Restaurant business
23 articles from the Katalyst team.
Restaurants under $500K sold at 2.0x SDE every quarter of 2025
How to triangulate POS reports, merchant statements, sales tax returns and bank deposits — and what each mismatch tells you about the seller's numbers.
A restaurant back injury costs 20x what a kitchen burn costs
Your EPLI likely excludes wage-and-hour claims, your liquor policy may sublimit bar fights, and personal auto excludes delivery. Read the exclusions.
The delivery apps may not be remitting your sales tax
A 22% auto-gratuity is fully taxable in Texas, and California wants four years of transaction-level POS data. Sales tax is a config problem, not a filing one.
Nobody can source the 6-10% restaurant rent rule
Filed 10-Ks put restaurant rent between 1.6% and 7.7% of sales, and show tenant allowances clawed back through percentage rent. Negotiate clauses, not ratios.
Restaurant cash flow management: why profitable restaurants still run out of money
Profit isn't cash. The 16-day buffer restaurants actually hold, the 13-week forecast that prevents surprises, and the levers that free up trapped money.
Restaurant financing: loans, lines of credit, and the merchant cash advance trap
What each funding option really costs, why factor rates hide triple-digit APRs, and the contract terms that turn a cash gap into an insolvency.
How to read your merchant statement: finding the fees you're actually paying
The three cost layers, how to isolate the only negotiable one, your true effective rate, and the junk fees hiding in the monthly lines.
Ghost kitchens and virtual brands: does the economics actually work?
The lower startup cost, the commission drag that eats the margin, the 2023 shakeout that killed the pioneers, and when a delivery-only concept still makes sense.
How to scale from one restaurant to multiple locations
Why the second location breaks the systems that carried the first, the signs you're actually ready, why expansions fail, and what has to be built to travel.
Restaurant chargebacks and payment disputes: how you lose money on your own sales
What a chargeback really costs, why delivery and online orders carry the risk, friendly fraud, the EMV liability shift, and how to prevent and win disputes.
How to read a restaurant P&L: the statement that tells you if you're actually profitable
The P&L line by line, benchmark percentages for each, where losses hide, and why the monthly statement alone is too slow to run a restaurant on.
Tip pooling, tip-outs, and service charges: the 2026 rules for restaurant operators
Tip credit, who can share a pool, the dead 80/20 rule, why a service charge is not a tip, and No Tax on Tips — the operator's guide to staying out of trouble.
What it really costs to open a restaurant in 2026
Real cost-to-open ranges, a line-by-line budget from build-out to working capital, costs by concept, and the failure-rate myth — an operator's breakdown.
The real cost of third-party delivery — and how to take orders commission-free
DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub commission tiers, the all-in effective rate after fees, the margin math, and how first-party ordering changes the equation.
Is credit card surcharging legal in your state? The 2026 restaurant guide
Where restaurant card surcharges are banned, where they're capped, the debit-card rule everyone breaks, and how cash discounting differs — state by state.
Bundled vs interchange-plus payment processing — what restaurants actually pay
Bundled and interchange-plus look similar on the marketing page. They're not. Here's how each model actually works on your monthly statement, and what the difference costs a typical restaurant.
POS contract red flags before you sign
Auto-renewal traps, 36-month minimums, hardware lease lock-in, processor entanglement, and the contract clauses every restaurant operator should know before signing a POS agreement.
The 53% shift: why direct online ordering is no longer optional
Stop losing 30% to apps. Reclaim your margins and data with Katalyst Native Online Ordering.
How an 8-location restaurant group found an innovation partner — and achieved a 10-year goal in just one year
After 7 years of failed attempts on legacy POS, an 8-location New Hampshire restaurant group rolled out KDS, reliable handhelds, and zero-downtime updates in 12 months on Katalyst.
Katalyst: the future of restaurant technology is here
Katalyst is the all-in-one restaurant management platform built by restaurateurs — combining POS, kitchen displays, loyalty, online ordering, and 250+ reports into one tool.
Katalyst announces all-in-one software now tracks 200+ KPIs to help restaurants streamline operations
Katalyst’s all-in-one restaurant management platform now tracks 200+ key performance indicators, giving operators unprecedented visibility into profitability and operations.
Menu engineering in today’s environment
How to engineer a restaurant menu that captures customer interest and maximises efficiency — using market insight, the cash cow / star matrix, and Katalyst’s POS data.
24/7 US-based customer support: how Katalyst makes service the backbone of the platform
Why Katalyst’s 24/7 US-based customer support team — fluent in English and culturally aligned with American restaurants — drives faster resolutions and stronger brand trust.