Restaurant CFO For Hire

Tired of Your Back Office Holding You Back?

Take your restaurant finance and accounting department to the next level.

Zachary Weiner provides part-time, interim, and special project Chief Financial Officer (CFO) services to the restaurant and hospitality industry.

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When Is It Time to Bring On a Capable Restaurant CFO?

You could be facing one or more of these example situations in your business, and that’s one of the first indicators that the business could need the advanced financial knowledge of a senior restaurant’s financial position. 

• Your business faces risk and uncertainty and needs an understanding of if that risk is manageable or at the minimum, a plan to mitigate it.
• If you are planning a hyper-growth for your restaurant, think that you have 3-10 restaurant units or locations and can realistically add 2-5 by the end of the year.
• You are concerned or unsure about some of the regulatory or compliance issues (think about the lines of liquor tax, varying rules in different states, sales tax, entity tax filings, and the like). 
• Your current accounting reports and operating reports are not communicating a clear story, are not timely, are not usable or structured appropriately.
• Your finance department is not well experienced in many issues you are facing or is not able to guide other connecting departments (e.g. sales, inventory, budget, planning and so on).
• You are continuously finding yourself in a cash scarcity, or even worse, mysterious cash disappearance situations. 
• Your purchases and COGS fluctuate rapidly from one period to another, and you are unable to explain the difference. 
• You want to value your restaurants and have plans for an IPO, debt restructuring, or fundraising from other sources.

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What to Look for in an Outsourced Chief Financial Officer

Of course, you look at the skills, experience, and qualifications of your new hire, but there are always some other qualities that make him (or me, for that matter) the perfect fit.

Here are some items you could look out for to find a good match for your restaurant’s Chief Financial Officer position. 

• The restaurant industry is in many ways different from other industries. Your CFO must have direct restaurant industry knowledge and experience, or at least in the hospitality business.
• Restaurants, as an industry, are unique. But even an individual restaurant is in many ways different compared to its counterparts. Your CFO must be equipped to analyze your financial situation, and make accurate analyses and projections.
• You will work with your CFO closely. You want to make sure that you understand each other’s leadership styles and also complement each other. For example, if you are not very structured, you want to make sure he fills in that gap by bringing more order to your system.
• Your ideal Chief Financial Officer should also facilitate the sharing of his expertise across other departments in the business. For instance, he could share his analytical approach or projection skills with the catering sales team to come up with more realistic goals with better pricing, more accurate predictions, and so on.
• CFOs these days go beyond just the numbers. They are a key collaborator with other departments and hence should have an understanding of the different functions of a restaurant too. This makes them more efficient in implementing the overall vision of your plans or strategy.
• A Restaurant CFO should be able to make decisions for you, so you want to get someone you can trust. For instance, when you plan to raise an IPO, he should be able to assess the market, and your business and give the go-ahead since timing is everything.
• A Restaurant Chief Financial Officer should also have the know-how of accounting software, IT skills, and understand the nuances of implementing related systems. The CFO should be comfortable with this software or should have the ability to learn easily, make decisions about the right tools, and know how to handle data privacy and compliance regarding the financial information of your business when you deploy software.
• The CFO should have a strategic vision. Maybe your restaurant’s financials suggest that you have expansion potential; he should be able to come to those conclusions and turn them into actionable plans. He should be an initiator, a leader, and not just a doer of his assigned task.
• A great restaurant Chief Financial Officer should be a leader, helping manage the restaurants and corporate team, taking them to the next level. Your CFO should have the courage to pinpoint and take suitable actions and also take responsibility for such situations.

Zachary is an experienced restaurant industry financial professional with a solid track record of successfully rearranging underperforming accounting and finance operations.

He does this by assessing complex financial data, handling large budgets, and delivering accurate forecasts to implement effective business processes that generate multi-million-dollar turnarounds for companies in the restaurant & hospitality industries.

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What Are the Responsibilities of a Restaurant CFO?

The main responsibilities of a restaurant’s Chief Financial Officer are to:

• Manage the restaurant’s financial reporting.
• Build and maintain the restaurant’s projections and budget.
• Raising debt or equity capital (such as new venture fundraising).
• Developing financial systems and infrastructure to facilitate growth into new markets.
• Mergers and acquisitions.
• Preparing for an IPO.
• Implementing financial planning tools to guide your company’s growth.
• Handle legal and negotiations for the CEO, such as leases, insurance, etc
• Preparing and executing a plan of reorganization.

The CFO should help translate the restaurant’s metrics into insights that the rest of the management team can use to make strategic decisions – important decisions such as when to open new units, make additional hires, when to ramp up sales or marketing spend, negotiate service contracts, etc.

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As Seen In

Zachary Offers Flexible CFO Options

Whether you just lost your CFO or Controller. Whether you need interim assistance or your company is growing and requires the expertise of a part-time Chief Financial Officer, we have a flexible solution that will work around your needs. We can hit the ground running and provide the type of expertise needed to assist your company in many areas successfully.

Restaurant Experience Makes All The Difference

Zachary Weiner is a seasoned finance professional, and his experience in the restaurant industry is what sets him apart from the pack.

The author of the top-selling restaurant finance book QuickBooks for Restaurants: A Bookkeeping and Accounting Guide, find out why Zachary Weiner is your perfect part-time CFO.

What Chief Financial Officer Clients Are Saying

The Chief Financial Officer’s Bottom Line

All of my efforts have a positive bottom-line impact. Some may show up immediately to the bottom line, others prevent unnecessary expenses from happening, and some create positive long-term benefits.

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Some Tell-Tale Signs You Need a Restaurant CFO

Still not sure you need a part-time restaurant CFO to elevate your restaurant empire to the next level. Here are some tell-tale signs:

• Concerns about regulatory or compliance issues, future cash flows, or if you are making an informed/educated decision?
• The financial staff takes over 15 days from the end of the accounting period to produce accurate and meaningful financial reports.
• Operating reports do not provide you and the team with meaningful information or are not timely.
• The finance department is bloated and inefficient.
• The cost of goods fluctuates widely from one period to the next.
• The lack of corporate planning results in crisis management (AKA putting out fires daily).
• The operating performance of entities reflected in your financial statements varies significantly from your and the team’s expectations.
• Unexplained cash shortages.
• Debt Service takes over 90% of free cash flow.
• Currently do not know your ideal food and beverage cost.
• Recently had compliance issues related to liquor tax, sales tax, entity tax filings, etc.

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Things You Need From a Restaurant CFO

You found some gaps you needed help with and went ahead and hired a CFO. Knowing the situations where he or she can step in and help will ensure a long-term and mutually beneficial relationship. Most importantly, it will ensure you get a strong ROI on your investment in this executive.

So here are some more common items that restaurants need their CFO to deal with. 

Benchmarking

Benchmarking against industry peers is important. Their strategic decisions, marketing tactics, and growth plans, tracking these, among other metrics, helps you understand many aspects of your restaurant’s performance.

These could be as simple as making decisions like when to open and close your store. Or as complex as opening a new revenue avenue, like breakfast across all your chains.

Especially when your restaurant is niche or has some unique, innovative concept, it could become difficult to have accurate benchmarking in place, and your Chief Financial Officer could help you set up a relevant structure for the same.

Financial Relationships

A great restaurant CFO will establish and maintain the lines of communication with bankers, financial analysts (public companies), and shareholders in conjunction with the CEO or company president.

The CFO will administer banking arrangements, loan agreements, lines of credit (or other debt instruments), and maintain adequate sources of capital for the company’s current borrowings from commercial banks and other lending institutions. In addition, this role will invest the company’s funds and administer incentive stock option plans.

Record Control

The restaurant CFO is responsible for the financial aspects of all company transactions including real estate bids, contracts, and leases.

The CFO also provides insurance coverage, as required, ensures the maintenance of appropriate financial records, prepares required financial reports, ensures audits are completed in time, and statutory book closing occurs.

One of the primary Chief Financial Officer responsibilities is ensuring company compliance with financial regulations and standards, like the IRS Tax Code, and GAAP.

Help With the Fundraising Process

Your restaurant could be looking at raising funds for a current or new venture.

Everything from deciding the best method (banks, IPO, VC, crowdfunding, debt, accredited investors) to valuation to assessing the market and so on, your CFO could be your guiding angel for the process.

Cash Flow

As a restaurant’s Chief Financial Officer, one of the aspects of the job is to control the cash flow position throughout the company, understand the sources and uses of cash, and maintain the integrity of funds, securities, and other valuable documents.

The CFO receives, has custody of, and disburses the company’s money and securities. A restaurant CFO’s responsibilities include the authority to establish accounting policies and procedures for credit and collections, purchasing, payment of bills, and other financial obligations.

Cash is king, and the flow of cash, or cash flow, is the most crucial job a CFO has in any company.

Financial Planning & Analysis

You might already have your system in place for the accounting side of the business. Still, an extra set of eyes from industry-trained professionals can help catch mistakes (completeness or accuracy), ensure compliance, create more efficiency, or even yield information that could help make strategic decisions.

Your CFO can not only review financial information but implement proper financial analysis, budgeting, budget variance reporting that can all lead to actionable next steps, driving the business forward.

Manage the Finance Team

You might have a strong finance team already, but no one to manage the department as a whole and overlook the entire financial side of your business from a leadership standpoint. This is again where the restaurant CFO could step in as a leader/manager and act as the main point of responsibility for the finance and accounting functions of your business.

Additionally, the CFO supports the company’s accounting and financial functions using job descriptions, policies, and procedures, and methods for automating document control.

Incentive/Retirement Plan

Both incentive plan and retirement plan for your employees have an impact on turnover, employee morale and also has a tax impact. Planning the timeline, beneficiaries, amount, setting goals and objectives against these plans, right execution strategy – all of this requires planning – something your CFO could be a good sparring partner for.

Succession Planning

When you own a business, especially a successful business, succession planning is inevitable. It is way broader than who will be next. It encompasses concepts like leadership transitions, estate planning, tax impacts, insurance, legal agreements, and financial strategy for it, to name some main ones.

Your CFO should be able to help you with setting up a suitable plan for your business.

Historic Record Analysis

The restaurant Chief Financial Officer could help you monitor and analyze your historical records. Doing this yields insights into things like cost savings or new revenue opportunities. For instance, if they analyze your food costs over time, it could lead to being able to strategize procurement opportunities to help save costs in the future.

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