Restaurants & Bars
Thin margins mean every dollar matters. We track food costs, reconcile your daily sales, and keep your books accurate so you can see where the money actually goes.
You Already Know It's Tight
You run a restaurant or bar somewhere in Long Beach, the South Bay, or greater LA. You work long days, manage a crew, handle vendors, deal with customers, and somehow keep the kitchen or bar running smoothly. At the end of the month, you look at the bank account and try to figure out if you actually made money. Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it’s not clear. Sometimes you’d rather not look.
Restaurant margins are some of the thinnest in any industry. A well-run place might net 5 to 8 percent. On $60,000 in monthly revenue, that could mean $3,000 to $4,800 in actual profit. The difference between a good month and a losing month can come down to a few percentage points of food cost or a handful of shifts with too many people on the clock. When those numbers aren’t tracked properly, you don’t see the problems until they’ve already cost you.
Who This Covers
Who This Covers
Restaurants, bars, cafes, food trucks, catering companies, juice bars, bakeries. Any food and beverage business in Long Beach or the Southland that deals with daily sales, perishable inventory, and a crew to pay.
Why the Books Are Different
Why the Books Are Different
High daily transaction volume from your POS system. Tips that need proper reporting. Food and beverage inventory that spoils. Multiple revenue streams from dine-in, takeout, delivery apps, and catering. Vendor payments happening weekly or even daily. It all adds up to a bookkeeping workload that’s very different from most other small businesses.
What We Handle
We reconcile your daily sales from your POS system to your bank deposits. That means matching what Toast, Square, Clover, or whatever system you use says you earned against what actually hit your account after processing fees. We track your food and beverage costs as a percentage of revenue so you can see whether your margins are holding steady or starting to slip.
Vendor bills get recorded and organized. When you’re getting deliveries from Sysco, US Foods, your local produce supplier, and the beer distributor all in the same week, it’s easy for invoices to pile up or payments to slip through the cracks. We keep accounts payable current and categorized in QuickBooks Online so nothing gets lost and you always know what’s owed.
Sales Reconciliation and Cost Tracking
Sales Reconciliation and Cost Tracking
Daily POS sales matched to bank deposits with processing fees properly accounted for. Food cost and beverage cost tracked as percentages of revenue on a monthly basis. You see your actual margins, not just your top-line sales number. That visibility is what turns your P&L from a mystery into something useful.
Vendor and Expense Management
Vendor and Expense Management
Bills from suppliers recorded and tracked so nothing falls through. Expenses categorized properly so your profit and loss statement tells a real story. Rent, utilities, insurance, supplies, and all the other overhead organized in a way that makes sense when you need to review it or hand it to your CPA at tax time.
Where Things Get Messy
Delivery platforms are one of the biggest blind spots. DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub take anywhere from 15 to 30 percent per order. The deposits that hit your bank from those platforms don’t match the menu prices your customers paid. Each platform sends deposits on its own schedule, withholds its own fees, and provides statements in its own format. Without reconciling each one, you might think delivery is boosting revenue when it’s actually dragging down your margin on every single order.
Food cost creep is the other slow killer. Prices from suppliers go up a few percent here and there. A cook starts over-portioning. Prep waste increases because ordering isn’t dialed in. None of these things show up as one big expense. They show up as a gradually shrinking margin that you don’t notice until it’s been happening for months. If nobody is tracking food cost as a percentage of sales on a regular basis, you won’t catch it until the damage is already done.
Delivery Platform Confusion
Delivery Platform Confusion
Three different apps depositing money on three different schedules, each taking a different cut. Without reconciliation, you can’t tell which platforms are actually profitable and which ones are just creating volume without margin. We reconcile each platform individually so you see the real numbers and can make informed decisions about which ones are worth keeping.
Untracked Cash and Tips
Untracked Cash and Tips
Cash sales that don’t get deposited consistently. Tip reporting that varies shift to shift. These gaps create problems at tax time and make your financial statements unreliable. Getting a clean process in place for cash handling and tip tracking protects you from headaches down the road and keeps your reporting accurate.
What Changes
When your books are current and accurate, you can actually use them. You can look at a profit and loss statement and see your real food cost percentage this month compared to last month. You can see whether labor is running at 30 percent of revenue or 38 percent. You can compare delivery revenue against the fees those platforms charge and decide if the math still works. Instead of running the business on gut feeling and bank balance, you have real data telling you what’s happening.
Tax time stops being a scramble. Your CPA gets clean financials without weeks of back-and-forth. Quarterly estimates are based on real numbers instead of rough guesses. Deductions are captured throughout the year instead of reconstructed in a panic in March. And when you’re ready to open a second location, renegotiate your lease, or apply for a line of credit, you have the books to back it up.
Real Visibility Into Your Business
Real Visibility Into Your Business
Monthly reports that show food cost, labor cost, and net profit clearly. Historical data that helps you spot trends and make better purchasing and staffing decisions. You stop guessing and start managing based on what the numbers actually say. That’s the difference between surviving each month and building something that grows.
Ready for What Comes Next
Ready for What Comes Next
Clean books that support loan applications, lease negotiations, and investor conversations. A financial foundation that gives you confidence to plan ahead instead of just reacting. Whether you’re thinking about a second location, a new concept, or just want to know that the business you have is actually working, accurate books are where it starts.
Long Beach's Trusted Bookkeeping Partner
The Next Step:
A Quick Discovery Call
Tell us where things stand with your books. We'll listen, ask a few questions, and give you a clear quote to get it handled.
