Category Archives: Finance

Operating Expenses Reveal Organizational Habits

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.

Labor Is a Capacity System, Not a Percentage

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

Cost of Goods Sold Is an Operating System

  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

Revenue Is More Than Sales

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

Every Number Began as a Decision

Part One of From Financial Statements to Operating Decisions How Restaurant Operating Metrics Connect Daily Choices to Financial Results A profit-and-loss statement can make a business appear more mechanical than it really is. Revenue appears at the top. Expenses are organized into categories. Profit—or loss—appears at the bottom. Each line is expressed in dollars, percentages,