporting.
From Blog Series From Financial Statements to Operating Decisions A restaurant’s income statement usually presents labor as a number. Wages. Payroll taxes. Benefits. Maybe management salaries. Depending on the reporting structure, those costs may be separated between departments or combined into a single labor line. That is useful for financial reporting. But it is not
Series: From Financial Statements to Operating Decisions A restaurant’s income statement may present cost of goods sold as a single line. Food cost. Beverage cost. Retail merchandise. Packaging and supplies. Each appears as a dollar amount and, commonly, as a percentage of revenue. When that percentage rises, the typical response is equally simple: “We
From Financial Statements to Operating Decisions — Part Two Revenue is usually the first number people look at on a restaurant’s profit and loss statement. Did sales increase? Did we beat the budget? Are we ahead of last year? Those are reasonable questions. But revenue alone rarely tells restaurant leaders what actually happened—or what they