Independent restaurant owner
Client: Karim B., owner of two restaurants in Lyon: a neighbourhood bistro open for 8 years and a brasserie taken over in 2022. He manages the finances of both venues with his business partner.
Background: management software for restaurants
Restaurants operate on thin margins with complex cash flows. Karim faces specific challenges:
- High, variable payroll costs: extra staff, fixed-term contracts and overtime depending on footfall
- Daily purchases of raw ingredients with unstable prices
- Two separate legal entities: two sets of accounts, two tax returns
- Strong seasonality: quiet July–August, peak December–January
Before Dirigeoo:
- Each venue managed separately in two different software packages
- Food cost calculated manually at the end of each week from delivery notes
- No consolidated view of both venues to manage the business as a whole
- Difficulty forecasting cash flow during the quiet summer period
The problem
- Food costs not managed: purchasing drift impossible to spot before the monthly close
- A fragmented view: no way of comparing the performance of the two venues
- Low season not anticipated: a 35% drop in revenue in July/August without sufficient provision
- HR decisions made blind: extra staff scheduled with no view of the available budget
The Dirigeoo solution
- Multi-venue dashboard
- A consolidated, side-by-side view of both venues on a single screen
- Key indicators: average spend per customer, food cost, gross margin per venue
- Purchasing and food cost tracking
- Delivery notes and supplier invoices centralised by venue
- Food cost to revenue ratio calculated automatically every week
- Cash flow forecasting
- A forecasting model that takes historical seasonality into account
- Automatic provision for the low season defined by Karim
- Payroll management
- Budgeted vs actual hours per week and per venue
- Alerts if the payroll budget exceeds the set threshold
Results
- Food cost ratio down 4 points: drift detected quickly, from the following week
- First summer without cash flow stress: €30,000 set aside from April to absorb the dip
- An operational consolidated view: Karim makes his HR decisions based on real data
- Weekly time saving: 3 hours of manual calculations eliminated every week
Testimonial
“Restaurants run on tight margins. One extra point of food cost across two restaurants adds up fast. Dirigeoo tells me every week, not at the end of the month when it’s too late.”
Karim B. — Restaurant owner, 2 venues in Lyon