Founderwright for restaurants & hospitality
AI for restaurant groups and hospitality operators. Prime cost, every shift.
Each location’s sales, schedules, invoices, and payroll land in one AI brain. On top of it, we build the tools your managers need to hold prime cost during the shift, not after the period closes. It’s built in-house, around your menus, your kitchens, and your guests.
Private-equity-grade tools. Without giving up equity. Built by an operationally minded CFO, not a software vendor.
- Restaurant groups
- Multi-unit franchisees
- Fast casual
- Full service
- Bars & breweries
- Catering
- Hotels
- Event venues
Operator-CFO built
Not generic software. What a CFO would put in front of a restaurant group.
Founderwright is built by an operationally minded CFO. The numbers that grow a company organically are the same ones that make an acquisition work and hold up when you sell. Every build starts there: surfaced before you ask and ranked by dollar impact.
Daily sales
Prime cost by location, updated every shift
Prime cost decides the month, so it can’t wait for the P&L.
Food cost percentage
The theoretical vs. actual gap in dollars, by item and cause
A percentage hides whether the problem is waste, portioning, comps, or theft.
A labor schedule
Scheduled hours against forecast covers, before the week starts
Labor can only be fixed before the shift, not after it.
The same numbers carry a restaurant group through every stage: recovery, growth, acquisitions, and exit prep.
The morning brief
Surfaced before you ask. Ranked by what it’s worth.
Agents watch every connected system overnight. By morning, the issues that matter most are ranked, assigned, and drafted.
Monday, 8:30 a.m. · What the owner sees before the weekly managers’ meeting
Ranked actions
From your own numbers, across every system- 1Protein costs jumped on Friday’s invoiceTodayWings up 18% · 3 menu items now under target margin
- 2Food cost 3.1 points over theoreticalThis weekEast-side kitchen · waste log shows proteins over-prepped Thursday–Saturday
- 3Trim 22 labor hours from next weekThis weekForecast covers down 9% · two locations scheduled like last year
- 4Prime cost at 60.8% across the groupOn trackUnder the 62% target · labor down 1.4 points
Illustrative data. Every build is designed around your company’s own systems and numbers.
Voice notes that take action
Or just say it.
Between jobs, on the drive, or walking the floor: record a thought and the platform drafts the tasks, schedule changes, and answers. Nothing happens until you approve it. How voice notes work.
“Trim Tuesday’s schedule at the east-side kitchen, have the chef recost the wing specials, and what’s prime cost group-wide this week?”
- RescheduleEast-side kitchen Tuesday → 6 labor hours trimmed · GM approves
- New taskChef: recost 3 wing specials after Friday’s price increase
- AnswerPrime cost this week: 60.8% group-wide · under the 62% target
Illustrative. Nothing changes until you approve it.
Sound familiar
Prime cost shouldn’t wait for the P&L.
Food cost shows up late
Invoices get entered after the period closes, so you learn a protein price jumped weeks after it hit the line. The menu kept selling at the old margin.
Theoretical and actual never meet
The recipes say one number and the counts say another. Nobody can tell whether the gap is waste, portioning, comps, or product walking out the back door.
Schedules built from habit
Managers write next week from memory, not forecast covers. Labor runs heavy on a rainy weeknight and short on the Friday a large party books late.
Reviews go unread
Guest feedback lands on several review sites and nobody reads it in one place. The same complaint about slow tickets can run for weeks at one location.
What we’d build
What we’d build for a restaurant group.
Each tool starts as one conversation with you. It’s built in-house for your concepts and owned by you, and your managers see it working on last night’s checks, this week’s invoices, and next week’s schedule, not a demo.
Operator’s command center
Sales, prime cost, labor, and cash for every location against forecast and last year. Problems are sorted by what they cost the week, and each opens to the checks, invoices, or shifts behind it.
Prime cost by location
Food, beverage, and labor cost against sales for each location by day and week, with vendor invoices coded as they arrive instead of after the period closes.
Theoretical vs. actual food cost
Recipe cost times what sold, compared with what counts and invoices say you used, plus waste logged by item and reason. The gap shows whether to look at portioning, waste, or receiving.
Labor against forecast covers
Covers and sales forecast by daypart from history, reservations, and booked events, with each schedule checked against it. Managers see sales per labor hour and overtime risk before the week starts.
Voids, comps, and discounts
Every void, comp, and discount by location, server, and reason, with patterns that don’t fit the shift turned into a review assigned to the right manager.
Guest reviews and replies
Reviews from every platform, grouped by location and theme, with recurring complaints tracked over time and reply drafts ready for a manager to approve before anything is posted.
Catering and events
Inquiries, proposals, deposits, and event orders in one pipeline, with food and labor costed for each event and remaining balances flagged well before the day arrives.
Rooms and revenue
For hotels, occupancy, average daily rate, and RevPAR by night and channel, read alongside restaurant, bar, and banquet revenue so the whole property runs on one forecast.
The compliance line
We build above the line. We connect to everything else.
In hospitality, the line sits under card processing, tip reporting and payroll, tax filings, food safety and inspection records, banking, and the books. Everything your managers run before, during, and after service sits above it.
Above the line
Built custom, in-house by Founderwright, around how you run. Owned by you.
Below the line
The regulated systems you’re required to keep. We read from them, and where they offer a write API, approved work is written straight back in.
Keep any tool you like. We integrate with it. Operators often want to keep the point of sale, reservation platform, and scheduling app their staff already know. We’d connect all three and build cost, labor, and guest tools to fit. See the systems we connect.
The build
How we’d build it for a restaurant group.
Walk a shift, open to close
We start with how a shift really runs: how you forecast and schedule, how orders are placed and invoices approved, how counts are taken, who decides on comps, and which numbers you check after close each night.
Connect sales and labor
Your point of sale and time clock are connected, and every location appears on the first command center, running on real checks, covers, and shifts, with labor cost updated through the day.
Add invoices, recipes, and payroll
Vendor invoices, recipes, inventory counts, reservations, payroll, and the general ledger come into the same brain, so theoretical food cost, prime cost, and cash all tie back to the same checks and invoices.
Replace the clipboards
Above the line, we replace what your managers keep on clipboards and side spreadsheets: prep lists, order guides, and event sheets. You own every piece, and subscriptions it makes redundant can go.
The numbers it runs on
Your definitions. Measured the same way everywhere.
Every metric is defined with you once, tied back to the source systems, and checked by agents before anyone makes a decision on it.
Questions
What owners ask us.
Do we have to change our point of sale?
No. The point of sale stays exactly where it is, and it’s where we start. Reservation and scheduling tools can stay too, with prime cost, food cost, and review tools built around all three. Anything above the compliance line you later decide to retire is replaced with software made for how your kitchens and dining rooms run.
What sits below the line for a restaurant or hotel?
Card processing, tip reporting and payroll, sales and other tax filings, food safety and inspection records, banking, and the books of record all stay where they are. We connect to them to read. Where one exposes a write API, approved work like coded invoices or journal entries goes back in directly, but only after someone you’ve authorized signs off, and each of those writes is logged.
Can it work alongside the systems a franchisor requires?
Yes. Franchise agreements often require a specific point of sale or reporting system, and those stay exactly as they are. We read from them and build your own view across every unit, and across brands if you run more than one, on definitions you control. Your managers stop rebuilding the same numbers in two formats.
Can it handle a hotel with restaurants and event space?
Yes. Rooms, outlets, and events each get their own view: occupancy, average daily rate, and RevPAR for rooms, prime cost and covers for each outlet, and bookings and margin for banquets. The owner sees them together, and a group booking shows up in the room forecast, the kitchen’s prep, and the labor plan at the same time.
If we part ways, who owns what you built?
The system is yours. That covers every tool above the compliance line, your recipes and costing logic, and the history of every check and invoice it holds. Keep developing it with us or take it fully in-house. Nothing is held back, and there is no lock-in to negotiate your way out of.
Start with one conversation.
Recovering, growing, buying, or getting ready to sell: tell us how your company runs. We’ll show you what it could run on.
Start a conversation logan@founderwright.com