The pain points a finance partner can actually take off your plate
If you own or operate a restaurant or taproom in 2025, you do not need another reminder that the math is tight.
Industry data keeps coming back to the same picture:
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Average restaurant profit margins still sit in the 3–5% range, even as sales climb.
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Full-service concepts are typically targeting prime costs (food, beverage, and labor) in the 60–65% of sales range just to stay viable.
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The broader foodservice industry is projected to hit roughly $1.5 trillion in sales and employ nearly 16 million people in 2025, but operators consistently point to food costs, labor costs, and staffing as their top ongoing challenges.
In other words: people are still dining out, but the gap between “busy” and “profitable” has rarely felt wider.
That’s the gap a fractional CFO is designed to close.
At Lord CPAs, we focus on giving you clean, reliable financials so you can see what’s actually happening in your business and then we step in on the strategic side—designing the cash-flow systems, dashboards, and decision rhythms that turn those numbers into action.
Together, that’s your fractional CFO function: CFO-level leadership, scoped for an independent restaurant or taproom, without the cost of a full-time executive.
Below are the specific pain points we see a fractional CFO solving for owner/operators.
Quick snapshot: What a fractional CFO does (in restaurant terms)
Makes sure your numbers are accurate and timely.
Translates those numbers into a simple weekly and quarterly playbook.
Sits next to you and your leadership team to make the hard calls: staffing, menu, pricing, growth, and cash.
Pain Point #1: Running the business off the bank balance and late P&Ls
Most operators live in one of two worlds:
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Bank-balance management.
“If there’s money in the account and vendors are getting paid, we must be fine.” -
Monthly P&L autopsies.
You get financials weeks after month-end and find out—too late—that food ran hot, labor spiked, or sales slipped.
In a world of soft traffic and stubborn costs, both views are too slow.
How a fractional CFO helps
This is where the Lord CPAs model shows up very clearly:
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We build the foundation:
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A chart of accounts that actually matches how your restaurant or taproom works (dayparts, revenue centers, locations).
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Clean, timely weekly and monthly numbers you can trust.
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Then we use those numbers to build:
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A simple weekly dashboard tied to how service actually happens.
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A cadence of weekly huddles so you’re looking at sales, covers, prime cost, and cash while you can still do something about it.
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The practical result: you stop finding out what happened; you start steering what happens next.
Pain Point #2: Thin margins with no clear picture of prime cost
On paper, you know food and labor drive the whole business. In practice, it often looks like this:
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Food cost “feels high,” but nobody is quite sure where.
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Labor is managed to a percentage target, but not to productivity.
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Prime cost is something your accountant mentions once a year, not a weekly operating target.
Across the U.S., full-service restaurants average 3–5% net profit margins, which means a couple of points of unexpected prime-cost drift can erase your entire year.
How a fractional CFO helps
A fractional CFO for restaurants/taprooms will:
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Define realistic targets for your concept.
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Prime-cost bands that reflect your service model and location (not generic “60% for everyone”).
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Build a weekly view of prime cost.
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Food & beverage COGS and labor, in dollars and as a % of sales, every week—not just at month-end.
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Tie the numbers back to decisions.
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Menu engineering work with your culinary/bar leadership.
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Labor plans that link schedules to sales forecasts and traffic patterns, not just habit.
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The goal is not to hit some perfect theoretical ratio; it is to know, every week, whether prime cost is supporting or suffocating your margin—and what to adjust next.
Pain Point #3: Constant cash-flow anxiety
Common symptoms:
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You dread payroll week.
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Vendor terms are all over the place.
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Annual bills (insurance, licenses, tax estimates) show up and wipe out months of progress.
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You’re never quite sure if you can afford the next piece of equipment or the next key hire.
In a low-margin environment, the timing of cash matters as much as the amount.
How a fractional CFO helps
Here, the “cash as a menu item” playbook we’ve written about for restaurants comes fully into play.
A restaurant-focused fractional CFO will:
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Build a 13-week cash-flow forecast that captures:
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All major inflows (dine-in, bar, to-go, catering, events, deposits).
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All major outflows (payroll by category, vendors, rent, debt service, taxes, capex).
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Define cash “specs” for your business—clear, non-negotiable floors for:
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Payroll buffer.
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Fixed-cost coverage.
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Tax and seasonal reserves.
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Turn that into plays you understand:
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“Normal week” play.
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“Soft stretch / slow season” play.
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“We’re gearing up for a big project” play.
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With that in place, cash stops being a constant surprise and starts behaving more like a designed part of your operating system.
Pain Point #4: Labor that feels out of control
Labor is one of your largest and most delicate levers. In a lot of operations, though, it gets managed like this:
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You look at labor as a percentage of sales after payroll hits the bank.
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When sales soften, you cut hours to chase the percentage.
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Service suffers, team morale erodes, and future revenue takes the hit.
We’ve written separately about shifting from labor efficiency to labor productivity in restaurants and taprooms: using metrics like Covers per Labor Hour instead of only chasing a labor%.
How a fractional CFO helps
On the labor side, a fractional CFO can:
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Rebuild your labor lens.
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Track labor by category (FOH, BOH, bar, management, production) based on hours worked in the week, not just pay dates.
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Layer in productivity metrics: Sales per Labor Hour and Covers per Labor Hour by daypart.
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Tie schedules to demand.
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Use history, reservations, and local events to forecast realistic sales by shift.
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Help your leadership team design staffing templates that protect guest experience while keeping productivity in range.
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Connect labor to growth, not just cuts.
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Identify where adding hours or a role (e.g., a stronger bar lead or expo) would actually grow throughput and check average.
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Instead of labor being a monthly argument, it becomes a weekly, numbers-based conversation that operators and managers can have without guesswork.
Pain Point #5: Growth decisions made on gut, not math
A few scenarios you may recognize:
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The patio is packed all summer—so a second location sounds obvious.
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A landlord offers you what seems like a good deal on another space.
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You want to upgrade the kitchen line, add a private-event space, or bolt on a small taproom.
Each of those decisions can help build enterprise value—or quietly add strain your current cash flow cannot sustain.
How a fractional CFO helps
A restaurant/taproom fractional CFO will:
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Model the economics of new projects.
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Build project budgets, timelines, and pro formas that reflect your real prime cost and overhead, not wishful thinking.
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Stress-test debt and lease structures.
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Evaluate what happens to cash if revenue comes in below plan, costs come in above plan, or construction drags.
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Protect the core business.
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Define clear thresholds: how much risk the existing restaurant/taproom can reasonably absorb while you grow.
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The point is not to say “no” to growth—it is to ensure that when you say “yes,” you know exactly what it will take to make the math work.
Pain Point #6: Data everywhere, but no single source of financial truth
Most independent groups have the same tech stack:
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POS (with endless reports)
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Scheduling/payroll platform
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Accounting or back-office system
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Maybe an inventory tool, maybe spreadsheets
On the floor, the team lives in the POS and the schedule. At month-end, you get a P&L that doesn’t quite match what you feel in service. Nobody fully trusts any of it.
How a fractional CFO helps
Here, Lord CPAs and The Fifth Table operate as one finance function:
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System alignment
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Clean up the chart of accounts so POS exports, payroll, and accounting speak the same language.
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Standardize how revenue streams, comps/voids, and discounts are treated.
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Implement simple, reliable closing routines so each week rolls up cleanly into the month.
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Operator-friendly dashboards
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Build one “front-stage” view for operators: sales, traffic, prime cost, labor productivity, cash, and guest signals on a single page. Lord CPAs
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Translate all of that into a weekly huddle format your GM, kitchen lead, and bar lead can actually use.
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Instead of arguing with spreadsheets, your team can argue about the right moves to make.
Pain Point #7: Leading alone at the top
The numbers are one part of the story. The harder part is often the leadership load:
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You are the one making every trade-off: food quality vs. margin, labor vs. service, debt vs. growth.
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You want to give your leadership team more ownership, but you are not sure how to structure the “scoreboard” or the conversations.
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You are tired of feeling like the only one lying awake at night thinking about cash, payroll, and the next quarter.
How a fractional CFO helps
A good fractional CFO relationship feels less like a vendor and more like another seat at your leadership table:
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Regular rhythm.
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Weekly or monthly finance/strategy sessions that look at dashboards, cash, and projects together—so decisions are shared, not carried alone.
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Translation layer.
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Someone who can explain the financial story in operator language and help you turn it into concrete plays for the team.
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Accountability without drama.
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Clear targets, simple scoreboards, and a cadence of revisiting commitments so you and your leadership team know what “on track” actually means.
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This is especially where The Fifth Table shows up: building the operating system—dashboards, huddles, and playbooks—that turns finance into a leadership tool instead of just a report.
When does a fractional CFO make sense for a restaurant or taproom?
You don’t need a fractional CFO for a one-day-a-week pop-up.
You should start considering it when:
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You have a meaningful payroll and prime-cost spend (even at a single location) and no one “owns” the financial picture.
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You’re juggling multiple revenue streams—bar, dining room, patio, events, catering, maybe retail or packaged product.
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You’re either seeing persistent profitability/cash-flow issues or you’re planning major moves (new concept, new location, or a significant renovation).
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You feel that the complexity of the business has outgrown the monthly “tax and bookkeeping” relationship.
In that space, a fractional CFO function built on Lord CPAs’ financial backbone and The Fifth Table’s strategic operating systems often costs less than a single full-time management salary—while directly supporting every major financial decision you make.
Where to go from here
If any of these pain points feel uncomfortably familiar:
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Running off the bank balance.
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Prime cost drifting with no clear weekly view.
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Cash-flow anxiety every time payroll hits.
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Labor decisions that feel reactive instead of designed.
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Growth plans that live mostly in your head.
Then you are squarely in the zone where a restaurant/taproom-focused fractional CFO can change the trajectory of your business.
This is the work we live in every day:
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Foundations: giving you accurate, timely financials and visibility into profitability, prime cost, and cash.
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Fractional CFO: building the dashboards, cash-flow playbooks, labor and menu strategies, and leadership rhythms that turn those numbers into better decisions on the floor.
If you want to explore what a fractional CFO would look like for your specific restaurant or taproom, the next step is simple: reach out through “Get Support” and we can talk about your current pain points, your goals, and whether this level of support is the right fit for your stage.
