Restaurants & Bars
Thin margins mean every dollar matters. We track food costs, reconcile your POS to the bank, and keep tip reporting compliant.
The Industry
A restaurant running $800,000 in annual revenue might clear $40,000 in profit if everything goes right. That’s a 5% margin. Food cost runs 28-35% of revenue. Labor runs another 30-35%. Rent, utilities, insurance, supplies, and everything else take their share. What’s left is yours, assuming nothing slips through the cracks. The problem is that something always slips. A supplier quietly raises prices 3% on your top five ingredients. A line cook portions heavier than the recipe calls for. The dishwasher forgets to rotate stock and you throw out $200 in produce. None of these show up as obvious problems. They just slowly eat your margin until the end of the month looks worse than expected.
Revenue comes from multiple directions now. Dine-in sales, takeout orders, delivery apps taking 15-30% of each order, catering jobs, maybe merchandise or gift cards. Each channel has different timing and different costs. DoorDash deposits hit your account three days later minus fees that aren’t itemized clearly. Credit card tips get added to paychecks while cash tips get reported separately. Alcohol sales have different tax treatment than food. A busy Saturday generates $8,000 in sales across four different channels with three different payment processors and a cash drawer that needs to balance at the end of the night.
Who This Covers
Who This Covers
Full-service restaurants, bars and taverns, cafes and coffee shops, food trucks, catering operations. Any food and beverage business in MetroWest or Greater Boston dealing with daily cash handling, perishable inventory, and tip reporting requirements.
What Complicates It
What Complicates It
Daily cash reconciliation from multiple payment sources. Food and beverage cost tracking against perishable inventory. Tip pooling and reporting for payroll compliance. Delivery app deposits that arrive days later with fees buried in the numbers. Alcohol and food taxed at different rates in Massachusetts. Seasonal swings that make January look nothing like July.
What We Handle
Your POS system tracks every sale but that data has to tie back to actual bank deposits. Credit card batches need to match what the processor deposited minus fees. Cash drawers need daily reconciliation. Delivery app deposits need verification against the order counts and fee schedules. We build the process so discrepancies get caught within days, not discovered months later when nobody can trace the source. Food cost gets tracked as a percentage of sales on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, not just whenever you do a physical count. You’ll see when costs drift up before a full month of reduced margin passes.
Tip reporting follows IRS rules and Massachusetts requirements. We make sure credit card tips flow through payroll correctly with proper withholding, and cash tip reporting stays documented. Vendor payments get scheduled around your cash flow reality. Food suppliers want payment in 7-14 days while your weekend revenue hasn’t hit the bank yet. We help you manage that timing so you maintain good supplier relationships without overdrawing accounts. For seasonal operations, we build cash reserves during busy months so the January slow period doesn’t become a crisis.
Daily Operations and Cost Tracking
Daily Operations and Cost Tracking
POS-to-bank reconciliation catching discrepancies early. Food cost calculated weekly as a percentage of food sales. Beverage cost tracked separately with pour cost analysis for bars. Inventory counts tied to purchasing records to identify waste or shrinkage. QuickBooks configured to show cost of goods sold by category so you can see where margins are tightening.
Payroll and Vendor Management
Payroll and Vendor Management
Tip reporting and allocation handled correctly for payroll compliance. Tipped minimum wage calculations for Massachusetts. Vendor payment scheduling that works with your actual cash flow timing. Sales tax filed with proper food and alcohol distinctions. Cash flow planning around seasonal patterns so slow months don’t catch you short.
What Goes Wrong
Food cost creeps up without anyone noticing. Your main protein supplier raises prices twice in six months. The new cook portions 20% heavier than the recipe card specifies. The walk-in cooler runs warm for a weekend and you lose $400 in dairy and produce. None of these trigger an alert. You just see lower profit at month end and can’t pinpoint why. By the time you realize food cost went from 30% to 34%, you’ve already lost four points of margin across three months of sales. On $60,000 monthly revenue, that’s $7,200 you didn’t know you were losing.
Delivery apps deposit money but the math is hard to follow. You fulfilled 200 orders through DoorDash last month. Menu prices totaled $4,800. The deposit was $3,600. The difference includes commission, marketing fees, payment processing, and adjustments for refunds or errors. Nobody reconciles this because the statements are confusing and the deposits seem close enough. Meanwhile 25% of your delivery revenue disappears into fees you haven’t evaluated. Cash handling without daily reconciliation creates slow leaks. A drawer that’s $20 short on a busy Saturday gets written off. Over a year, that adds up to real money that nobody tracked.
Invisible Cost Increases
Invisible Cost Increases
Supplier price increases that slip by unnoticed. Portion drift from inconsistent prep. Waste from poor rotation or equipment issues. Food cost tracked monthly instead of weekly means problems compound for weeks before showing up in the numbers. By the time you see it, the damage is already done.
Revenue Leaks and Cash Gaps
Revenue Leaks and Cash Gaps
Delivery app fees never reconciled against the value they actually provide. Cash drawers not balanced daily allowing small discrepancies to accumulate. Tips not tracked properly creating potential IRS issues. Seasonal cash flow not planned leaving you scrambling to cover payroll in slow months.
What Changes
Food cost gets tracked weekly so you catch problems in days instead of months. When your beef cost jumps 8% in two weeks, you know immediately and can adjust pricing or sourcing. Waste gets documented and measured against acceptable levels. Portion consistency improves because you have data showing where drift occurs. Your actual margin becomes predictable instead of a surprise you discover at month end. Delivery app performance gets evaluated with real numbers. You can see which platforms generate profit after fees and which ones just create work for minimal return.
Cash reconciles daily and discrepancies get investigated while they’re still traceable. Tip reporting stays compliant and documented. Vendors get paid on time because payment timing aligns with your actual cash flow. Seasonal patterns get built into cash planning so you build reserves during summer and don’t panic in February. When you want to open a second location or apply for financing, your books tell a clear story. Banks and investors can see exactly how the business performs because the numbers are accurate and well organized.
Cost Control and Margin Visibility
Cost Control and Margin Visibility
Weekly food cost tracking catching problems early. Waste documented and measured. Delivery app profitability analyzed by platform. Clear picture of actual margins by revenue stream. Data to support menu pricing decisions and vendor negotiations. Problems identified in days instead of discovered months later.
Cash Control and Growth Readiness
Cash Control and Growth Readiness
Daily cash reconciliation preventing accumulating discrepancies. Tips and payroll handled with proper documentation. Cash flow planned around seasonal patterns with reserves built during busy periods. Clean books that support financing applications or potential sale. Financial statements that show exactly how the business performs.
Greater Boston's Trusted Bookkeeping Partner
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