Cash flow tips for restaurants heading into slow seasons

Slow seasons are predictable. Cash crunches during slow seasons are not — but only because most operators wait until sales have already dropped to start planning.

A workable 13-week cash flow model doesn't require software. A single spreadsheet with weekly deposits, payroll runs, vendor payments, rent, and debt service is enough to see three months out. Update it every Monday.

The three expenses worth renegotiating before things get tight are linen and uniform contracts, waste and recycling, and merchant processing. All three quietly creep up year over year and are almost always negotiable.

Talk to your landlord and your primary vendors early, not late. Concessions are much easier to secure when you're ahead of the problem than when you're already behind on payments.