From Financial Statements to Operating Decisions — Part Seven A restaurant can have a clean profit-and-loss statement, a sophisticated dashboard, dozens of KPIs, and more data than anyone has time to review. And leadership can still walk away from a meeting unsure what to do next. The problem is not always a lack of information.

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

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