In the restaurant industry, experience matters.
We have decades of experience in this industry as an operator, a CFO, and a corporate finance leader. We know the numbers, the decisions behind them, and what it takes to make them work for an owner.
David Lyon, CFP®, EA, CEPA®
I have spent my whole career in finance and hospitality. I started at 16 in a coffee shop, washing dishes and then learning to close. I studied finance and accounting at Boston University and worked in restaurants to pay for it.
After school I joined General Electric and spent several years in finance and accounting leadership roles in Sydney, Paris, London, and New York. At 29 I left corporate finance to do what I had always wanted to do. Over the next ten years I developed, owned, and operated a restaurant in Paris (my wife is French) and then franchise restaurants in California.
Through all of it, I came to find that my peace of mind as an operator depended on understanding my books, cash, taxes, and how the financial puzzle fit together. I started helping other owners with those questions, went back into finance to do it properly, and earned the CFP, Enrolled Agent, and Certified Exit Planning Advisor designations along the way.
Five things we have learned in 25 years of finance, restaurants, and restaurant finance.
Nearly every problem is operational, but almost impossible to solve without good data.
As an operator, it is very hard to drive change on a feeling, even when you know you’re right. When you can see on paper exactly what the problem is, your ability to fix it will increase dramatically.
Profit is an opinion. Cash is a fact.
Don’t get me wrong. The P&L matters, and done right, it is something you can act on every month. But nothing brings peace of mind like knowing how much cash the business is generating and having a cash flow forecast you can rely on.
A handful of key metrics, built on a rigorous process and delivered at a consistent clip, is all most operators need.
Too much data, too often, can be as bad as looking once a year. This is still the hospitality business. Ninety percent of what you need to do is on the floor, with your people, your product, and your guests. Producing and summarizing trustworthy data is a simple idea. But delivering it is hard.
In this industry, the owner and the business share one balance sheet.
This is true of a lot of business owners, but never more than with restaurant owners. This is a personal business. Advice that treats the restaurants and the household as separate problems is usually flawed.
Reporting is not the same thing as advice.
Pulling the data together and reporting it cleanly matters, and our team has it nailed down. But that is not CFO work. CFO work takes a deep understanding of the industry and the willingness to sit down with an operator and talk straight. A lot of service providers will call themselves CFOs when they have no business doing so.
And one more thing, which is less a lesson than a rule: it is better to face a problem than to run from it. Financial problems never get better by being avoided.
Sherin Lyon runs the firm's operations and helps oversee the bookkeeping staff. She is a former Global Controller for GE Corporate.
Beyond that, we are supported by our very talented finance staff. David trains each of them in restaurant accounting, operations, and financial reporting, and then they do what they do best.
Fresno, California. We work with restaurant operators across the country. Most of the work runs through your systems and over video, and we come to you when it matters.
Start with a conversation
Thirty minutes about your business and what you’re facing. A new location, a partner, a lease, or just getting books you can trust. No obligation.