The Key to Profits - up to date Financials!

We recently took on a new client, and quickly discovered they had been running their single site takeaway/restaurant blind (financially).

With no true, accurate, up to date financials, they had a “gut feeling” about their margins and profitability but had nothing on paper to prove it.

This restaurant - let’s call them “Burger Co” - loved the idea of our full FD service, and so came on board after just a few meetings.

This full FD service includes everything a hospitality business would need, from weekly bookkeeping, paying suppliers, payroll, VAT and more – but most importantly, includes monthly conversations with live results, bang up to date! 

In our very first meeting, we had the news that their GP margins were sitting at around 20% after stock/labour. Not only that, but for the most recent quarter, they had been making monthly losses after overheads. 

The beauty of our service though, and especially the regular catch ups, meant we could put plans into place to improve their results straight away, and get them back into profits asap.

They had plans of expanding to a second site, and so we had to prove that site 1 could work first, and fast!

By looking at costs, over-staffing, as well as price increases (especially with VAT recently going up), we were able to paint a much more positive 6-month plan.

I am pleased to report that this owner is now back on track, and with our help, forecasting for his 2nd site, ready to open shortly.

The moral to this story is that your “gut feeling” is needed when running a business, but not when it comes to finances.

If you are getting results from your Accountant quarterly, or even annually, this is not good enough to run a successful hospitality business.

You need data as live and up to date as possible. 

For some of our restaurants/takeaways, we are feeding back WEEKLY GP reports to them. By running a full FD service, we deal with their suppliers directly, meaning we have up to date financials to hand, and have direct links to their EPOS systems. 

As Hospitality experts, if you feel like you need better help with all things Accounts, Tax, Payroll, Bookkeeping and Management Reporting, get in touch. 

Although our HO is in Bristol, we help businesses all around the country, from small single site owners to multi-site companies.

Within the same day, we can have a proposal to you, and get straight to work helping your F&B empire boom!  

To find out more: - https://steelefinancial.co.uk/sme-accountants/hospitality/#Restaurants 

To contact us: - email info@steelefinancial.co.uk or call: 0117 440 6439