Questions restaurant and brewery owners ask us

We run the whole money side of a restaurant or brewery. That means bookkeeping, payroll support, business and personal tax returns, quarterly estimates, tax planning, and monthly reporting you can actually use. Every plan includes a fractional CFO element, so you get someone to talk the numbers through with, not just a set of statements in your inbox.

You can see what sits in each plan on our pricing page.

Restaurants, bars, cafes, nano breweries, taprooms, and brewpubs. We work with owners at every stage, from a first location that just opened to a group planning its next concept.

We also have plans for small businesses outside hospitality, though the industry work we are known for is restaurant accounting and brewery accounting.

No. Our office is in Huntley, Illinois, and we work with restaurant and brewery owners across the United States. Everything we do is cloud based, so where you are does not change how we work together.

That depends on your plan. Check-in calls and financial reviews run twice a year on Launch, quarterly on Grow, and monthly on Expand. On top of that, questions are unlimited on every plan, so calling or emailing between scheduled meetings is expected rather than an imposition.

We also do not book client meetings back to back, so nobody gets a rushed conversation about their business.

Book a discovery call from our contact page. We will ask about your setup, your current books, and what is frustrating you, then recommend the plan that fits. If we are not the right fit, we will say so on that call.

We charge a fixed monthly fee, not hourly. Plans start at $1,050 a month for Launch, which suits small cafes, bars, nano breweries, and micro breweries under $750k in sales. Grow is $1,575 a month for quick service and full service venues under $3m in sales. Expand is $2,500 a month for owners opening or scaling additional concepts.

Current figures and the full inclusion list live on the pricing page.

No. Questions are unlimited on every plan and they are covered by your monthly fee. Call, email, or text as often as you need. We would much rather hear about a decision before you make it than clean up after it.

No. Your Xero and MarginEdge subscriptions are included in every plan level, so the software you need to run the system is part of the fee rather than another invoice.

Payroll, outsourced payables, and outsourced receivables sit on the accounting side. Sales tax and 1099 processing sit on the compliance side. Cash flow forecasting, budget versus actual, business planning, and a financial health scorecard sit on the CFO side. Any of them can be added to any plan.

Xero. We are a Xero Certified Gold Partner and our team carries Xero's advisor certification, so it is a platform we work in every day rather than one we are learning on your file. There is more on how we use it on our Xero page.

Yes, and we handle the migration for you. Coming from QuickBooks, Sage, or spreadsheets does not change the answer. You do not have to move the data yourself.

Yes. Whether you are on Toast, Square, or something else, we connect the POS, payroll, and accounting into one flow so sales and labor land in the books without anyone rekeying them. That is usually where the biggest time saving shows up in the first month.

Syft Analytics is the reporting layer that sits on top of your Xero data. It turns the bookkeeping into dashboards, monthly reports, and forecasts you can read without an accounting background. Every client gets monthly Syft reports as part of the engagement. More detail is on our Syft page.

Restaurants get food cost %, beverage cost, labor as a share of sales, and prime cost, alongside the standard profit and loss, balance sheet, and cash flow. Breweries get cost of goods broken out by category, taproom revenue against distribution revenue, and labor as a % of sales.

Those are the figures that tell you whether each part of the business is pulling its weight, which is why pricing and staffing decisions get easier once you see them every month.

It is common and it is fixable. Catch-up work is included in the Expand plan and can be quoted separately on the others. We would rather start from a clean set of books than build reporting on top of a mess.

Both. Cash flow analysis is built into the Grow and Expand plans, and forecasting can be added to any plan. On the Grow and Expand plans we also set up Relay Financial with the Profit First method, so money is separated for its purpose as it comes in rather than sitting in one account until the bills arrive.

If you want the strategic side on its own, that is what our virtual CFO services cover.

Yes. Business and personal income tax returns, quarterly estimates, and tax planning are in every plan. The number of planning sessions changes by plan, from once a year on Launch to four times a year on Expand. Having the same team on the books and the return is the point, because nothing has to be re-explained at filing time.

There is more on how we approach it on our business tax services page.

It is a federal credit for the employer share of Social Security and Medicare taxes paid on certain employee tips, claimed on IRS Form 8846. Plenty of owners with tipped staff never claim it, usually because nobody told them it existed.

We identify and file it as part of our standard restaurant service. What it is worth depends on your tipped payroll, so it is a conversation about your numbers rather than a figure we can quote up front.

Recipe and menu development can qualify for the federal credit for increasing research activities, claimed on IRS Form 6765. Most owners assume research credits are only for laboratories and software companies, so it goes unclaimed in kitchens. Whether your work qualifies depends on what you are doing and how it is documented, which we go through with you.

Yes. Excise obligations are part of what we manage for breweries, alongside ingredient costs, taproom payroll, and the monthly reconciliations. It is one of the reasons a general accountant often struggles with a brewery.

Yes, both are available as add-ons to any plan.