The Accountant Who Saved the Restaurant

Maria is an accountant at a busy restaurant chain. She watches every dollar carefully. Her main job is to track costs—ingredients, wages, rent, utilities—and compare them to sales. This helps her calculate margins, which show how much money the restaurant keeps from each dish after paying for ingredients. Good margins mean the restaurant can pay staff, fix equipment, and invest in growth. Without this knowledge, managers are just guessing.

Let’s say a pasta dish costs $7 to make (ingredients, cooking time), but sells for $15. The margin is $8, or about 53%. Maria also tracks KPIs—Key Performance Indicators—like food‐cost percentage (ingredients cost ÷ sales price), average sale per table, and table turnover rate. If a KPI is off—like food‑cost % creeping up—it’s her job to find out why: maybe prices rose, portions got bigger, or waste increased. She then tells the manager, “Heads up—we need to adjust.”

A recent example is Red Lobster under its new CEO, Damola Adamolekun. When he arrived, the restaurant chain was struggling. One widely criticized offer was “endless shrimp”—unlimited shrimp for a fixed price. Sounds fun, right? But it hurt margins: guests ate too much shrimp, food costs skyrocketed, and profits dropped. Damola listened to his finance team and decided to remove the deal. Instead, he introduced dishes under $20, $5 margaritas, and streamlined options that brought guests in but kept costs predictable.

An accountant like Maria would be right in the middle of those changes. She would calculate how much guests were eating, how it affected costs, and how prices and portions change profit. Then she’d build a report: “Before, margin was maybe 30%. After removing endless shrimp, margin jumped to 40%.” She also tracks guest counts and satisfaction—another KPI—to make sure profits aren’t coming at the expense of happy customers. With Maria’s numbers, Damola could confidently say, “These menu changes improve health and profits.”

Accountants do more than crunch numbers—they power decisions. They help leaders answer critical questions: Is this dish making money? Should we raise prices? Are costs creeping up? They set red flags (like high food‑cost %) and guide changes before problems grow. In a restaurant or any business, accountants are the engine: tracking, measuring, advising. With clear numbers in hand, leaders can make smart moves—just like Damola did at Red Lobster—and keep the business running strong.

Discussion Questions

1. What do you think is the hardest part of being an accountant in a restaurant?

2. Why do you think removing “endless shrimp” helped Red Lobster’s profit?

3. If you owned a small café, what KPIs would you want to check every week?

4. How can an accountant help a CEO make smart business decisions?

5. Have you ever seen a restaurant change its menu or prices? Why do you think they did that?