Prime cost, weekly
Food plus labour as a percentage of sales is the number that decides whether the restaurant survives. Monthly is too slow.
Restaurants & Food Service
Restaurants & Food Service — tax and accounting that fits how you actually operate
Restaurants run on two numbers — food cost and labour cost — and a month-old P&L is far too late to act on either.
What goes wrong
The five things that cost restaurants & food service businesses money
Daily sales reconciliation
POS, delivery platforms, card processors and cash all have to tie out every day, or discrepancies become untraceable.
Tip reporting & credits
Tip allocation, the FICA tip credit and reporting thresholds are easy to get wrong and expensive to correct.
Delivery platform economics
Third-party commissions, marketing fees and the sales tax the platform collects all need separating out to see true margin.
Sales tax on prepared food
Hot food, cold food, to-go and dine-in are treated differently in California. Auditors know this even when owners do not.
What we do about it
How we work with you
- Daily sales journal built from your POS, reconciled automatically
- Weekly prime cost reporting rather than a monthly autopsy
- Tip reporting and the FICA tip credit handled properly
- Delivery platform income and fees separated so real margin is visible
- Sales tax categories configured correctly at the POS level
Services
What this usually involves
Bookkeeping & Monthly Close
Reconciled every month, closed on a schedule, and delivered with a short note explaining what changed. Not a shoebox reconstructed in March.
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Payroll & Worker Classification
Running payroll is the easy part. Staying on the right side of the EDD, wage orders, sick-leave accrual and worker classification is where employers actually get hurt.
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Sales Tax & CDTFA Compliance
California layers district taxes on top of the state rate, treats marketplace sales differently, and audits sellers more actively than most states. We keep the filings clean.
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Outsourced CFO & Financial Advisory
Forecasting, margin analysis, pricing and capital decisions — the work a full-time CFO would do, scaled to a business that does not need one full time.
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Let’s look at your restaurants & food service numbers.
Bring last year’s return and a month of books. Thirty minutes, no charge, and a straight answer about what we would change.