Restaurant business
48 articles from the Katalyst team.
The IRS uses your year-end count if your books do
The 2026 small-business threshold is $32 million in average receipts. Texas now exempts $125,000 of inventory and equipment per location on January 1.
New York says Z-tapes aren't enough for a sales tax audit
Toast keeps your data accessible for 60 days after you close the account. Card data is the one record PCI DSS requires you to purge every quarter.
Restaurants can still deduct 100% of shift meals in 2026
The IRS calls a shift meal the employer's convenience; the Labor Department calls it the employee's benefit. California credits up to $11.28 for dinner.
New York's minimum wage won't rise on January 1, 2027
Michigan's tipped cash wage jumps to $6.30, and New Jersey's whole increase lands on the cash wage because its $9.87 tip credit is fixed.
The 2027 ACA penalty rises 13%, to $3,780 per employee
Restaurants under common ownership are counted together for the 50-employee test, and the look-back method can't be used to decide whether you're covered.
New York taxes a 'service charge' but not a 'gratuity'
California, Washington and Georgia tax a mandatory gratuity even when staff get all of it. Texas taxes the whole charge once it passes 20%.
NYC now says app-only ordering breaks its cash law
Maryland's new cash law, effective October 1, exempts sit-down restaurants. DC lets licensed bars and late-night spots refuse cash until about May 2027.
Cooks and dishwashers are on the IRS no-tax-on-tips list
2026 W-2s, due February 1, 2027, must show total reported tips under code TP plus a tipped-occupation code. An auto-gratuity guests can't remove isn't a tip.
No commercial card program carries an interchange cap
The same $6,000 invoice: $150.10 on a corporate card, $105.10 with Level 3 data, $5.00 by Stripe ACH, $3.22 on a regulated business debit card.
Ordered before January 20, 2025? Your bonus rate is 20%
Delivered but still crated on December 31 is next year's deduction. Roofs and HVAC take Section 179 but fail the bonus test; California caps 179 at $25,000.
The Visa-Mastercard deal would let you refuse premium cards
It isn't final: preliminary approval came June 9, and there's no opt-out. The surcharge cap becomes 3% or your cost, and state bans still apply.
Closing? W-2s are due with your last 941, not in January
New York's closing-notice law starts at 50 employees, not 100, and New Jersey adds a week of severance per year of service even with full notice.
Food service drew 21% of 2025's web accessibility lawsuits
An overlay widget didn't prevent about 1,400 of them, and the FTC fined accessiBe $1 million. A restaurant can't use the online-only defense.
The new federal hemp cap is 0.4 mg of THC per can
The deadline moved to December 11, and synthetic cannabinoids lose hemp status November 12. A state hemp licence does not protect a bar from federal law.
DC, Chicago and Michigan walked back ending the tip credit
DC now caps tipped pay at 75% of the minimum by 2034. Chicago holds a 24% credit until 2028, then ends it in 2030 or 2033 depending on employer size.
If a broker quotes you earnings, check Item 19 exists
About a third of franchisors publish no earnings data at all. Item 8 can mandate your POS outright, at prices reported 10-30% above the open market.
Courts rejected the IRS mileage rate as a driver safe harbor
Cheese trades on the CME and moved 13% in one month. Under-reimbursing your drivers is a minimum wage violation, with class action mechanics attached.
Three cities in one week means three separate plan reviews
Nearly every state requires a signed commissary agreement before the permit issues, and a folding prep table beside the truck can put you outside your license.
Bad water voids the warranty on your espresso machine
The SCA target is 90-150 ppm TDS, and above 200 ppm scale builds in three to six months. Coffee's real difference is hours to earn rent, not cost per cup.
Your liquor license can dictate your seating plan
Food-to-beverage ratios make menu mix a license condition, not a business choice — and Virginia's replaced its flat 45% rule with tiers as of 1 July 2026.
Your contractor's unpaid sub can put you in lease default
Paying the GC in full is no defense: the sub liens the landlord's building, and your lease gives you 10 to 20 days to clear it at your own cost.
Your projections can't carry an SBA acquisition loan
From 1 October, SOP 50 10 8.1 lifts acquisition coverage to 1.25x on historical earnings alone. Startups keep projections and pay in collateral instead.
Wage-and-hour liability doesn't require owning the place
The trust-fund penalty reaches your personal assets, sales-tax liability is joint and several, and moving partner units needs liquor-board approval.
The church can consent and the state still must say no
Change of use can make you fix the sidewalk, ADA path-of-travel runs to 20% of build cost, and every prior tenant's inspection record at that address is public.
Your health inspector will not do a courtesy walkthrough
Plan review must be approved before construction starts, the CO gates your final health inspection, and the liquor clock can't start until the lease is signed.
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.