Restaurants

According to The National Restaurant Association there are over a million restaurants in The United States, providing employment for 1 in 10 Americans.  Restaurant owners faces a variety of challenges, some typical of any small business owner, others specific to the food service industry.

Industry challenges include: 

• Legislative and regulatory pressure, labor cost increases, security, and challenging profit margins.
• Recruitment and employee retention.
• Women and minority owned restaurants continue to grow at a faster rate, but turn over quicker when ownership doesn't seek support early on.
• Technology growing pains.  Unable to keep up with consumer demands or new technology makes restaurant visits more complicated or less appealing.
• Mobile payment options are too diverse and hard to keep up with on the operations side.
• There are many challenges faced by restaurants of all sizes, including regulatory compliance, labor, new technologies, moderate sales growth and a shifting palate. 

 Some of the ways that FLEX Consulting can help: 

• Creation or updating of a business plan that includes financial budgeting, forecasting, cost and pricing models.
• We take the time to separate out business and personal impacts with the business.  Success oftentimes requires long hours, however creating livable work schedules actually helps productivity, while simple processes for the separation of personal and work expeses enables clarity and helps profitability.  We personally invest our time to ensure they are successful and keep a full 360 life view.
• Market Analysis, product review, pricing advisement, and scenario forecasting.
• Assist with strategic investment plans for additional funding.
• Develop strategies for growth and resource/employee management.   
• Help with networking options for funding and future growth.   
• Manage HR, Payroll, Accounting, and Operations.        
• Identify inefficiencies and wasteful spending and optimize vendor relationships based upon price, quality and financial terms.
• Exit and succession planning strategies, for the expected and unexpected changes.

How we've helped others:

• Ongoing advisement work with 6 regional brew pubs, primarily providing market analysis, production, and forecasting work in order to ensure continued profitability regardless of the ups and downs of markets and the economy.
• Operational and financial planning for regional distilleries to enable them to meet their short and long term growth initiatives.
• Soular is the only green certified restaurant in Wisconsin, solely utilizing clean energy and local organic products.  FLEX Consulting helped them by providing guidance during the certification process, identifying vendors, and doing a long term cost benefit analysis for implementation.