1178: Profit First Money Management for Restaurants with Kasey Anton

Summary

Restaurant Unstoppable – Episode 1178

Profit First Money Management for Restaurants with Kasey Anton
Aired: April 24, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this hands-on workshop episode, Eric Cacciatore sits down with Kasey Anton, founder of Spark Business Consulting and author of Profit First for Restaurants, to break down the powerful "Profit First" money management system tailored for restaurants. Kasey and Eric discuss why financial health—putting profit at the forefront of business decisions—is crucial for restaurant success. The episode guides listeners through practical steps, shares real case studies, and provides immediately actionable advice for owners and operators seeking to stop struggling with cash flow and begin building true, sustainable profitability.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Motivation & Mindset (03:28–06:29)

• Love What You Do

  • Kasey’s mantra: “If you love what you do, you never have to work a day in your life.” (04:28)
  • Both Kasey and Eric underline the importance of loving the hospitality industry, which sustains their passion and commitment.

• Defining Your Why

  • “My why...I still believe and love in hospitality and what it does for the world and that we just bring joy.” – Kasey (05:39)
  • Eric expands, noting that empowering restaurant owners uplifts communities.

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2. The Profit First Formula & Philosophy (07:32–13:58)

• The “Profit First” Shift

  • Traditional accounting: Sales – Expenses = Profit
  • Profit First: Sales – Profit = Expenses
  • “If we’re going to prioritize profit...our expenses will conform to what the business or the sales can handle. That’s a big mindset shift.” – Kasey (08:17)

• The True Role of Profit

  • Profit isn’t owner’s salary—it’s used to pay debt, invest in assets, and reward owners or staff through profit sharing (09:05–11:46).
  • “Profit and owner’s pay should be and are two very, very different things...Profit is for the business, owner’s pay is for [you].” – Kasey (12:36)

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3. How "Profit First" Works—A Cash Flow Management System (15:32–29:32)

• Visualizing Cash Flow

  • Most restaurateurs use one or two bank accounts, but Profit First means using multiple dedicated accounts for Income, Meals Tax, Cost of Goods, Payroll, Profit, Owner’s Pay, Owner’s Tax, and Operating Expenses (OPEX).
  • “We’re going to give every single dollar a job, an intention, when it comes into your business.” – Kasey (15:32)
  • By allocating percentages to these accounts as income comes in, owners create a live, real-time budget and avoid end-of-month surprises.

• Practical Bank Account Setup

  • No/low-fee checking or savings accounts, each with a specific purpose.
  • Most banks are familiar with this structure now.

• The Instant Assessment

  • Use a one-page summary of a year’s Profit & Loss to find your current allocation percentages for COGS, payroll, owner’s pay, OPEX, taxes, and profit.
  • Compare your numbers with industry “Mac Daddy” benchmarks developed by Profit First (25:55).

• Gradual Implementation

  • Start with modest allocations (as little as 1% to profit) and gradually improve as the business gets healthier.

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4. Real-World Case Studies

A. Profit First Diagnosing Failure: The Burger Shack (29:58–37:40)

• Background: College-town burger shop in Indiana, deep in debt ($500k+), unable to implement Profit First successfully.
• Problem: “Every time he sold a burger, he was losing money.” – Kasey (31:09)
  • Food cost was over 60%. The owner believed it was much lower.
  • Close analysis revealed over-portioning, untracked waste, and underpriced menu items.
• Outcome: Had to cease operations—Profit First helped surface broken business fundamentals quickly.
• “When you start allocating and you see industry averages...it makes you realize, okay, well, where is it? It forces you to start the investigation.” – Eric (37:42)

B. Profit First Enables Success: California Bistro (40:16–44:53)

• Background: Fine dining bistro near San Francisco; stable but not leveraging profit as a business tool.
• Intervention: Applied Profit First allocations; discovered labor and food cost inefficiencies.
• Actions:
  • Tweaked labor scheduling, re-costed menu (tracked everything, even complimentary items).
  • Began systematic weekly allocations, tracking trends.
• Results:
  • Increased profit set-aside
  • Owner finally achieved predictable pay
  • Built up marketing and reserve budgets, gamified the profit process.
• “She is loaded in terms of profit is set aside. She takes half, she leaves half as a reserve fund...She’s killing it.” – Kasey (44:53)

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5. Power of Tracking, Technology, & Scaling Up (48:11–51:25)

• Software Integration:

  • Profit First bank accounts work alongside restaurant management platforms.
  • No functional conflicts—multiple accounts simply reinforce visibility and intention for every dollar.
  • “Instead of having one bank account and everything comes out...we’re just going to give your dollar a job and segregate it into bank accounts with different nicknames.” – Kasey (49:53)

• First Step for Growth:

  • Profit First can be implemented before investing in enterprise restaurant management systems—getting disciplined with cash management is foundational.
  • “Leveraging Profit First to get to that point where you can invest in more robust systems.” – Eric (51:13)

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6. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Purpose and Joy:

  • “What’s better than creating joy in the world? And I feel like that’s what restaurants do and that’s what I help support them do.” – Kasey (05:39)

• On Clarity and Accountability:

  • “Profit is not a bottom-line net income...it actually should be money in a bank account. It should be money in a bank account that we nickname profit.” – Kasey (15:32)

• On Diagnosing Problems:

  • “Profit First is a great way to bubble up to the surface any fire drill issues...it’s going to bubble up to the service [if something’s off].” – Kasey (36:42)

• On Systems as Tools for Growth:

  • “All that technology is, is a system. And Profit First is a system...it’s the first step to getting...in that direction of going to an enterprise solution.” – Eric (50:30)

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Important Timestamps

• Motivation & “Why” Discussion – 03:28–06:29
• Profit First Formula Explained – 07:32–13:58
• Cash Flow Visualization & Account Structure – 15:32–18:52
• Instant Assessment & Benchmarking – 25:55–29:32
• Case Study: Burger Shack Failure – 29:58–37:40
• Case Study: California Bistro Success – 40:16–44:53
• Technology Integration & Scaling – 48:11–51:25
• Call to Action and Next Steps – 53:49–55:23

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Recommended Resources & Next Steps

• Kasey's Book: Profit First for Restaurants (available on Amazon, audiobook, etc.)
• Profit First for Restaurants Online Course – A step-by-step, self-paced training for owners and bookkeepers.
• Restaurant Accountant Certification Course – For accountants/bookkeepers seeking specialized expertise.
• Free Tools & Downloads: ProfitFirst4Restaurants.com (16 free tools for implementation)

“Whether it’s, you download the audio or get the book book, Amazon or wherever books are sold is great. There’s a lot of fun stories. It’s a fun read.” – Kasey (53:49)

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Who to Watch

• Laura Magoo, Owner of RÊVE Bistro (California):
  Kasey’s “poster child” for Profit First success. “She’s killing it. She recommends it to everyone.” (52:24)

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Final Takeaways

• Profit First is a practical, visual, and disciplined approach to profit management—tested and proven specifically for restaurants.
• Start small: Even minimal allocations and separated bank accounts will bring impactful clarity and control.
• Use industry benchmarks as guideposts but adapt the system to your business model—with steady improvement, not overnight change.
• The system exposes operational issues quickly, empowers you to fix them, and, over time, builds a self-rewarding engine for growth.
• Begin by reading the book, considering the online course, or joining Restaurant Unstoppable’s Profit First Power Hour for ongoing guidance.

“This is a system for giving every dollar a job, for turning hard work into sustainable wealth, and for making restaurants unstoppable.” (paraphrased summary)

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For resources, links, and the full toolkit: restaurantunstoppable.com/profitfirst

Transcript

[A]

Going to go over kind of the high level, 30,000 foot view of profit first and we're going to get a little bit into the trenches because when I was talking to Eric about this presentation, I'm, I'm like, it's a workshop. I want people to walk away with either one or two things they can go do, or at least just be able to wrap your arms around this thing and be like, okay, now I get what the heck she's talking about. Whether you've read the book or not, it won't matter. You are going to understand what Profit First Restaurants is and why it is extremely powerful. And I can't understand why, why not everybody does. But okay, let's go. So we're to go. Overview I'm going to talk about the financial health. It literally this is the epitome of putting your money where your mouth is. That phrase that's kind of what profit versus restaurant is. And then we'll tap into some, you know what your goals, your restaurant in the end.

[B]

Welcome to restaurant Unstoppable. Ten years and over 1,000 episodes, I've been traveling the country chasing word of mouth leads and having in person only long form discussions with the industry's finest owners and operators. Our mission is to inspire, empower and transform the restaurant industry by bridging the gap between this generation's leaders and the next. Listen to today's guest and so many others and get one step closer to becoming unstoppable. This episode is brought to you by M. With Meese, you can standardize your culinary IP and stay in sync, giving the culinary team the ability to both create recipes and distribute them from the same platform. You can train your team quickly and maintain dish consistency by turning your recipes into interactive training material. And you can get laser accurate food costs because M allows you to calculate the yield of ingredients with prep loss included. Create a free account by visiting getmes.comunstoppable that's G E T M E Z.com unstoppable and as a listener of Restaurant Unstoppable, you can get 25 recipes uploaded to your me's account for free. Sign up today and learn more at G e T m e e z.com Unstoppable. Do you wish you could have all of your restaurant needs and solutions under one roof? Well, you called Restaurant Systems Pro and with Restaurant Systems Pro you get accounting systems, budgeting systems, costing systems, purchasing systems, inventory management systems, labor management systems, training systems and systems to create and implement checklists. And on top of all this, Restaurant Systems Pro has their own native general ledger, and they're in the process of launching their own pos, which they are so appropriately naming serve, because that's exactly what they do. To learn more, head over to Restaurant Unstable unstoppable.com RSP where you can schedule your own demo. Watch a demo that I did with Restaurant Systems Pro CEO Fred Langley, or catch every and all testimonial we've ever recorded on the show.

[C]

That's restaurantunstoppable.com RSP with excitement, allow me to introduce to you today's guest founder of Spark Business Consulting in the author of Profit first four restaurants, Casey Anton. Casey, my lady, are you feeling unstoppable today?

[A]

I am definitely feeling unstoppable today, yes.

[C]

And I'm stoked. You know, like, I was just sharing with the people that joined us today. I am a user of Profit First. I'm a user of your services with Spark Business Consulting. I'm not just a promoter of the work you're doing. I'm the beneficiary of the work that you do. And I do believe that Profit first is a, a life changer. This isn't the first time you've been on the show. We had you on the show way back. I think it was like 2019, episode 637. Mike McCallowicz joined us. We went deep into profit first. We're going to today, we're going to recap the highlights of Profit First. We're going to talk about your book, which is launched two years ago. We're really going to dive into the case studies and the success stories and hopefully, uh, you know, we'll be around for Q and A at the very end. But before we officially get going, let's get that motivational inspirational ball rolling with a success quote or mantra. Casey, kick it off.

[A]

I'm gonna go with what our topic we started this conversation with, which is if you love what you do, you never have to work a day in your life.

[C]

Ooh, Dive more into that.

[A]

Really?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, I mean, you love what you do and it shows. It shows through everything you do. And I think that's why you're so. You're. You and your podcast are wildly popular. And I would say the same here. Here at Spark, I work. I have 10 full time employees that work with me. And I often use that mantra I say for me, like, if I had to describe my dream job, or if my kids say, you know, mom, we talk about our dream jobs, I'm in it. Like, I love what I Do I love working with restaurateurs day in and day out. I love hospitality, love everything about it. And my staff, thank God the same way, like, oh, we love what we do here. We love helping others, like, grow the business of their dreams. So I think that's why we're so joyful when we come to work. That's why you're so joyful in what you do. It's just, it doesn't feel like work. There's nothing else I'd rather be doing than what I do right now.

[B]

It reminds me of the quote, if.

[C]

You have the right why, you can deal with any how, right? And my why is, you know, literally changing the world through finding people to make an example of, to lift up owners. And I believe that if we can lift up owners, we can lift up communities and the world will change. But what is your why?

[A]

Oh, God, this is tough today, Eric. My why? My why. It's kind of, how do I make it short? So I was a former restaurateur, right? I used to own restaurants in Boston. I thought that was my lifelong job. I loved everything about it. I literally got goosebumps every day during a great service, even during the bad services. So in a new chapter in my life, having kids, wanting to be a super involved parent and all those things, I felt like I couldn't really be in the restaurant industry they wanted to be. But my why, why comes from, like, I still believe and love in hospitality and what it does for the world and that we just bring joy. And I write about this a lot throughout the book. The theme is kind of like, what's better than creating joy in the world? And I feel like that's what restaurants do and that's what I help support them do. So that is. That is my why.

[C]

I love it. Okay, so big picture, kick it off. You have this very fancy, beautiful looking slideshow. Get into your thing, Casey.

[A]

All right, so we're gonna get over. We're gonna go over kind of the high level 30, 000 foot view of profit first. And we're gonna get a little bit into the trenches. Because when I was talking to Eric about this presentation, I'm. I'm like, it's a workshop. I want people to walk away with either one or two things they can go do, or at least just be able to wrap your arms around this thing and be like, okay, now I get what the heck she's talking about. Whether you've read the book or not, it won't matter. You are going to understand What Profit first restaurants is and why it is extremely powerful. And I can't understand why, why not everybody does it. But. Okay, let's go. So we're going to overview. I'm going to talk about the financial health. It literally, this is the epitome of putting your money where your mouth is. That phrase. That's kind of what profit first a restaurant is. And then we'll tap into some, you know what, your goals, your restaurant, in the end, horrible picture. I did not put that there. You just ignore that.

[C]

So I like the shoes, though.

[A]

No, I know. Those are great shoes. Those are great. Profit first formula. This is from the original book from by Mike Michalowicz. He wrote the original Profit first, Right. I wrote a derivative for restaurants. And there's, I think there's 10, maybe 12 derivatives by now. But mine is obviously the best because it's for restaurants. So his formula is instead of following the sales minus expenses equals profit, which is accounting 101. That is the gap accounting that all, all of us accountants follow in the world. That's how we have to write our P. Ls, it's how we have to produce our taxes, et cetera. We're not changing the math. We're just changing the equation and saying, what if we did Sales minus profit equals expenses. And when you do that, the whole game changes, right? Because if we're going to prioritize profit, which every single business should, because no business can survive, let alone thrive without profit because it serves so many different uses in any business. But if we put it first and really prioritize it, then what happens is our expenses will conform to what the business or the sales can handle. So that's a big mindset shift that changes everything. And that's what Private first is based on.

[C]

And Kasey, if you're going to get into this, I apologize, but I think there is a weird relationship with profit. I think a lot of people think of profit as what I get to take home. That's what I use to pay myself. Uh, but in Profit first, the relationship with profit is different. How should we be using profit?

[A]

Yeah, so that's what you just explained. Is one benefit or, you know, one use of profit is for the owner to use. That's one. It's usually not the first one. So if you have any type of debt in your business at all, whether you have a credit card balance, you have a loan, loans, line of credits, whatever debt is listed on your balance sheet, the only way to service or to pay back that debt is through profit. There's no other way to pay it except for more, more debt. So you have to use profit for that. Right. Because once when you take out a loan or you use your credit card to go buy things, whatever it is that you bought using that credit card or using that loan, those loan funds, that's what you get to expense. Or maybe it's an asset, that's what you get to expense. You don't then get to expense the payments toward paying that credit card off or paying that loan or line of credit down. That comes out of profit. So that's number one. Profit is the only way that you can pay any debt. So if you're not profitable, if you're not running a profitable business and you have debt, you are in really big trouble because you are just going to be incurring more and more debt to satisfy that until you make profit. So that's number one, it's super important because you have to pay down debt. Another thing that it does is it helps grow a business. Whether you want to expand or buy a piece of equipment or a new computer system or anything, that's considered kind of an asset of the business. Again, that's not something that you can expense. And chances are when you designed your restaurant in the first place, you didn't design it going, all right, I'm going to sell, you know, burritos or fries and these are going to be my cost and here's going to be my payroll. Oh, and then I'm going to buy this huge walk in too, and I'm still going to be profitable. No, it's not part of your daily operations. It's something extraordinary. It's an asset. And therefore profit is the only thing that you can use to buy assets other or debt. Right. Or I know I'm going to go take a loan out to go buy that asset. Okay, but then how do we, how do we pay back the loan? Through profit. So profit is connected in all those ways. And then the final big reason is what you had mentioned. It is a way to not only service the owner and reward the owner for creating a profitable, functioning, wonderful business, but also in terms of you can use it to, instead of giving away equity, which I never recommend as much, you can offer profit sharing for your general managers or your chef, or however it is you want to grow. Because a lot of times in their minds being able to say, oh, I share in the profit I get, profit sharing feels like ownership. It feels like equity without actually giving away equity. So it's A great way to be able to reward your team, to create larger teams and of course reward the owner. And I can go on and on, but those are some of the ways.

[C]

Not only reward but incentivize to give people a reason to, to go the extra mile because that they know that there will be a benefit on the back end of that, that effort. But I think the big takeaways there is profit is used to pay off debt and to invest in assets. And it really, profit is a wealth generating. Profit first is a wealth generating system because you can then as you invest in assets, assets are things that make you money, even passive income. Maybe it's investing, you know, it's, it's. And I think where restaurant owners get so guilty is they, they, they don't take that profit to invest in wealth. They take it to cover their liabilities. And the thing I love about profit first is that they account for owners pay. So this isn't like you're paying yourself and then you're taking profit and you're keeping that separate. But maybe I'm getting way too far ahead of you, so I'll just let you take it from here.

[A]

Yeah, you probably are. But sorry, but that's, that's a great point that you just made and I'm glad you brought that up because profit and owners pay should be and are two very, very different things. And I think the best way for me to kind of articulate that or give you the visual on that with any business, right. That you're setting up, there's you as the human being. So there's, there's Eric and then there's restaurant unstoppable. And it may feel like to you that they are one and the same because you created and it's all you and you know, you're the one who left holding the bag and all that stuff. But it's not. They're two very separate. And I'd like to say human beings, although restaurant stuff of course is not a human being. But we treat it that way. And I'm going to tell you, in the eyes of the irs, it's separate. So you have to remember to keep those two things separate. And for your business, for restaurant unstoppable, we need profitability is kind of like the cash flow engine that keeps it going, that allows it to grow, that pays its debt, that does all these great things. But then for Eric, Eric needs to get paid. Eric has a mortgage or a rent and Eric has personal expenses like the rest of us human beings do. Right? So then there's Eric over here. So that's owner's pay. Profit is for the business, Owner's pay is for Eric. So we just always want to make sure we keep those two things very, very separate. Like, you know, church and state. However they say or however they say, it's very important that you keep those separate. And if you can get in the mindset of doing that, both you and your business will thrive because of it.

[C]

Love it.

[A]

The ones that don't and that really struggle for a variety of reasons is because of the commingling of the two when they're really two very separate things.

[C]

I love it.

[B]

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[A]

So now we're going to dig in I think to a little bit. I can't see my next slide, but I'm just going to go with it blindly because this is a new presentation just for you, Eric. But now we're going to get into what profit first for restaurants is. It's cash management system. It is literally a visual cash flow system because I'm sure you hear the term cash flow all the time. And there's in your QuickBooks or your accounting software, there's a statement of cash flows, which you, I'm sure you study every night or not, but this is literally cash flow. It's taking the cash that comes in and we're going to watch it flow through your business. Now, if you are like a lot of restaurants, you might just have one main bank account, maybe like this one on the screen, Maybe you have two. Maybe you have one for payroll too, which is great. It's a great start. So when you have this, you might log in to your account on, let's say a Monday after, maybe the credit card, the weekend credit cards hit. And let's say for a small, small business or a food truck or whatnot. Or whatnot, you have 12,846 bucks. And you're like, great, perfect, 12,000. I could make payroll. And rent is due this week. Perfect. And then you're like, okay, now I gotta pay my food and beverage vendors that are knocking down my door. Okay, all right, so let's, I got some money left over. Let's pay them. And then there's usually a few other expenses that you need to also pay right from your business, things that need to happen. So you're like, okay, yep, I got to pay these guys oven fix, you know, whatever bathrooms painted, I need meals tax, sales tax, whatever you guys call it in your state, ignit that do. And then by the time you're done paying, everybody's got their hands out. You may or may not have been on payroll, may or may not have paid yourself. You probably did not set aside any taxes that you would owe for, you know, operating a profitable business, because that's a taxable event. And then where did you put your profit? Because, and I may have said, I may probably should have said this earlier, but profit is not a bottom line net income at the bottom of your p. L that you look at, you know, hopefully at least monthly, if not more often, and go, oh great. A plus if it's black and ooh, D minus if it's negative or whatever it is, it actually should be money in a bank account. It should be money in a bank account that we nickname profit. And that's what your profit is. That's usually what throws people off. We really want profit to actually equal money in a bank. So instead, all we're doing with this visual cash flow system by using bank accounts, which also is leveraging the human behavior of any business owner I've ever known is by using their bank account, we're going to give every single dollar a job an intention when it comes into your business. So instead, on that Monday morning when you sit down, you log in, you go, okay, I got some bills to pay, what am I going to do? Instead of seeing this, you're going to log in and you're going to see this or something like this. This is the Mac Daddy proper first restaurants system. You can use a version of it. You can start slowly and work up to these accounts. You can explode and use more accounts. But this is how we're going to leverage how it works. So I'm going to explain real quick.

[C]

Real quick. Before you explain, if you're listening to the audio only version of this, what Kasey has, which she says you will see, this is a series of checking accounts. Income, meals tax, cost of goods checking account, payroll checking account, profit account, owner's pay account and owner's tax account, and then op X account. So if you head over to YouTube.com/restaurant unstoppable, you can see the visual portion of this sorry, case. I just want to make sure people that weren't watching understand.

[A]

Yeah, I'm glad you pointed that out. And also these visuals are also in the book as well. If you happen to have the book or see the book or the workbook, these same visuals are in there. So the income account is all your sales get dropped in there. So your, your point of sale, your credit card terminal, your cash, if you bring it to the bank, and I hope you do, all those things get dropped in like a big huge pile of money. So the way I like to describe this is like just pretend like everybody pays you in cash. You're a cash only business and you just throw all this money in a big pile on the floor. That's your income account. Then you're going to take whatever your sales tax or meals tax percentages, you can take that right off the top. Why? Because it's not your money in the first place. It was never your money. And we are the trustee and we have to set it aside. So in this example, in the parentheses next to my meals tax account, I have a 7 because in the state of Massachusetts, 7%. So we put 7% aside of that income account. So we have that taken care of for our meals tax, then we have our cost of goods account and then our payroll account. Those are our prime cost accounts. And for this restaurant example, we know that they're running a 31% combined food and beverage or cost of goods account and they run 30% payroll. That's why I put them in parentheses. It kind of reminds them what they need to transfer to those ounce. Yours might be 40 and 20. The maybe they're like 36 and 48. I hope not. They could be. You figure out when you do an assessment of your business what your percentages could be. And we'll get to that in just a few slides. So we transfer that money to those accounts and then it looks like this. So now our income account went down because we just, we just allocated or transferred money out of it. And we put aside money for meals tax. We put aside our 31% for our cost of goods, and we put aside 30% for our payroll. Now we funded those accounts. What's left in that income? In our, in our example, it's the 4659 is what we call real revenue, also known as gross profit. That's the money left over that you run your business on after your prime cost. Your sales tax is taken care of. So that's what these other parentheses stand for. These equal 100% of what's left of the real revenue. In our example today, this was Lucy's bistro. It's the one that I kind of bring you through. In the entire book, Lucy was just starting to be profitable or wanted to be profitable. So we're only going to start her at 1% set aside. Because this system is not designed to like wallop you over the head and make you want to jump off a cliff. We're going to beach entry into this. As you make improvements in your business, we're going to increase the profit amount. But when we're just starting out of the gate, we're going to say just do 1% of the real revenue. Just 1%. Because if you can operate your business on 90 and 99% of your business, you can set aside 1%. It's slow rule, and in this case it's 46 bucks. I know she can do it. So that goes to the profit we had 40% for owners pay because that's what she was already making. We were leaving that alone 1% for taxes, which is low. But again, beach entry until we try and find money saved somewhere that we can add. And then the last 58% of that real revenue went to her OPEX account. So now this is what I mean by not only visual cash flow, we watch the money start at the top and flow through based on her business model into these accounts. But now we have this kind of live working budget. Now we know that she's got $3,700 to pay her food and beverage vendors. She's got $3,500 for the payroll for that week. So what if, what if her payroll, she runs the payroll in her software and it comes out that she owes $4,000 for payroll. Right. You can't underfund the payroll. But here's one of the beautiful things about this process is that now in this example, Lucy has to make a decision. I got to put another $400 in that payroll account so my payroll doesn't bounce. Where am I going to take it from? Am I going to take it out of my food and vendor, my food and beverage vendor account like, and piss somebody off maybe? Am I going to take it out of my owner's pay, which a lot of people do right now? Possibly. Am I going to take it out of my OPEX account and maybe not pay some type of due subscription insurance? Hopefully not. Most likely, it's going to probably come out of your owner's pay. And it's in making that decision and being this. And being able to see it visually, it really does kind of change the game on how you're going to work on your restaurant to fix the percentages. Because clearly if she was, if she has to pay $4,000 in payroll, she's not running at 30%, is she? She's running higher. Maybe she's at 32, 33. And I'd rather her know that now and work to change that immediately versus waiting to the end of the month when the books are closed, the percentages come out and you meet with your bookkeeper and then they'll say, oh, by the way, you ran 32% last month. Oh, thanks. Like, I just lost a few weeks. So now we're doing it immediately. It's one, one of the great benefits getting into the brass tacks and how to set up these accounts. Most banks, most. A lot of banks already have heard of profit first. Most are not surprised. I have a printable worksheet that you can, you can have, which you can bring to the bank with you, but it basically tells you what accounts you need to set up. They're checking or savings. And why this is. These should all be free, no fee, no minimum. Checking or savings accounts. Yes, they do exist. We have a list of banks that offer this and you should be paying for your, your bank accounts as far as I know. All right, now we're going to move quickly into the assessment. Like, how do you know what percentages are for you? Hopefully you might on this call. You're probably all veterans. You probably have an idea of what you are really running in your food and beverage, your payroll, etc. But just to do a quick assessment, this is what you're going to do on the screen here. This is also the same one that's in the book. I have a collapsed version of a profit and loss report also called an income statement. Right. So what we're going to take is the total revenue. This is for one year. And this, in this example, it's half a million 500,000 total cost of goods. We're looking for total payroll or labor and then her total operational expenses down here. So that would be like admin advertising, occupancy, direct operating, those things. We're collapsing them down. We're going to come up with amounts for those buckets and then we have owners pay and personal expenses. And if there was any taxes paid, that would be on here. So this is just one sheet. We kind of put all the data together and saying, okay, now we're going to fill out this chart. So this instant assessment chart, again free to you, there's tools you can download for it. And we're just going to fill it in so we know where everything's going. So they have 500,160 in COGS, 155 payroll. That means 185 in real revenue. And here we're, Here we are. Owners pay 74,120opex. She was at a running at a loss of 9,250 for this one year that we did the assessment. So what does that look like? We're going to just do some simple math. We're going to divide each one of these by 500 to get her cost of goods and her payroll. That's where we come up with these caps. Percentage stands for current allocation percentages. Just meaning like this is where the money's been going before you did this assessment. And then down here we take these amounts, divide them by the real revenue to get what her profit. Owners pay, owners taxes and OPEX percentages are. So this is our starting point. We don't want to live here. We want to get better than this, obviously, because we want to be profitable. So then we take this and we're going to put it into another chart. Right before I get to that, I have our Mac Daddy Taps chart on the screen. So if you're wondering, hey, what should I be running at? This is a chart that was developed by Mike Michalowitz, the original author of Proper first, where he, when he wrote that book again 10, 11 years ago now, he interviewed thousands of businesses in different revenue ranges, many of them restaurants, but also across other industries, and kind of came up with what was the average of the healthy business running based off of their real revenue. So that's where these percentages come from. It's a good starting point. You may, may or may not end up there. You know, we want to follow your business model and how you plan to be profitable. That's what we want to get to. But for this example and Lucy's, she would be under column A because her real revenue falls under 250,000, her real revenue. So we're looking for her to be at 5% profit, 50% owners pay 50% taxes, 30% opex, maybe if she can get there. So we put that in this final chart, this is our tax chart, to kind of figure out what we need to do. Now at the top, she was running 32% in food and beverage costs. We want her to run at 30, which means we're looking for a $10,000 decrease across a year. So less than 1,000amonth. Pretty easy to do with maybe some menu pricing, maybe figuring out some menu mixes and food costs, beverage costs, etc. That's not, not too hard to do over a year, period. Same with payroll. She was running at 31. We want 30. We're just looking for a $5,000 decrease across the year. Some light scheduling differences we could probably come up with that. So easy lifting down here is real. The work, the real work is going to be done. In order for us to be able to increase her owner's pay, increase taxes, you know, her tax savings, and then add to profit, we need to drastically reduce her opex. This is where the work is really going to happen. Will she achieve a 30% opex when she's running 65? I mean, probably not, but the work that she's going to use, she's going to do to get her there. That's going to, that's going to transform the business. It's the fine tuning sort of the nickel and diming, but in a really good way because it's going to ensure that she's creating efficiencies, whether it's inventory, whether it's, it's doing away with things she's not using. It's really just fine tuning the business model. So even if she hits 40% or 45, that still frees up about 20% for her to use toward her owners pay taxes and profit. And that's certainly better than where she is now. So the final piece of this is what we do with our clients. You may or may not necessarily need to do this for, if you're doing this on your own. But when we work with restaurants who want to implement profit first we have their starting point, which is kind of like day one. And then usually it takes about six quarters, sometimes four quarters. So a year, year and a half for us to, to get from point A to their point B, which is like the best they can run. Some do it in much less, like I said, but usually we like to give it six quarters because there's really, can be a lot of work to be done there. All right, so you want to talk about case studies, Eric, want to talk about some success stories?

[C]

Yeah, let's get into it. So this is, are these case studies in the past two years?

[A]

Some are even beyond that. Probably, probably all in the past five years. In the past two years, Yeah. I mean, I have some of the past two years too. What do you want to talk. Which ones do you want?

[C]

Take it away. Whatever you want to talk about.

[A]

I think I'd like to give one of each.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Success story and then a not so success story story.

[C]

Go for it.

[A]

Okay. All right, what should I start with? I'm going to start with the non success story just so I can end on a happy note. But this non success story is one that's in the restaurant. Is the one that's in the restaurant book. I mean, it's in the book. So this is the Burger Shack that I, I talk about through the book. To us, they were in Indiana. They were in a college town. They came to us about five years ago, really gung ho. Loved his business, loved everything about profit First. Set up all the accounts from, from the original profit first before my book came out and, and couldn't figure out why I wasn't working. So, you know, engage with us. Hey, I want this to work. So we. He comes to us. I'm like, all right, well send us your book. Send us your QuickBooks back up so we can, you know, take a look. And his books were a mess. So number one, like, if you don't have financials that are perfect, I mean, they should, let's face it, it's software. It should be perfect. You can't, it's kind of like, you know, driving at night without a roadmap cross country, like you don't know what you're doing. So we had to say, hold up, hold up, it's fine, but let us figure out the numbers first. We got, we got into his books and we Realized that his food cost was astronomical. It was like 60 something percent.

[C]

Oh, damn.

[A]

Just for the food cost. He said, no, no, no, that can't be right. That guy, right? And I'm like, okay, well then show me where we're wrong. We sent him the details and we weren't. I mean, we were right. So what ended up happening with this burger shack? He was running so high every time he sold a burger, he was losing money. So when we were. When he was trying to run profit first, it wasn't working for him at all because nothing was making sense to him. He was losing money every time he sold something. But the benefit of running profit first was it bubbled that up to the surface right away. Not only just doing his bookkeeping, but him by trying to allocate money. But then they're never ever being enough. And him like, I don't know why. I guess I just need to sell more. I guess I need to sell more.

[C]

What gets measured gets minded, right?

[A]

What's that?

[C]

What gets measured gets minded.

[A]

Yeah. All of all the things, all those phrases. Absolutely. He just didn't know. But it was such a dangerous situation to be in that I'm glad we got it out. The sad, you know, it's a sad story. One because we. He needed to literally stop. Stop operations and stop the business. Because like I had said, he. Every time he sold something, he was actually losing more money and just didn't realize it. And he dug a hole so deep. I want to say when he came on board with us, he was about a half a million dollars in debt. And given his business model and what the revenue streams were and things like that, in order for us to get him out of debt would have been way beyond his lease. It would have been like 20 years plus. And that's if everything went perfectly. It just wasn't doable. It wasn't doable. He just wasn't going to raise the price of his burgers from 8 to $28 to cover it. Like, who's going to pay that?

[C]

Yes.

[A]

So but in the end, I think we saved him from digging any more of a hole. He definitely thanked us at the end. He really thanked us for like getting him out of that and showing him the light. So that's the way that's how Profit first really helped a business model that was broken. And it does do that. It does it across the board. We have clients and I'd say, you know, now we have. I have 260 clients, but about 95 are strictly restaurants. The ones that come to us and we run them through the, you know, run them through a prop first assessment real quick. We know immediately like, oh, this isn't working, something's broken. It's either your, your food costs or your labor. Maybe it's your occupancy, we need to dive, but we know immediately. So before we implement this system with strict guidelines, let's figure out what your business model is or was supposed to be and how do we get back to that? So profit first is really helpful with really redefining or getting back to what your original business model was supposed to be. Because let's face it, I hope it was supposed to be a profitable business model.

[C]

So do you remember diving into this guy's business and really looking at like, why are you 30% over what your food cost should be? Like, what, what is going on here? Did you identify what those issues were?

[A]

Well, yeah, so when, when we came, when we finished, you know, the books for the first year and it came up to over 60%. And he's like, no, when we send him the profit loss detail, which just listed all the vendors, it was where he's getting all of his buns and all of his meat. And then there's, you know, the, the ketchup, the pickle, the doily, like everything that was included. And we showed him, he was, you know, with a pencil going through, going through like, yep, yep, yep. And so I was like, okay, let's break down one plate like that you're selling. So we grabbed that had a, you know, weigh the burger the ounces and that's what hopefully everyone's doing really weigh. Like, what exactly is recipe costing? Yep, complete menu, costume, recipe costing. So when we got down to it, he was running, it was 58 on one thing. I think it was all day long. But he thought he was running at 30.

[C]

Did he sell, did he sell french fries?

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Was it an issue? So we just recently did something in the profit power hour where, you know, Fred Langley from Restaurant Assistance Pro is helping us out and he advised this, this person who joined us to do a descending expense report to ask his vendor for a descending expense report where it lists out the, the things that you're spending most of your money on to supply your, your business, the goods. And for a burger joint, it was likely probably french fries and then beef patties and then buns. But where people go wrong is they over portion french fries. And if you're accounting for five, like a five ounce portion, typically if you're not measuring, you could be doing an 8 ounce or a 7 ounce, so you're almost doubling. So like, and then if you're not tracking waste and like all these things like, or you know, people are just eating food like willy nilly and you're not tracking. Is that the kind of stuff that you were seeing once you started diving in?

[A]

Oh yeah, we find that all the time across the board. And even with more fine dine or sit down restaurants, oftentimes if they're going to give out complimentary, you know, bread service, like they're not counting that anywhere in their food cost. So it's baffling to me when I think like, well where, where did you think that it's not free? Like where'd you think it was coming from? But it didn't, it didn't occur to them that they should tack on, you know, 25, 35, 40, 50 cents to their costing every time they put a menu, a new menu item out or a current menu item out to, you know, to counteract for the rolls, the bread that we give out. So we, we dive into every single detail of the plate or really what's on the table and then make them go out. And that's why there's an entire chapter in the book on menu costing and a very simple way to do it, but just to make sure that they're capturing everything on there. Because a lot of times like, all right, burger bun, I'm done. Good. That's the price. It's like, well no, because everything else costs money. The salt never costs money. I'm not saying weigh out the grains of salt and pepper. I'm just assign a value to it. $0.03, $0.05, what, $0.10, whatever it is, give it a value. Because nothing was free. Right. And when you do that, it completely changes what they thought their food cost was.

[C]

Yeah. So what is the big takeaway from this, this case study?

[A]

So I guess, I mean there's a lot of takeaways. But I think for me, I use this case study a lot as a takeaway that profit first is a great way to bubble up to the surface any fire drill issues that you are having right now in your restaurant or in any business. But we're just talking about restaurants right now because if you think that when someone spends a hundred dollars for easy numbers in your business, they come in, they spend a hundred dollars and you're saying, great, my food cost is 30, my payroll is 30, and then all my other OPEX is 30, that gives me 10% profit, meaning that that hundred dollars that somebody spent. You're putting $10 aside for profit or in your pocket or whatever you do the profit. But your book aren't showing that, like, this is going to bubble up to the service, like, where you're bulging. Maybe you weren't 30%. Maybe you were 58%. Maybe your labor is 30. Maybe it's 92%.

[B]

I mean, I've seen that the big.

[C]

Takeaway for me was just that, like, when you start allocating and you see industry averages, like, for, for example, prime costs, you want to be at about 60%. You can dice that up between labor and cost of goods. But when you start seeing industry averages and how you stack up, it makes you realize, okay, well, where is it? It forces you to start the investigation, right? And. And like in. If you. Unless you're tracking it, you'll never know. So that's the big takeaway for me.

[B]

Behind every great restaurant is a great person. The key to being great is to be of service to others. And this holds true for all organizations, not just restaurants. After spend in Phoenix, Arizona, being hosted by Restaurant Systems Pro CEO Fred Langley, I got to experience firsthand Fred's desire to serve. It all started when I got there. Fred gave me the keys to his house and to his office building. When Fred leaves work every day, I witnessed him go coach one of his two son's baseball teams. And when Fred's neighbor lost power when they were hosting their son's birthday party, Fred offered to host the party at his house. Eric, why are you sharing this? Because how you do one thing is how you do everything. And believe me when I say that the desire to serve extends to Fred's restaurant clients. There are no secrets or shortcuts to life or restaurant success. There's only discipline, hard work, and the desire to do the right thing. Fred and his team at Restaurant Systems Pro are here to serve you with the systems and resources to be more disciplined so you can do the hard thing, which, nine times out of 10, is the right thing. With Restaurant Systems Pro, you get accounting systems, budgeting systems, costing systems, purchasing systems, inventory management systems, labor management systems, training systems, and the systems to create and implement checklists. On top of all this, Restaurant Systems Pro also has their own native general ledger, and they're in the process of launching their own pos, which they are so appropriately naming serve. And you know what? If you don't want to change your pos, that's absolutely fine, because Restaurant Systems Pro integrates with all major POS providers. To learn more, head over to restaurantunstoppable.com RSP and you will find a link to schedule a demo with their sales team. A demo I personally did with Restaurant Systems Pro CEO Fred Langley and all 18 of our testimonials that we've recorded.

[C]

Since the beginning of Restaurant Stoppable.

[B]

Again, that's Restaurant Unstoppable.com RSP.

[C]

So do you have any. How many more case studies are you going to share with us?

[A]

Just one more.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

Just so it's a good one. Yeah. So trying to think of which one to use. And oddly enough, they're all in California that I'm thinking of right now. But I feel like California restaurants get kind of hit the hardest.

[C]

Yeah. They're the ones that have to track it the most because of the. It's so like, oh, my God. Yeah, labor tax California.

[A]

It's crazy. But these, these places have done really well. So I think I'll go on the opp Instead of doing the casual one, I was thinking about, we have a bistro, more of a fine dining one outside of San Francisco. And when she came to us with private first, and so she's been a client for about a year, maybe just over a year now, this business was doing okay, meaning it was already able to pay its bills. Right. It could pay its bills. It didn't have any vendors screaming, you know, knocking on their door. They were able to pay themselves what they thought they, you know, though they weren't really sure, like, what they should be making. They just kind of paid themselves they thought they should. So overall they were doing okay. There was no, no such thing as setting money aside for profit, an account called Profit, and looking at it. There was really no other, no things that they were doing other than like, they had a great, loyal following. They made money and they could pay their bills for the most part. And at the end of the day, okay, like, she wasn't sure where to go next.

[C]

Revenue will solve a lot of problems.

[A]

What's that said?

[C]

Revenue will solve a lot of problems. But you can still, you can still get better. Even if you, if like you have the cash flow, you can still allocate and get better.

[A]

Revenue can solve a lot of problems. It could also cause problems as the case with the Burger Shack. Right. The more, the more revenue was, was putting him in the hole deeper. But in this case, all we had to do, like, she wasn't having a revenue problem, which is kind of unusual, that it was like a nice, refreshing change for us to kind of work with someone like, okay, so you're not. There's no fire drill here. You're doing okay. You're just not quite sure where you're supposed to go. Great. We can throw a private first at you right now. Let's do the allocation. The allocation was like, like she was running a little high on food costs, like a decent amount high on labor. We were able to show her using dollar amounts, like, hey, this is what's going on. Like, this is where your labor is high. Now let's dive into your scheduling, let's dive on staff, dive into what you're paying them. Let's figure this out here. So she just brought by profit first. Bubbling to the surface like, okay, like, yeah, labor, like that's my low hanging fruit that I really need to figure out. She talked with the chef. They figured out a new kit, model, whatever she was able to chop off, you know, over the first six months, like 3 to 4% of that. The same time, whittling down the menu pricing. A lot of it had to do with the complimentary focaccia. They offer, things like that. So we were able to do some menu pricing changes. We added some specials that had a much higher profit margin to kind of offset the ones that were lower. So doing that. So I'd say it was. She's like my poster child because in the first six months, not only was she able to like, like make those changes that she may or may not have made without us, you know, doing profit first and working together, but she had all this money set aside for profit that we were able to move that needle and keep putting more of the percentage of profit over there paying her, her owner's salary that she was like, oh, I don't know if I should take that. Maybe I should leave it in the business. Nope, you need to get paid. You are the number one employee in this business. Let's pay you what you should be paid. Let's set aside the taxes so you're not screaming around when 4:15 comes around, right? We did all those things and now like we're a year into it. She is loaded in terms of profit is set aside. She takes half, she leaves half as a, as a reserve fund in her business. She's making the most amount of money she can. She's loving her business right now. She's. Now she's writing a book about something to do with wine, wine rooms or something, I forget. It's kind of a unique book. She set aside another account because she wants to do more when it comes to like marketing, advertising. Probably has to do with her book for her restaurant. So we set aside a little satellite 5% marketing advertising budget that we take off the opex she can afford. So now she's got a live working budget to go do those fun things for her business. So she really took, you know, Mac daddy puff cash to the property and then really just expanded it because it is working so well for her. And, you know, like I said, because she's doing the allocations, like every single week, she knows immediately for costs are in line. And if her costs are in line, then everything else can just really type the flourish and the balances start to creep up and it sort of gamifies the whole thing because if she can drop her food cost by 1 more percent, that's more money dropping down to fund all the other accounts. And it's just fun and she loves it. So again, she's probably who I'm going to recommend you talk to on your next podcast. Okay, go to California. Because she's one of our poster child. She's killing it. And it's just. It's such a great thing to watch.

[C]

So what comes to mind as I'm hearing this is. Is, you know, I. One of the biggest lessons I've learned here in terms of growth and scale is cash flow. And people determine growth and scale. So when you start allocating and you know exactly where the money is going and what you have, it really acts as a governor to let you know, okay, what can I do? Like what? Okay, like, we are consistently bringing in more money. We have money going to these places. Like what? Like, you don't. It takes literally all the guesswork out of it. So now, you know, like, this is the. This is the capital I have to do the next thing. We are consistently showing these trends that this money is coming in.

[A]

Where.

[C]

Where can we take this overflow and where can we put it to add value, to. To add assets, to hire somebody to put more money into driving revenue, whether that be marketing, you know, so, like, it just takes all that, like, guesswork of like, am I ready for this? Is the money there? Do you have the people to execute on the strategy? Yeah, go for it. What are you thinking when I say that?

[A]

Yeah, I'm thinking all of that. I love the term you use governing. It really is. Although that almost sounds like political in a way, but I love that the term that you're using, I love. It's exactly what it does. I had another thought that just came into my head when it came to this, and I forgot and Just like, went out my. Went out of my head. Oh, yes, I know. So we're talking about that. And I was thinking about, I think was Mason, who had brought up, you know, he set up the system but didn't start using it because he had this other thing kind of going on with. With buying out a partner. I believe he was talking about whatever I have in. In talking about governing the money in. In the book, I talk about expansion, and I. I gave an example of just say you wanted to expand your outdoor seating. So what I would recommend anytime that you have something extraordinary happen financially in your business, whether you're buying out a partner or you're. You're growing, you're. You're increasing your capacity, usually you need to go borrow funds or even if it's your own personal funds. Right. And I would set up a separate account that just governs that. So in the example I use, just say they went to the bank, they borrowed $100,000 to create this outdoor seating, new door, glass door, etc. And that's kind of like it's $100,000. That's what you have to spend. That's what you borrowed. You have to spend in order to build this thing out. It's not going to touch the profit first for restaurant accounts, because you still want to be running your business like a lean, mean machine, right? You still want that money to come into your income that you're allocating. You don't want the expense of, you know, the, the electricians and, you know, the new door coming in. All that hitting, hitting over here, hitting your restaurant accounts, because it's not your restaurant's fault that you want to do, like, they shouldn't be hit. It should be separate. And so I was just thinking about Mason. I'm like, you know, he put in his own money. I'm wondering if he had done that separately, invested his own money, and that way we can add it to the balance sheet, you know, as a shareholder loan and being able to service what that $5,000 he had to pay off out of there without affecting the proper first accounts, because it's just really segregating the money to where it belongs.

[C]

Yeah, makes sense. Yeah. One more question before we start to wrap it up and do our Q A. Mason, we'll have time for you to. We'll. We'll come to you first.

[B]

In terms of.

[C]

You mentioned, like, you need to be using software, right? Like, in today's age, you need to be using software. Do you. How do you see profit first work with the enterprise solutions that are out there, I. E. The Restaurant Systems Pro and like the restaurant 365s. Like where does, like how does this in that play?

[A]

I. I don't think there's anything to even think or like talk about there. It's just unless those systems and we were familiar with both, we do not work in either of them for various reasons. But they don't have a cap on the number of accounts that you can have. So there should be. There's no difference. Right. They don't say, hey, you're only allowed to use one bank account. So. And literally the only bank accounts that have a lot of activity which is going to be your, your cogs account, your food vendor account, your payroll account, your OPEX that's going to have the activity and it's just going to be dedicated to those three items. Everything else is just going to be just a quick transfer out for a quarter and then back in. So I don't, I don't think as long as there's no limit on the accounts that you attach there, there should be no change. And, and you know, this kind of goes with this, with this slide I have up is the biggest pushback. And I had it yesterday on a call with somebody about like, I just don't like a lot of bank accounts. I don't like. And I get it. I'm not here trying to sell you in bank accounts. I just know that this is the only way I've seen it really sink in and with entrepreneurs because they aren't the most logical people that can just work with a spreadsheet. Not even me. And I do this for a living. Like I need the bank accounts. So I feel like that's the only difference here. Instead of having one bank account and, and everything comes out of. And we're hoping and praying that we did the right thing. We're just going to like give your dollar job and segregate it into bank accounts with different nicknames.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

But it all works the same. The accounting is the same and it actually simplifies the bookkeeping and accounting if you ask me, 100%.

[C]

And I. Sorry to interrupt. I see profit first as like the first step. If you are realizing that as you grow and scale and you realize you need to eventually implement and improve your technological stack to just be more efficient. Right. And to invest these assets in scale. Like you know that profit goes to investing in assets. It could be to get the initial investment into your, your tech stack. Right. If that's like something that's holding you back. But all those things are.

[B]

All that technology is, is a system.

[C]

And Profit first is a system. So if you feel like you are not, whether it be cash restraints or you just don't know if you're there or you're ready yet, this is the first step to getting to that, getting in that direction of going to an inter. Like an enterprise solution that has a general ledger tied to it. Because those platforms essentially are using the profit first philosophy. They are. You are having accounts allocated in those systems. And you can have that same effect with using checking accounts and the bank technology. Right. It's. It's the same idea. And this is one step closer to the enterprise solution. So if you are somebody who's like.

[B]

I can't afford that, or I don't.

[C]

Have the bandwidth for that, but I.

[B]

Know I need a system, like, this.

[C]

Is the first step in my mind, leveraging Profit first to get to that point where you can invest in more robust systems. Do you agree or disagree with that, Casey?

[A]

Oh, I would definitely agree with that a hundred percent. Because, because that, that would play into anything that you might want to grow into, whether you have, you want to have 10 units of a year only on your first one. I would absolutely, all day long implement Profit first or a version that works for you. So like I. This is the Mac, like literally, I call it the Mac Daddy version. But even if it's just you set up a separate payroll account, a sales tax account, and maybe a profit again if you start small, any version that's going to give intention to the money coming in that you set is going to have massively positive benefits. Benefits for your business.

[C]

Good. Okay. So before we wrap it up and say goodbye, I do want to have you call somebody out. So this is my North Star. This is how I find people to make an example of. I don't want to decide who I should talk to. You know the industry better than I do. So who do you respect and admire? Who's doing it right? I think you already kind of alluded to who you want to call up, make it official.

[A]

So her name is Laura Magu. Magu. She owns Reeve or Rev. I should probably know how to pronounce it. I was too embarrassed to ask her. It's R E V E in California. It's not Walnut Creek, it's the town right next door. I can get you that, but it's R E V E RA Bistro. Laura Magoo is the owner. Like I said, she's been a client for Just over a year. She is obviously it's supposed to child. She's taken this Profit First Restaurants and has gone crazy with it. She recommends it to everyone. She's killing it. And she's also some other things that I talk about with my clients on my own private client group in terms, in terms of other revenue streams and really just like maximizing profitability and revenue. And she's been taking a few things I've mentioned and running with it and just in tracking, tracking everything and killing it. So she's a great person to talk to and she's just lovely. You'll love her.

[C]

Laura Magoo, look out. I'm coming after you. I'd love to get you on the show. And we gotta let our listeners know if they're not sticking around for the Q and A. I want to get this on now. What is the call to action if we are interested, if we want to take the next step? Obviously there's the Profit first for Restaurants book that you authored. We'll link to that in the notes. If you're listening to this on Spotify or itunes, just in the notes, we'll, we'll link to that. But you have something else that you're excited to share. What's that?

[A]

Yeah, so I would definitely say the book. Whether it's, you download the audio or get the book book, Amazon or wherever books are sold is great. There's a lot of fun stories. It's, it's fun. It's a fun read. I'd like to say myself. So that's step one. Step two is we, I just redesigned, redeveloped the Profit First Restaurants online course because one, as much as we do get a lot of leads to the book, which is lovely. We can't take everyone right now. We're not even onboarding anyone new at the moment. And it's not that hard if you can follow it through. So we created this online course which teaches you or if you happen to have a bookkeeper, accountant that you love and they're game to learn this, like they can go through the course and it's just very step by step on exactly how to implement it in your restaurant. So that's what we developed. So that's, that's live and ready to go and there's lots of downloads and like cool stuff that goes with that. So that's number one. I highly recommend that.

[C]

So I'm linked. Go ahead. Sorry.

[A]

Yeah, I was just going to mention. So we also, in case that you're working with like an accountant or a bookkeeper that works with a lot of restaurants or, or, you know, one, we have a restaurant certification course that's for them where we're certifying more people to do what we do for restaurants because again, we can't, we can't fulfill the capacity. But there is a lot to know about restaurant accounting and chart of accounts and things like that. So we have a restaurant account certification course as well. And then there's lots of other fun little downloads. And the free tools that I had mentioned about Profit first, the number four restaurants dot com. I think right now we have maybe 16 free tools that you can download to help you implement this in your business.

[C]

Yeah. And if that's a lot to remember, if you head over to restaurantsoppable.com profit first we will link to the book, we will link to the course, we will link to Profit first for Restaurants tools. I think we also have the original interview that we did with Casey and Mike McCallow. It's there if you want to check that episode out. And I'm excited to announce that going forward, Casey and I are going to be collaborating in Restaurant Stoppable Network. If you want a piece of Casey because she's so busy right now with clients, you might not be able to work with her, we're going to at least give you access once a quarter for an hour. We're starting a profit first power hour, essentially Restaurant Stoppable listeners getting together to, you know, support each other with the. The Profit first for Restaurants expert Casey Anton there to coach us along the way. So you can sign up for Restaurant Stoppable Network and get access to Casey once a so stoked about that. And thank you for doing that, Casey. And I think that ties up all of the calls to action. Right, that's it.