A founder-led restaurant group operating multiple concepts across multiple locations was transitioning out of a full-time CFO. The accounting team was in good shape and the close was running well. What ownership needed was budgeting, forecasting, operating expense analysis, and a finance partner who could sit across the table on real decisions. That work didn’t require forty hours a week, at least not at the outset, and the group wanted a structure that could move with the business rather than lock it into a fixed seat.

Rather than run a like-for-like CFO search, we proposed a fractional model. We placed a CPA with thirty-plus years of multi-unit restaurant finance leadership, someone who had repeatedly stepped into founder-led and PE-backed concepts, raised equity and debt capital, and built the reporting infrastructure ownership and boards rely on. Local to the market, on site when it mattered, and engaged on a defined weekly commitment. Just as important, we built the engagement to flex. As the business needed more, the hours scaled up. When it needed less, they scaled back.

The engagement is still running today, and it has grown. What began as a part-time commitment expanded as ownership found more they wanted their CFO involved in. The group has clear KPIs, forecasting it can act on, and visibility into where operating expense is actually going at the unit level. Board and ownership reporting arrives on a predictable cadence, the accounting team has operated without disruption throughout, and leadership has senior finance experience available at whatever level the month actually calls for.

“We didn’t need another full-time CFO. We needed the right person for the work that actually required a CFO, and the flexibility to dial that up or down as things changed. District Partners understood the difference and found someone who fit our business

CEO, Multi-Concept Restaurant Group