Restaurant consulting · Minneapolis

The money is already in your restaurant. Let's find it.

Eat Street Consulting works with independent operators and multi-unit groups who are running tight, running hard, and leaving margin on the table without knowing it. Not because of bad effort — because no one's looked at the right numbers in the right way.

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What I do

Operational depth. Financial clarity. No fluff.

01
P&L Review & Opportunity Analysis
Most owners know their restaurant better than their financials. I bridge that gap — reading your P&L at the operator level to identify where margin is leaking, where costs are out of line, and where the clearest opportunities for improvement are hiding.
  • High-level P&L review & assessment
  • Prime cost analysis & benchmarking
  • Labor cost structure & scheduling analysis
  • Sales mix & daypart contribution analysis
  • Period-over-period variance review
  • Breakeven modeling & target-setting
02
Menu Engineering & Pricing Architecture
Every item on your menu is either earning or costing you positioning. For food, I cost recipes as they're developed so the margin is built in from the start — not reverse-engineered after the fact. For beverages, I design tier-based systems that are clean, defensible, and grounded in both cost and market value.
  • Stars / Puzzles / Plowhorses / Dogs analysis
  • Recipe costing during menu development
  • Tier-based beverage pricing design
  • New concept & daypart launch planning
  • Guest count & PPA sales forecasting
03
Food Cost Control & Theoretical Costing
A gap in your food cost is almost always a measurement problem before it's anything else. I trace invoices, reconcile usage, and build the theoretical cost model so the number on your P&L starts meaning something real.
  • Invoice-level food cost reconciliation
  • Unit & cost conversion from raw recipes
  • Accurate theoretical food cost modeling
  • SOP development & training materials
  • Waste log frameworks
04
POS & MarginEdge Programming
Most consultants can tell you to use better software. I can actually set it up — build the menu architecture, map items correctly, and configure MarginEdge so your theoretical food cost reflects what's actually happening in the kitchen.
  • POS menu build & item architecture
  • Modifier logic & pricing structure
  • MarginEdge recipe entry & cost mapping
  • Theoretical vs. actual variance reporting
  • Recipe-to-POS alignment & audit

Background

Both sides of the pass.

I started in restaurants at sixteen, breading chicken on the opening shift. Over the next few years I worked my way to line cook, picked up cashier shifts, covered FOH when they needed it. When I was eighteen, the night manager trusted me to close the store alone on a Saturday. I didn't know it then, but that was the job I'd spend the rest of my career trying to understand from every angle.

I spent five years after that in public accounting. I was good at it. I was also drinking in a way that eventually cost me the career.

When I got sober, I knew two things: I understood financial systems, and I understood restaurants. I decided to build something at the intersection. But I also knew I wasn't ready to advise on operations I hadn't worked in for years. So before I called myself a consultant, I went back — spent a year on staff, mostly in the kitchen, some in the front of house, then three years as a manager. I wanted to know what the numbers looked like from the floor before I started talking about them from a spreadsheet.

That's the background I bring to every engagement. Not a methodology. Not a framework with a name. Just a long time spent on both sides of the pass, and a genuine understanding of what it costs to run a restaurant well.

Who this is for

Operators who are serious about the numbers, not just the narrative.

I work best with owners and operators who already know their restaurant — they just need someone who can translate what's happening in the kitchen and on the floor into language that shows up on the P&L.

I'm not a rebrand consultant. I don't sell a signature system with a trademarked name. I look at your actual invoices, your actual menu, your actual POS data — and find what's costing you money that doesn't have to.

Most of my engagements start with one specific problem and expand as we find the connected issues underneath it. Some start with a P&L that doesn't make sense. Some start before opening day.

  • ✓ Independent single-location operators with a hunch that their margins could be better
  • ✓ Multi-unit groups where the numbers don't reconcile cleanly across concepts
  • ✓ Owners planning a new concept or daypart who need a real financial model first
  • ✓ Operators taking over an existing concept and needing a clear-eyed audit
  • ✓ Teams rebuilding programs after a chef or manager departure
  • ✓ Groups considering new software who want an honest evaluation first

Get in touch

Most engagements start with a single conversation.

Tell me what's not adding up — food cost, menu pricing, POS setup, MarginEdge, a launch you're planning — and I'll tell you honestly whether I can help and what that looks like. No deck, no discovery call theater.

matthew@eatstreetconsulting.com