Fractional CFO for Restaurants & Hospitality Groups in Chicago
Full-service restaurants and growing hospitality groups run on some of the thinnest margins of any industry we work in — and some of the least reliable reporting. POS data, food and beverage cost, and labor scheduling all live in different systems, and they rarely add up to what actually hits the P&L.
We connect what you already run — your POS, inventory, and scheduling systems — into financials you can trust, so prime cost, location profitability, and menu decisions are made on real numbers, not on how busy the dining room felt last Saturday.
The Pattern We See in Restaurants & Hospitality
Prime Cost Is Tracked Monthly, Not Weekly
Food, beverage, and labor cost — the number that decides whether a restaurant makes money — usually shows up a month late, after the week that mattered is already gone.
Multi-Location Comparisons Don't Hold Up
Once you have more than one location, the P&Ls rarely track costs the same way. So comparing locations means fixing the numbers first, before you can even read them.
Menu Engineering Runs on Instinct
Which dishes actually make money, once real food cost and labor time are accounted for, is usually a guess dressed up as a menu review.
The Three Pillars, Applied to Restaurants & Hospitality
Governance & Operational Design
Clear rules for discounts, comps, and vendor terms, so margin doesn't leak out through exceptions nobody's tracking.
Financial Data Infrastructure
POS, inventory, and scheduling systems connected into financials that reconcile — and that use the same chart of accounts across every location.
Reporting Operations
Weekly prime cost and location-level P&Ls built for a decision this week, not a monthly file that arrives too late to act on.
What Restaurants & Hospitality Operators Ask Us
How is this different from what our POS system already reports?
Your POS tells you what sold. It doesn't tell you what it cost to sell it once food, beverage, and labor are fully allocated — and it definitely doesn't compare that cleanly across locations. We build the layer that does.
Can you help us decide whether a new location makes sense?
That decision should be made using real numbers from the locations you already run, not a hopeful guess. Financial Data Infrastructure and Reporting Operations together build the location-by-location view that makes the case one way or the other.
We're a single-location, owner-operated restaurant — is this still a fit?
The Read is a fixed-fee diagnostic built specifically to answer that honestly before you commit to anything ongoing. Thin margins make prime cost visibility matter at one location just as much as ten.
Do you work with specific POS or inventory systems?
We connect to whatever you're running — Toast, Square, Restaurant365, MarginEdge, and others. We build the reporting layer on top of your existing systems rather than asking you to switch.
Want a read on your own numbers first?
Take the Free Restaurants & Hospitality Mini Read →It doesn’t end with a deck. It ends with a system.
We Take a Small Number of Engagements at a Time.
Every engagement starts with a Read — a short, fixed-fee diagnostic that tells you plainly what’s broken and what it’s costing you.