We’re dishing out insight for CFOs looking to propel growth and cut costs without skimping on service.
What’s on tap in this issue:
BJ’s budgeting mojo magic
Tech flex of robo-made salads
Smart moves to slash spend
Industry news
What’s cookin’ in the industry?
Industry thought leaders are finding ways to cut expenses as labor and food costs climb, and tariffs threaten to drive prices even higher. (check out this past edition of The Fix devoted to tariffs). 💰
BJ’s $35M budget glow up
Despite industry headwinds…
BJ’s Restaurants is making cost control look easy. The chain beat its own cost-saving goal by a mile, and it shows.
They wrapped up Q4 2024 with a solid 13.8% YoY boost in restaurant-level operating profit and squeezed out a 1% gain in margin. (Revenue increased by 6.4% and sales by 5.5%.)
📉 $35M in annualized savings. They crushed their original $25M target by cutting food, labor, occupancy, and operating costs.
🏗 Lowered new store buildout costs by nearly $1M. By designing a prototype store with higher operational efficiency and revamping the contractor bid process, they brought the total investment down by almost $1 million (they’re working to trim the cost by another $500,000).
📦 Focused on SKU & menu simplification. They trimmed pantry size and eliminated low-profit items to improve throughput and reduce waste.
BJ’s is counting on stronger profits to fuel more growth in 2025, projecting a 2–3% increase in sales.
Sweetgreens salads are robo-licious
Sweetgreen’s Robotic Kitchens Could Power 5X Growth and $700M in Annual EBITDA
Sweetgreen’s Infinite Kitchen is more than a futuristic flex — it’s a case study in automation as a strategic cost cutter and growth lever. In 2024, it drove 6% same-store sales growth and $18.7M in positive adjusted EBITDA — a first for the brand.
🤖 The Infinite Kitchen model — automated, lower-labor restaurants — delivers 800+ basis points higher margins and can fulfill 500 orders/hour.
These locations have at least an 800-basis-point margin advantage vs. traditional sites (700 from labor & 100 from COGS).
A Hingham, MA Infinite Kitchen location hit a 30% margin its first month, 4 points better than the original Infinite Kitchen store in Naperville, IL.
In 2025, 25 new Infinite Kitchens will launch (half of all new builds), with plans to retrofit busy urban stores and expand into new markets like Phoenix & Cincinnati.
Timely tips
This is for CFOs who want numbers that make them smile.
Audit your assets before they break the bank. If you don’t know what equipment you have or how often it breaks, you’re not managing costs — you’re rolling dice.
💡 Use an asset management system, like ResQ, to track maintenance history and make smarter repair or replacement decisions. If your ice machine’s gone down 4 times this quarter, the ROI on replacing it just wrote itself.
Get with preventative maintenance. Emergency repairs = expensive repairs. Preventative maintenance keeps you ahead of breakdowns and budget creep.
💡 Set recurring service intervals for high-risk assets (HVAC, walk-ins, fryers).
Track every dollar of R&M spend. You can't make wise decisions when you don't know where your money is going.
💡 With ResQ, you get real-time spend visibility across every location, vendor, and asset — H&H Bagels used this insight to identify that toaster ovens were breaking often due to misuse. They set up an SOP to train staff — problem solved, money saved.
Automate where it hurts the most. Labor’s expensive, and so is inefficiency. When the 2 overlap → budget crisis.
💡 Use automation to reduce manual tasks. When it comes to R&M, think sensors that alert you to equipment issues. Fewer delays = fewer dollars lost to downtime.
Train staff to handle the little stuff. Not every broken piece of equipment needs a vendor call and a $300 invoice.
💡 Give your team basic troubleshooting steps for common issues — blown pilot lights, jammed dishwashers, clogged drains. (You’d be surprised how many problems get fixed with the flick of a switch off & on again.) A well-trained GM can save you thousands a year just by knowing when not to contact a trade.
From the community
🧁 Magnolia Bakery: Saving money and sanity by baking efficiency into their operations
Magnolia Bakery, known for its iconic banana pudding and cupcakes, was juggling dozens of vendors and drowning in 50+ invoices a month before ResQ.
ResQ helped them sharpen their R&M ops and achieve real, measurable cost savings.
Key wins for the finance team:
📉 Cut R&M costs by 9.2% in 6 months by tracking equipment performance in real-time and reducing HVAC and refrigeration issues (& spend) through consistent preventative maintenance.
🕒 Saved 12+ hours a month by streamlining vendor management and improving accountability, making approvals and audits quick and painless.
📦 Consolidated 50–60 monthly invoices into one platform, giving the accounting team immediate spending visibility across 10+ locations.
Justin Jones, Facilities Manager, can now focus on higher-impact work — like a full brand refresh — instead of chasing down hot water heater repairs.
Magnolia didn’t just reduce R&M spend — they gained operational bandwidth, clearer cost visibility, and the peace of mind that comes from swapping out putting out fires for proactive prevention.
Break time
When your food cost forecast gets wrecked by a “temporary” tariff pause
The tariff roller coaster ride: Unpredictable and may cause occasional nausea. All you can do is ride it.
— Kareem at ResQ
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Shameless plug
What does ResQ do?
ResQ is the most trades-friendly facilities management platform that streamlines restaurant R&M operations, while providing value to the trades industry.
Operators can efficiently track assets, create work orders quickly, and choose from a network of quality vendors to work with.
Love free samples? Same here. Schedule a FREE demo to learn more about ResQ.
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