COGS Without Inventory

Managing COGS doesn’t have to be a time-consuming ordeal. By shifting your focus from inventory to purchases, you can achieve long-term profitability without the hassle of complex systems.

Why Managing Your Restaurant's Cost of Goods Sold in Real Time is Key to Profitability

In the restaurant business, Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) is one of the most critical metrics. Managing COGS effectively can mean the difference between a thriving operation and one struggling to break even. Even a couple of percentage points up or down can significantly impact your bottom line, so having

The Importance of Running an Efficient Restaurant Operation

The cyclical nature of restaurant operations means that the same processes are repeated day after day to generate revenue. If any of these systems break down, the impact on profitability is immediate and profound.

Change contains risk, but so does the status quo

If you view a chainsaw as a redesigned axe you will fail to see its value. Any technology that applies a radically different solution to a familiar problem faces this issue. It is difficult to understand the implications of a technology you’ve never seen before. Yet you cannot succeed

Simplicity as a business strategy

Simplicity is difficult to achieve. Complexity works its way into our relationships, the way we communicate, the way we frame problems, and the solutions we build. Complexity creeps. Simplicity is a difficult pursuit but it has immense value. Relationships of all types are complex but their foundations are simple; respect,

Restaurants are struggling!

A third of restaurant operators are concerned about the future. It’s easy to see why. Half of foodservice companies are losing money or breaking even. Restaurants visits continue to trend downward and while total spending is on track to be 10% higher than 2022 that increase has been more

Be Opinionated!

I am working on a new feature set for one of our software products. I find myself deciding to be opinionated in the way these features are implemented. That’s a tough call, I’ve found restaurant managers to be opinionated themselves, and stubborn. You are bound to battle with

Recovering credit card fees from tips

Most restaurant bills are paid with electronic money - credit cards dominate. The restaurant pays a 1 - 4% fee to the bank for the privilege of taking credit card payments and therefore is paying a fee on any tips left on credit card - the primary way most customers

Counting Change is Bullshit!

If you have a business that deals in cash, like a restaurant, part of managing the day’s sales is counting change. At restaurants and bars all the front of house staff collect change throughout their shift, and wow do they love to dump that change into their nightly cash-outs!

Tip Committee

Canadian Restaurant Association recommends setting up a staff run tip committee. The committee meets on a regular basis, decides on the strategy for calculating staff share of tips, and distributes the tips to individuals. A tip committee takes the employer out of the equation and fits the definition of “direct”

Restaurant Tip Liability

If the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) deems the tips coming through your restaurant are “controlled” you are on the hook for employment insurance and Canada pension plan for those tips. They must be declared as restaurant income and the tips must be included on the employees T4 slip, along with

Tip Distribution Strategies

Collecting tips into a pool of money and distributing the funds to staff is a standard practice in the restaurant industry. The method of deciding what share of the collective tip pool is distributed to each staff member varies widely. We’ve been collecting the spreadsheets operators use to distribute

Would you know if your employer is stealing your tips?

Tipping is a part of restaurant dining in North America, for better or worse. As a diner you tip your Server and they are expected to share some of those tips with the other staff. Servers and Bartenders are the front line staff that interact with the customer, but they

Cash-less Tips

Cash is disappearing Cash has been losing favour as a payment method for decades and the restaurant industry has slowly been transformed by this changing reality. Debit and Credit was used 85% of the time to pay restaurant bills in 2019. The pandemic has accelerated this evolution and virtually eliminated

Tip Jar Management

How do you distribute your Tip Pools? We’d love your input on our new tip pool distribution feature! Buckets full of (electronic) Cash! Restaurants have always collected a Tip Pool for the Kitchen staff, and every week or two it gets distributed to the hard working crew in the

Guerrilla Entrepreneur

I’m a solo entrepreneur (now with a small team). I write the software, do the marketing, mop the floors. I attend no meetings. I need approval from no one. The design work is done in my head or doodled on a scrap of paper and communicated to the team

Discovering Hospitality

Discovering Hospitality Podcast I’ve made my podcast debut! My good friend Ally Stone hosts a Discovering Hospitality podcast where she discusses the restaurant industry and its quirks and joys with her guest. Ally is genuine and heartfelt in all her endeavours and it’s always a pleasure to hang

BlackFox partners with XTM

We are please to announce our partnership with XTM Inc, a leader in mobile banking and payment solutions. BlackFox and XTM are teaming up to bring cash-less tip distribution to the BlackFox cash-out system. Historically, restaurants dealt in a lot of cash, and Servers and Bartenders have traditionally ended their

Design Philosophy

I’m lazy and selfish. I don’t want to spend time doing things I don’t like. My mom likes to tell people that when I was a teenager I’d spend 10 minutes arguing with her about the best way to do a 5 minute task. Now I

The Black Box

When you start a job, they give you a black box, metaphorically. On the second day at my new job I say, “Super excited to be here. I’ve been thinking about that black box. Have you ever tried it with rounded corners?”