Restaurant tech, written by people who’ve run restaurants
Operator playbooks, product deep-dives, and the data behind the shifts shaping how restaurants run today.
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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.
Month two flatters you, because discovery diners order big
With no history, period-over-period metrics are unavailable. Compare servers to each other, tickets to each other, and theoretical cost to actual instead.
A comped soft opening tells you nothing about your prices
Contribution margin and menu engineering need a sales mix you don't have yet. Measure ticket time as a distribution, and tag the tables that aren't friends.
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 gas meter is sized as if everything runs at once
Hood type, the 400 CFM makeup-air trigger and panel capacity cap the equipment list before you pick any of it. Run too negative and you lose 30% of the exhaust.
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.
13.7% of reactions: menu declared it and staff were told
Only 10% of restaurants with a fryer have a dedicated one. And your bread supplier may have added sesame flour — invisible in the bun, and perfectly legal.
Los Angeles's fair workweek law doesn't cover restaurants
Nearly every ordinance gates on 30+ locations or 250+ employees, Berkeley is the only one reaching independents, and Chicago fines per employee per day.
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.
Book delivery at net and your food cost percentage is wrong
The FICA tip credit is still computed against $5.15/hour, 2026 W-2s add a new tip code, and the standard restaurant chart of accounts hasn't changed since 2012.
The order link on your Google profile isn't yours by default
Google shut off Q&A in November 2025, and being open at search time now outranks review count. What actually moves a restaurant listing in 2026.
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.
The card brands never fine you. Your acquirer does
SAQ P2PE runs about 32 requirements; the standard integrated-POS path runs about 165 — and a second location on one network pushes you off it entirely.
Voids and refunds are 6% of restaurant fraud cases
Automated monitoring catches 3% of cases; tips catch 43%. Surprise audits halve how long a scheme runs — and only 44% of organizations use them.
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 onboarding and training: the first 90 days decide your turnover
Most restaurant turnover happens before month three, for reasons onboarding controls. What the evidence says, and what a training program should look like.
Restaurant reviews and online reputation: what actually moves revenue
The Harvard finding on stars and revenue, why recency now beats volume, how to respond, and the review-generation tactics that violate the rules.
Delivery operations: packaging, temperature, and getting food there still worth eating
Why 66% of guests blame you and not the app, what happens to food in the first five minutes, and the packaging and handoff controls that protect quality.
Cutting restaurant food waste: what it costs and what actually works
The $7-per-$1 return documented across 114 restaurants, where waste really happens, and the measurement habit that makes every other tactic work.
Pour cost and bar program management: where beverage margin disappears
Pour cost benchmarks by category, the bottle math behind every drink, why free-pouring is invisible theft, and the controls that make variance attributable.
How to price catering orders — and write contracts that protect you
The real cost stack behind a per-person price, why catering food cost runs lower, and the contract clauses that decide whether a booking is profitable.
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.