Brian Hart

Senior finance leader for private equity-backed, 13-unit casual dining restaurant concept, generating $27.3M in annual revenue. Reports to the CEO with direct oversight of the Assistant Controller, Accounts Payable Coordinator and outsourced Payroll Manager. Manages functional areas for accounting, finance, IT, treasury, payroll, accounts payable, tax, licensing and risk management.

• Implemented new accounting system, reducing the period end close from 20 days to 5 days
• Implemented new inventory system, resulting in 100 bps, or $273k, of annual cost savings
• Created analytic tools to support the five-year strategic plan and new site selection decisions resulting in cash-on-cash returns of 44%, compared to 25% industry average and 0% for 4 prior Parry’s openings
• COVID-19 crisis management – managed restaurants to cash flow break-even during dining room closures, successfully secured $1.6M of PPP funding, with anticipated 100% forgiveness

Finance and Analytic leader for this privately-held, 205 unit fast casual restaurant concept, generating $208.8M in annual revenue. Reported to the CFO with direct oversight of the Senior Financial Analyst and Financial Analyst. Primary responsibilities included management of annual budgeting process, reporting, operations analysis and board presentations.

• Enhanced reporting by integrating detailed Blackbox industry data, highlighting daypart, pricing and labor opportunities relative to competition
• Implemented MarketForce, a consumer insight service, which provided detailed guest feedback data
• Completed multiple revenue analytic projects including credit card frequency and menu pricing/mix
• Year-over-year results from 2016/2017 were: Same Store Sales +7.9%, Same Store Traffic +6.0%, COGS Improvement +1.3%, Labor improvement +2.4%

Finance and Analytic leader for this private equity-backed, 143 unit yoga studio concept, generating $110.4M in annual revenue. Reported to the CFO with direct oversight of the Financial Analyst. Primary responsibilities included budgeting, financial modeling, reporting, operations analysis, bank relationships/debt covenant management and board presentations.

• Co-led restructuring of company’s credit facility, increasing borrowing capacity by $10M and easing covenant restrictions, allowing new studio growth rate to continue at +27% per year
• Implemented a new business intelligence reporting tool, resulting in accounting close decreasing from 20 days to 7 days
• Created a cloud-based budget tool that resulted in company-wide participation in the budget process and decreasing the overall budget timeline by 2 months
• Built a five-year projection model, including all financial statements, debt covenants, and key business drivers
• Identified and captured $500k in annual cost savings by performing comprehensive P&L reviews of each studio
• During my tenure at CorePower company results included: Same Store Sales averaged +9.1% / year, Studio count from 88 to 143, Total Revenue from $70.1M to $100.4M, Total Studio EBITDA from $19.8M to $28.5M

Finance and Analytic leader for this publicly traded, 415 unit casual dining restaurant concept, generating $1.1B in annual revenue. Reported to the VP of Finance with direct oversight of the Finance Manager, Senior Financial Analyst and Financial Analyst. Oversaw all aspects of forecasting and reporting, including the five-year enterprise model, restaurant level budgets and operations scorecard.

• Created and managed an operations scorecard, which dramatically improved accountability within the organization and was the primary tool used to measure, capture and drive $30M in restaurant level margin improvement over a three-year period
• Drove a reduction in annual controllable labor spend of $5M by creating and deploying a labor model, which defined labor standards for the restaurants
• Served as a core member of Cross-Functional Teams, including the CEO, the COO, the CFO and the CMO formed to oversee several key initiatives, including the creation of a fast casual concept and a brand refresh project, resulting in 10 new units and a 5% same store sales lift, respectively
• During my tenure at Red Robin, restaurant count increased from 163 to 415 , restaurant revenue increased from $471.8M to $1.1B. Restaurant EBITDA increased from $100.7M to $241.5M.