Hot Tips & Takes: Revenue Forecasting & Financial Planning for Restaurants w/ Stephanie O’Rourk, CohnReznick

Meet Stephanie.

Stephanie O’Rourk co-leads CohnReznick’s National Hospitality Emerging Concepts, and Operational and Financial Consulting Divisions. Everyone from small, family-run restaurants to nationwide franchises can benefit from her insights into budgeting and forecasting. We sat down with her to learn the ins and outs of revenue forecasting and get the details on CohnReznick’s Restaurant Planning & Forecasting app.

Why is revenue forecasting so important for restaurants?

Revenue forecasting is the basis for the major line items in your overall forecasting cash flow — cost of goods, labor needs, and operating supplies. Therefore, whenever you start to model and do financial planning, revenue is an appropriate starting point.

Cashflow is the lifeblood of any business, enabling business continuity; the ability to invest in itself and future growth; as well as the ability to satisfy both short- and long-term debt obligations. It’s vital to understand how your business needs to perform in order to achieve your desired free cash flow and liquidity.

How does planning improve the resiliency of your restaurant and position you for growth?

To improve resiliency, you need real-time visibility into your business to make fiscally responsible and financially fluent decisions. It’s vital to the continuity of your business to understand where your cash flow is currently, and where it’ll be in the future. This can’t be done without measuring, forecasting, and monitoring the performance of your business on a consistent basis.

Another valuable tool is scenario forecasting, which allows operators to model how operational decisions affect their overall cash flow and financial performance. For example: You’re expecting a cost increase for a key ingredient utilized in numerous menu offerings from one of your main suppliers. If you utilize scenario forecasting, you can address menu prices based in a more thoughtful manner rather than just increasing prices by 5% across the board.

Planning provides an operator real-time forecasting and monitoring that will change as the business evolves. Monitoring your forecast and projections is what enables you to better monitor cash flow and, quite frankly, leads to operational success or failure.

What makes revenue forecasting difficult for restaurant owners?

It’s really a lack of understanding of their revenue and menu mix — the in-dining, to go, online orders, and food and beverage mix.

“If you’re utilizing the prior year as a baseline without understanding what some of those outliers were, and not adding relevant information for this year, you’re not forecasting.”

Another issue is understanding fluctuations in menu pricing and projected average checks. If you are reviewing year-over-year — comparing February to February, and then notice a big increase in May, you cannot assume that the increase is a result of menu price changes. That’s not a good enough. You must understand what caused the increase. It could have been more covers, it could have been increases in pricing. Not digging into the details to understand what happened in prior years is what can potentially produce a faulty forecast.

What are some of the common forecasting mistakes that you see operators make?

For a mature operator, one of the mistakes we see often is having a very siloed approach in terms of forecasting — that is, not incorporating all team members that affect all of the lines on their cash flow, financial modeling, and projections. You need to incorporate each important team member’s knowledge of the business for an accurate picture.

A big one is relying too heavily on historical data and just applying percentages across the board, stating: “I think we’ll grow 5% this year.” As we just talked about, utilizing straight year-over-year increases from the prior year without accounting for outliers doesn’t work. I see that a lot due to lack of understanding of menu mix and theoretical costs. Without menu analysis done on a regular basis, you don’t really have a true understanding of your costs for your various menu items.

Another mistake includes no consideration given for inflation as it pertains to expenses outside of the core prime costs. Everything in this world goes up in price. You’re seeing your G&A expenses, consulting expenses, office expenses, and paper supplies go up.

And then, there’s focusing on only P&L (profit and loss) items, but not incorporating balance sheet items that need to be considered when forecasting cash flow. That includes debt service, tax and profit distributions, and other long-term liabilities such as customer deposits. These are the things that affect current and future cash flow.

New operators are a little different, right? One huge miss we see a lot is failing to build the founders into their own model. How are they going to pay themselves? Another issue is they have no true North Star— no definition related to what successful growth means to them.

Finally, failure to execute on lessons learned.

“In the restaurant industry, we always concentrate on the bad when it comes to financial performance. Rarely do companies say, what did we do right? And how can we repeat that?”

That takes looking at your forecast and comparing it to your actuals. We must update the forecast as the business evolves, otherwise it becomes a useless piece of paper that we’re not able to utilize to make the decisions needed to be successful.

How do new restaurant concepts forecast when they have no historical data to rely on?

They must develop a menu. That’s number one.

Number two, they must cost that menu. Then they must understand their business model and revenue streams: Will it be in-dining or primarily delivery?

Next, determine the number of seats, projected table turns and covers, as well as the projected average check to generate the information you need to forecast for revenue and costs of goods sold.

You’ll need to develop a labor schedule, which is based upon your FOH and BOH needs, which ultimately is based on your covers. It’s not all about revenue; it’s covers and the minimum amount of labor required to successfully execute those covers. From a BOH perspective, whether you’re doing $100,000 in sales or $1 million in sales, sometimes you need the same number of cooks in the kitchen to successfully execute your concept.

Then, you base controllable expenses (expenses that are driven by revenue) on your revenue and business model. For example, if your model is to do a good deal of delivery, then your third-party delivery fees and paper supplies are going to be higher based ony our business model.

You also need to know the price per square foot of your restaurant space to determine your rent and occupancy costs as an industry standard percentage of revenue. These costs will only increase over time and are fixed in nature. An operator’s business model needs to support whether a space is an affordable long-term option for their future business needs.

For G&A, marketing, and the rest, you can use industry standards. These costs are typically fixed in nature and are not typically driven by revenue.

What are the implications of variables like a competitive labor market and high turnover?

Understanding the cost of turnover is critically important because it affects other aspects of your business. With turnover comes the loss of institutional knowledge, which in turn means a potential loss in revenues and increase in costs. A new employee isn’t as familiar with the menu, needs time to be trained, and might not be able to upsell as well. Those are the things you need to and build that into your financial model.

Any conversation about the cost of labor also includes retention and that takes rethinking how you pay and incentivize employees. Operators always think it’s too expensive to offer the benefits that everyone wants, but you don’t know that until you model it and see how it will affect your financial performance. The model will show you how employee retention could mitigate some of the risks associated with turnover.

Operators may find that they can afford most of those benefits that haven’t traditionally been provided by the restaurant industry. With the proper financial planning and analysis, an operator can see the potential increase in revenue that could come with providing such benefits

Operators always think it’s too expensive to offer the benefits that everyone wants, but you don’t know that until you model it and see how it will affect your financial performance.

You might find that you can afford all those benefits that haven’t traditionally been given in the restaurant industry, but the people who are doing financial planning and analysis can see how they could potentially increase revenue.

What kinds of tools/resources are important for restaurants to have as they’re building a forecast?

You should have the technology in place to obtain the information needed to perform budgeting and forecasting. The data you need will come from your POS, inventory management system, reservation system, general ledger, labor management system or any other business intelligence tool within your organization.

Integration is key when you’re trying to connect all the dots and connect the varying platforms. For instance, CohnReznick has a restaurant planning and forecasting application that provides instantaneous visibility into your business performance. It uses real-time data from all in-house sources to create both traditional and scenario budgets and forecasts.

“It’s important to understand what you’re going to do next year and what you should expect in cash flow, but what’s really more important is the real-time visibility that enables you and your team to make those quick, real time decisions.”

Information is power, and connecting platforms to provide real-time visibility into operational performance is key.

Back to my example from earlier: Suppliers told me that there is going to be a dramatic price increase on a key ingredient that runs across many menu offerings. So how do I pass that along? Do I pass the entire increase along to my customer? How is that going to affect my potential marketability? I might have to think about other revenue streams that might mitigate some of these additional costs that maybe I can’t pass along.

If you have the information at your fingertips and you can compare actual to theoretical, you’re going to be able to pivot in real-time. You’ll also able to identify operational trends, remediate risk, and forecast performance impacts.

Anything timely that restaurant operators should take into consideration in 2023 and 2024?

Again, lack of employee retention remains a challenge in the industry. It’s wise to rethink pay and incentives and understand how you will be able to pay for that. Many operators will be seeing significant increases in labor rates for some states in the next few years. Putting pen to paper, computing to quantify the financial impact on your business, and incorporating scenario planning into your future budgets and forecasts will put operators in a position to be ahead of the curve.

Commodities are also always a factor. For example, with egg prices — everyone talked about them and now they’re back down. There’s always something — like acts of nature — that cause a crop to underperform, resulting in demand outweighing supply and therefore higher prices arise.

We are still in a competitive market and understanding your market in your segment and geographic territory in relation to your menu pricing is key — because if you are above market, there has to be a value proposition that keeps customers coming through your doors.

Knowing your customer base and ensuring that you are catering to your bread and butter is everything. While there’s a lot of technology out there to help manage customer relations, it isn’t a substitute for real, face-to-face interactions and a human touch.

Stephanie leads the National Hospitality Emerging Concepts and Operational and Financial Consulting Divisions at CohnReznick. Learn more about her and CohnReznick here.

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Product and Company News

Kickfin Ranked 65th Fastest Growing Company on the 2024 Deloitte Technology Fast 500

We’re thrilled to announce that Kickfin made the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ list, a ranking of the 500 fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, fintech, and energy tech companies in North America.

How Kickfin stacks up

Overall, 2024 Technology Fast 500 companies achieved revenue growth ranging from 201% to 153,625% over the three-year time frame, with an average growth rate of 1,981% and median growth rate of 460%.

Our 2,144% revenue growth earned us the 65th spot on Deloitte’s list. It’s another exciting milestone for Kickfin — but more importantly, it’s a meaningful validation of our mission to take the clunk out of tip management, so payouts are faster, smarter and safer for every restaurant team we serve.

Based on Deloitte’s ranking, Kickfin is:

The highest-ranked restaurant tech company on the list
The *only* tip management company on the list
Austin’s fastest-growing tech company

Growth driven by product innovation, demand for automation

Kickfin was the first digital end-to-end tip management solution on the market — and with more than $2 billion payouts to more than 250,000 restaurant employees, we continue to be the largest and top-ranked.

Why?

It comes down to working the way our customers work — and not the other way around. Not only do we automate the tip pooling and payout process for thousands of restaurants and bars; no two tip policies are alike, so we’ve built a solution that gives them the flexibility and customization they require.

With more than $2 billion payouts to more than 250,000 restaurant employees, Kickfin continues to be the largest and top-ranked tip management software on the market.

That’s a big reason we’ve focused on building direct, robust integrations with the leading POS systems on the market. So far, we’ve rolled out integrations with Toast, SkyTab, Oracle, PAR, Heartland and Square — and the list continues to grow.

“In recent years, digital tip management has become table stakes,” said Justin Roberts, Kickfin’s co-founder and co-CEO.

“Operators now understand the significant efficiencies to be gained by eliminating manual tip-out processes. It’s no longer a question of ‘if,’ but ‘how.’ As a direct result of our commitment to innovation and customer success, we’re thrilled to see more and more restaurants select Kickfin to modernize their tip management.”

A big thank-you to our customers who trust us with their payouts, to our partners who support, collaborate (and integrate!) with us, and of course, every member of the Kickfin team.

About the Deloitte 500

Now in its 30th year, the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 provides a ranking of the fastest-growing

technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, fintech, and energy tech companies — both public and private — in North America. Technology Fast 500 award winners are selected based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2020 to 2023.

In order to be eligible for Technology Fast 500 recognition, companies must own proprietary intellectual property or technology that is sold to customers in products that contribute to a majority of the company’s operating revenues. Companies must have base-year operating revenues of at least US$50,000, and current-year operating revenues of at least US$5 million.

Additionally, companies must be in business for a minimum of four years and be headquartered within North America.

Ready to take the next step?

See how brands like Walk-On’s, Marco’s, Bar Louie and more are automating tip pooling and payouts with Kickfin. Schedule your 10-minute demo today!

Industry Trends

How the 2024 Presidential Election Could Affect Taxes for Tipped Employees

It’s an election year, in case you haven’t heard! 😉 This one has major implications for tipped employees — specifically, when it comes to taxes.

It’s no secret that our Democratic and Republican candidates are running on very different platforms. But when it comes to tip regulations, Vice President Kamala Harris and Former President Donald Trump actually both support reducing taxes on tips.

A little context on taxes and tips

We’re just going to state the obvious: For the average American, tax reporting can be pretty, pretty confusing. For the millions of employees working in tipped occupations — well, that creates another layer of uncertainties.

(Do I have to report my tips? Do have to report my cash tips? Will anyone know if I don’t report my tips? What happens if I don’t accurately or fully report what I earned?)

Historically, there’s been a trend of hospitality employees underreporting cash tips to prevent higher tax burdens. And while this may reduce what employees owe Uncle Sam in the moment, there can be downsides: e.g., if they find themselves eligible for unemployment, if they’re trying to qualify for an auto loan or mortgage, etc.

However, that urge to underreport could be relieved in the near future, given the tax code changes both of our presidential candidates have proposed. The TL;DR: Both Trump and Harris have voiced their intention to relieve some of the burden on tipped workers in restaurants, bars, hotels, and other service positions.

Here’s a quick summary of each candidate’s plan, as well as some potential impacts for restaurant employees.

Trump’s plan for tipped employees

Trump shared his plan to reduce tipped income tax burden at a rally in Las Vegas — fitting for a city that’s built on the gig economy. Nevada is home to the highest concentration of tipped employees who work in the many hotels, casinos, and restaurants that millions of tourists flock to annually.

During the rally, the former president announced that he would make tipped income exempt from federal income tax, stating it would happen “right away” when he takes office.

Since speaking at the rally, Trump has not yet clarified what this would mean for tipped employees. Many servers want to know if this is an exemption just on federal income tax or if the proposal includes payroll taxes (social security and Medicare).

Harris’s tip tax proposal

Harris also took the opportunity to speak on her tipped income policy while visiting Nevada. Much like Trump, she knew she’d have a captive audience when it comes to tipped earnings.

Her proposal promises to exempt tipped income from the federal income tax, but she has made clear that tips will still be subject to payroll taxes. While not yet confirmed, campaign insiders say Harris is considering placing some guardrails on her plan — like a caveat that the tax exemption only applies to employees earning less than $75,000 per year.

Is one plan better than the other?

In short: probably not. (Most service and hospitality workers do not earn above the $75,000 threshold that’s been suggested by the Harris campaign.) So either way, servers, bartenders, and hospitality staff can expect to see a lower tax burden during the next administration.

But what does that look like in practice?

Most tipped employees aren’t receiving their tips on payroll — they’re walking out of every shift with their earnings for the night, deduction-free. Instead, the taxes are paid on payroll out of their hourly earnings, which is why many servers get $0 paychecks every two weeks. With a reduced tax burden, most servers will see the difference in higher paychecks.

On the other hand, economists are wary of the impact of eliminating taxes on tips, citing the reduced funding for social security and Medicare. And with so much negative sentiment around “tipflation” these days, experts also speculate that a reduced tax burden may result in even more hesitance at the tip screen.

Increasing minimum wage

We’re closely following campaign promises about an increase to the minimum wage — especially in regards to the tipped minimum wage and the tip credit.

Minimum wage earners have been eyeing an increase, noting that the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour hasn’t increased since 2009, and servers, bartenders, and other tipped employees have been earning $2.13 per hour for over 30 years. An increased minimum wage paired with the reduced tax burden could make a major difference for service workers trying to keep up with the rising cost of living.

In the Harris camp, removing tax on tips is just part of the plan to take some pressure off service workers. While Harris hasn’t shared a detailed plan for bumping up the minimum wage, she has indicated that she would support an increase.

In previous election cycles, Trump stated that he would consider a minimum wage increase, but he has not shared his opinion on the matter during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Of course, we’re a ways out from any real policy changes actually shape — but if you’re looking to make your tip management process less taxing in the interim (see what we did there?), Kickfin is here for you! Check out how you can use Kickfin to auto-calculate tip pools and send payouts directly to employees’ bank accounts in seconds.

Restaurant Management

Top 4 Ways to Protect Your Restaurant from Cash Shrinkage

No matter what industry you work in, there’s always a risk for shrinkage and theft. Ninety-five percent of all businesses experience theft in the workplace, and up to 75% of employees have admitted to stealing from their employer.

Most of the time, it’s not intentional or malicious. For restaurants, it could be something as innocent as giving your friends a free drink or asking the kitchen for food and neglecting to ring it in.

But when you have a lot of employees handling cash day in and day out, it can be very tempting for someone to take advantage of systems and pocket extra money at your expense. To make matters worse: because cash is hard to track, it can be tricky for operators to put their finger on exactly what’s happening — at least, before it starts to impact your bottom line.

While cash shrinkage can jeopardize your business, operators do have the power to protect their restaurants. Ultimately, it comes down to having the right processes, systems and partners in place.

Here are 4 things you can start doing today to protect your restaurant from cash shrinkage.

1. Create a culture of trust with employees

Most people want to come to work, do their best, and make an honest living. Creating an environment where your employees trust you with their earnings should encourage them to also be responsible with company assets, including cash.

Of course, it starts with doing your due diligence when building out your team. That means interviewing new hires in person, asking the right questions, and always checking references.

But the fact of the matter is that even good people can make poor decisions, especially when they’re struggling. As an employer, there are things you can do to keep your staff from ever getting to a place where they feel the urge or need to steal. That includes:

Paying a fair and competitive wage
Paying wages on time, in full
Giving people instant access to their earnings
Offering employee benefits and perks if possible
Adhering to federal, state and local labor/wage regulations, especially as they relate to tips

Bottom line: If you show that employees you take their financial well being seriously, it can foster an environment of mutual respect, making employees less likely to consider theft as a reasonable (or justifiable) option.

2. Minimize cash touchpoints

It’s simple. Less cash on hand = less opportunity for cash shrinkage.

In the unfortunate case that a high-ranking employee is stealing from your restaurant, cash tip outs make it much more difficult to catch and trace. Anyone with access to cash registers and safes has the opportunity to take a few extra bills — and you may not notice until well after the cash is pocketed and spent.

Instead of locking up cash and making only a few employees responsible for the massive task of paying out tips, take advantage of new technology that eliminates cash from the tip out process. Fewer people will need to manage cash, which adds one extra layer of security against theft.

Bonus: cashless tipping vendors like Kickfin give your employees more flexibility with their earnings. They can opt for tips to be sent directly to their bank or to have them put on their payroll check, empowering employees to make their own financial decisions.

3. Create a digital paper trail

The trouble with cash is the inability to track it. Half the battle is realizing that the cash is missing; and once you know it’s gone — well, now what?

Digital gratuity management software makes it easy for restaurant operators to create a digital paper trail for all tip payouts. You’ll be able to identify any improper payments, who they went to, and who authorized the payout — removing a major security soft spot.

Not only will you feel more secure, but your loyal employees will thank you for making tip outs much easier.

4. Select a secure tip management partner

Removing cash-on-hand is a great first step, and it should make any potential theft traceable back to the person responsible. But wouldn’t you rather prevent theft before it happens?

If you’re ready to bring your gratuity management into the future, make sure to thoroughly vet your options — because not every digital tip out software has strong protections against theft.

That’s why Kickfin has optional guardrails that can mitigate your risk of employee theft.

Maximum tip amounts: Limit the amount that can be issued in any individual payout.

Role policies: Create policies to limit who can receive payments by role type, and limit who can send payments to themselves.

Multi-factor authentication: Set your own rules to require MFA at any point, whether at every login or once a month.

Payment interval approval: Trigger a requirement for second approval for an employee’s first payment or their first payment in a determined number of days.

Payment velocity approval: Trigger a requirement for second approval when an employee receives a determined number of payments within a certain interval.

For our POS integration partners, Kickfin can also put guardrails around your tip calculation policies to prevent fraud. While we offer the ability to send payments through manual entry, spreadsheet upload, or using our tip calculation software, integration users can disallow manual and upload payments to prevent any ad hoc payouts.

Integration users can also lock in their tip calculation rules, so that only certain users can make changes to the calculation policy.

How Kickfin helps in the event of fraud

Even without the temptation of cash in the safe, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

If you find yourself in a regrettable situation with an employee, your tip management partner should be there to back you up. Thankfully, our platform tracks each payout which will help you identify irregularities and the source of the problem.

The Kickfin team will always be there to support our partners who experience security breaches.

Check your Kickfin security settings

Do you want to make sure you have the most up-to-date protections on your Kickfin account? We’ve got you covered. Reach out to your Kickfin customer support team to ask about a free security audit, where we’ll go over your current settings and offer guidance on how to minimize your risk.

Not yet a Kickfin user? Find out more about our platform and security settings with a demo today.

Restaurant Management

4 Ways to Save on Restaurant Labor Costs with Kickfin

In the restaurant industry, profit margins have always been tight — and these days, they’re only getting tighter.

Running a restaurant is a labor intensive business. You need a strong back of house team to push out food, front of house workers to greet and care for guests, and managers to keep everyone in check. Naturally, labor is one of the most significant expenses for restaurant operators. In order to keep costs reasonable for customers, even a slight overage on labor can break your budget — but thankfully there are levers you can pull to reduce labor costs.

If you want to secure your business’s financial future, you’re going to need to streamline scheduling practices and keep a close eye on labor costs… without frustrating employees who want more shifts.

Don’t worry: you can turn to traditional wisdom, sales forecasting, and emerging restaurant technology to make sure that you stay on budget.

Here are a few ways you can save on labor costs at your restaurant:

1. Rethink the schedule

Obviously, the most straight-forward way to cut labor costs is to reduce the number of people you schedule on a given night.

We get it — you don’t want to see hour-long ticket times and poor guest experiences. But you might not need as many folks on the line or servers on the floor as you think — at least, not all the time.

Staffing and scheduling isn’t a perfect science, but there are some tactics operators should test if they’d like to “right size” every shift — including:

Analyze your daily schedule. Don’t make assumptions about your peak times and slow periods. Analyze sales trends and let the data be your guide.
Anticipate seasonal trends. If you’re in a college town, don’t wait until your servers are twiddling their thumbs in July to implement a new summer schedule.
Let your seasoned staff shine. Your veteran employees likely thrive on those super busy nights when they’re running on pure adrenaline (and earning way more in tips). Consider giving more experienced workers more responsibility — assuming they’re willing and able — and you might be able to get away with fewer people on a shift here and there.

>> Learn about scheduling software that helps you manage labor and engage with employees

2. Assess and address productivity

Are you making the most of the team that you already have? There are a few ways you can identify your highest-producing employees and make the most of their success:

Evaluate employee performance. Most employees want to be successful; observe your team and analyzes things like sales per labor hour, table turnover rate, and tip volume to get a sense of your strongest players and those who could use more training (and bonus: this can reduce turnover and boost team morale)

Provide incentives. Create a fun bonus system that rewards strong performance and high levels of productivity. You can use data from the previous data point to set goals.
Cross-train employees. Training your staff to handle multiple roles – or hiring folks with vast service experience – offers flexibility for scheduling and can reduce your need for additional hires.

3. Don’t pay employees to wait for their tips

No, we’re not saying to cut all of your servers early (no matter how much they ask).

But, you can send your servers on their way much quicker when they don’t have to wait around for managers to count out cash tips. Once they’ve finished their sidework, servers can clock out and see their digital tips sent directly to their bank account, instead of hanging around on the clock waiting for the shift manager to do their check outs.

4. Prevent labor overages before they happen

Most restaurants simply can’t afford to pay overtime for staff. But sometimes your full-time staff creep toward 40 hours of work without anyone noticing…and suddenly you’re paying 1.5x what you expected for a single worker.

This, too, goes back to proper scheduling policies. Give yourself a bit of wiggle room for the employee who clocks in 10 minutes early or often takes a long time on sidework by never scheduling anyone for more than 38 hours each week.

5. Pay close attention to clock-outs

People make mistakes, and tired servers often leave their long double shift without clocking out for the night. Usually, they’ll realize their mistake and call the store to have someone clock them out (still adding extra time to their shift).

But sometimes, the clock keeps running all night, and no one notices until it’s time to process payroll. Two weeks later, your admin team is spending way too much time correcting clock-outs so that you don’t end up paying for 8 extra hours of work.

Try using technology that puts guardrails in place to prevent any clock-out mistakes before they happen. Kickfin doesn’t allow you to process and pay out tips until an employee is clocked out, so managers can make sure everyone is clocked out at the proper time.

(We also have some other exciting new features that can make your life easier!)

Not only can Kickfin help you reduce labor costs, but we’re ready to simplify your entire tip management process. Reach out to us to learn more about our instant tip calculations, integrations, and smarter tipping solutions.