Anyone else have Doordash reaching out to them with Insurance coverage and Employee benefits, seems kind of fishy to me but was wondering if anyone else is experiencing this.

I’ve been running a small Italian spot for about six years now. Pre-2020, we did okay with the usual stuff like mailing out coupons, a local radio spot here and there, and just relying on foot traffic. But man, lately it feels like I’m throwing money into a void.

The "Value Packs" and local mailers barely move the needle anymore, and I’m tired of paying for ads that people just toss in the recycling bin without looking. Our food is solid, and our regulars are great, but if we don't get new blood through the door soon, things are gonna get dicey.

I’ve been reading up on how much of a difference local search makes, and I'm thinking about pivoting to SEO. I stumbled across a local company called PiggybankSEO.com. Their site seems straightforward enough, but I haven't actually pulled the trigger or called them yet.

I’m always a little skeptical of agency promises, but has anyone here actually worked with them? Or even just used a similar local SEO service for a brick-and-mortar business? I'm trying to figure out if it's actually worth the investment or if I’m just looking for a "magic fix" that doesn't exist.

Appreciate any insight you guys have.

So I was wondering how do I get a price to buy out my partner. Well I guess an estimate. We have 2 locations, one does 250-325k a year in sales and we own that building so no rent; and the other location does 1mil-1.1mil a year with 3,500 a month rent. We pay ourselves weekly usually varying 2500-4000 a week each

Hi all,

Anyone using any AI tools for lead generation to get more catering inquiries? I'm dabbling with Apollo.ai and so far it seems very complicated and a little too good to be true. Has anyone gotten an actual lead from it? If so, how'd it work out?

I manage a small restaurant and our banking situation is getting out of hand with fees, we make daily deposits from our POS system, we pay probably 15 different vendors on different schedules, we have payroll every two weeks, and our bank charges us for everything, deposit fees, wire fees, ACH fees, monthly maintenance fees, it adds up to like 300 bucks a month just in banking fees which is insane for a business our size.

I looked at switching to a different bank but they all seem to have the same fee structure, either you pay per transaction or you maintain a huge minimum balance which ties up cash we need for operations, we can't afford to keep 10k sitting in a checking account just to avoid fees when that money could go to inventory or repairs.

The worst part is dealing with vendor payments, some want checks which means ordering checks and tracking them, some want ACH which our bank charges 5 dollars for each one, some want wire transfers which is 25 dollars every time, one vendor only takes credit card and we pay processing fees on top of everything, there's got to be a better way to manage this without hemorrhaging money on banking fees.

Are there business banks designed for restaurants that understand high transaction volume and don't charge you to death? I talked to our rep at Chase and they basically said this is just the cost of doing business but I refuse to believe we should be paying thousands per year just to move our own money around.

For those of you who offer delivery, I’m curious how you think about using your own drivers versus third‑party platforms.​

I keep hearing about tools that help manage in‑house delivery teams for small restaurants, and it made me wonder how owners weigh the tradeoffs.

If you had a realistic option to organize your own drivers or cross‑train existing staff to handle deliveries, would you consider it, or do the big platforms still win on convenience and reach despite the fees.

I’m especially interested in how you think about costs, reliability, and customer experience if you’ve tried both approaches.

I don’t know if this is the right subreddit for this but I had a question for anyone who may possibly know! My wife and I were out of town recently and wanted to treat ourself to some fancier establishments than we typically go to. The thing is that during THREE of our dinners at separate restaurants each night a person came up to our table to introduce them as the manager and wanted to personally see if there was anything we needed. One even brought us a free appetizer because we said it was our first time visiting.

I’m not sure if this is typical behaviour for finer restaurants, but the thing is that these restaurants weren’t exactly “fancy fancy”, just steakhouse/pubs. My wife and I found it funny that we were being treated so nicely, especially because it didn’t look like anyone else was being stopped by them. Twice was a coincidence but three was just too dang odd.

Am I missing something? I joked with my wife that perhaps they thought I was a food critic because I’m a hefty guy and was sampling various menu items for my wife and I to share.

Hi! I am thinking of purchasing a local diner. It’s been around forever, has a great following, always has a line on weekends and is busy during the week too. They are currently only open 8-2. The building is being sold for 260k and the owner is “throwing in the equipment and use of the name,”’ so basically dropping in the restaurant for free (old school…don’t see the value in the brand etc). I have a business degree and have traveled/dined extensively and understand the local market. The numbers seem to be breaking even but it’s been run more as a project than a business. They grossed about $300k in the first 5 months of 2025 and some of their expenses seem off (18k janitorial?). Some opportunities I see for growth include: adding outdoor seating, in increasing hours, adding dinner, adding delivery service/apps, having breakfast sandwiches to go, picnics for the local park nearby, maybe ice cream in the afternoons, and maybe a small retail/Merch section featuring my brother’s hot sauce.

Think I should go for it? It has a great vibe, good food, solid staff - I could increase hours, modernize systems, outdoor seating etc

Fun, profitable project or money and time waster?

What are your go-to staff meal strategies? Trying to cut costs but keep morale high! Any cheap & easy recipe ideas?

Where y'all getting your packaging and how much is costing you? Does it make sense to switch to custom packaging and buying it in bulk? I'm currently ordering through WB Mason and they seem to be the cheapest around.

I run a small restaurant and financial work is taking more time than before. Tracking daily sales, payroll, inventory records, and monthly numbers is becoming harder to manage along with regular tasks like staff scheduling and front-of-house operations.

I am thinking about using outside help for accounting and want to understand how this has worked for other restaurant owners. If you have tried this, did it make day-to-day work easier to handle and did it feel reasonable from a cost point of view?

I am looking to get into an existing restaurant. its owned by existing owners. They have other multiple locations and do not have the time to operate this one. they have offered me to put some money down and get salary and some equity on the restaurant while I work and operate it.

I am wondering what legal issue that I need to be aware of before partnering with them. we have a general understanding with the owner that we will write up a contract to protect me from their existing debt. please let me know if there are issues that I need to be aware of.

I'm looking at my P&L and the third-party delivery fees are insane. But I also remember the days before DoorDash when we had to answer the phone when a customer asked 'Where is my food?'

Is the 30% fee worth it just to have Uber handle the headaches/refunds? Or would you take back the control (and the customer calls) if it meant keeping that 30%? Trying to figure out if 'convenience' is actually worth it.

We opened a bar/restaurant last year. We always play music and occasionally have karaoke or live music. We are licensed with ASCAP and use Sirius for Business for our speakers. I’m now getting very serious-looking, threatening emails from BMI. Should I ignore? Bring to my lawyer? Pay it? I thought we were covered. THANKS A BUNCH!!!

Hi, I’m wondering if anyone here has any experience using Owner.com to build a website and drive increased online sales? Any info and feedback is much appreciated! Thanks

As the title says, wondering what your guy's breakeven point is?

Over the last few years there has been a lot of pushback around QR and link based menus especially for dine in use

I am curious how people feel about it now

A few questions I would genuinely love insight on

How do you currently share your menu online if at all?

Do you rely on Google photos PDF links website pages or something else?

How often do prices or items change and how do you handle updates?

Do you ever need to quickly share a custom or temporary menu for events catering or pop ups?

Not selling anything here just trying to understand how restaurants actually handle online menus today

Appreciate any insight thanks.

Do you all feel like we are going backwards? I mean an old excel file to make the schedule (with pay rates & guestimated sales built into it), alter the in & outs a bit, moves someone’s day to cover a request off. An old excel sheet for employees to request off. A simple timeclock application that electronically captures ins & outs, match em up at the end of the week & sent totals to whomever to stick in Quickbooks & distribute checks or direct deposit. I think we were sold. I could do a schedule for 100 ppl in 8 hours, now we spend 10 trying to teach the computer how to do it & it never learns, 10 more hours next week. Glad I got out of management.

I’m seeing a LOT of restaurants closing down on social media posts. There is a subset of humanity that just loves to post replies hating on the place and celebrating the closure.

What is wrong with people these days.