Where Profit Hides: Bookkeeping, Blind Spots & Better Decisions with Trish Fields

Rachel Stainton: Every closing shift, there's that routine moment, a final wipe down, checking your sales, seeing if the numbers landed where you hoped they would. A quick check that things are on track before locking up and taking a breath before it all starts again tomorrow. Speaker 2: Have a good night. Speaker 3: Good night. See you tomorrow. Rachel Stainton: But that snapshot only tells part of the story because in hospitality, the difference between a good month and a great one or a profitable service and a frustrating one often isn't dramatic. It's hidden in the margins, in the patterns, in the things that are easy to miss when you're focused on, well, everything else. And oftentimes, the challenge isn't a lack of information. It's knowing where to look and what to trust when you find it. Trish Fields: You really need to look at what's behind that number and do it often, not just monthly, do it every time the deposit hits the bank. That's really a place where the numbers can deceive you. And if you're not watching them, that can be problematic. Rachel Stainton: Hospitality finances aren't short on data, but they are full of complexity. Multiple systems, constant movement, and just enough nuance for the most important details to get lost in plain sight, which is why having someone who understands not just the numbers, but the business behind them, it can make all the difference. And while technology is opening up new ways to analyze and understand your operation, it takes support, guidance, and maybe even an expert hand to fully grasp what makes your business tick. Trish Fields: It's a table touch. How are things going? Let me know what's happening. You're never going to be able to have AI do that for you. It needs to be a human and it needs to be the person that's knee-deep in your books. Nothing can replace that sort of human touch. And in my view, that's what hospitality is all about. Rachel Stainton: Our guest today is Trish Fields, owner of Bookkeeping Solutions and Consulting. Someone who has spent years helping hospitality operators get closer to their numbers, uncover hidden issues, and build systems that actually support the way restaurants run. Last episode, we explored how the right accounting support and better financial visibility can help operators take control of their business. Today, we're building on that with Trish, diving deeper into the role of experienced bookkeepers and the practical ways they can bring perspective, uncover opportunities, and keep the financial side of the business working exactly as it should. I'm Rachel Stainton and welcome to Science of Service, the podcast where we uncover the strategies behind building successful hospitality businesses. Whether you're a seasoned operator or just starting out, you'll find insights and inspiration to help you thrive. Trish is exactly the kind of person you want digging into the numbers. Someone who understands how they connect to the reality of running a hospitality business and how to turn them into something genuinely useful. And if you're wondering why she's such a natural partner for operators, it turns out that story starts a lot earlier than you might expect and even earlier than Trish realized. Trish Fields: I've always been intrigued by restaurants, the theater of it, the chaos in a way. There's so many different players in it from the guy that washes the dishes to the chef, front of house, back of house, how all these elements sort of combine. And then when it's time to open, the lights go up and it's go time, showtime. In fact, when I was a little kid, I had a little restaurant in the den of my parents' house called The Greenhouse. Rachel Stainton: Love it. Trish Fields: I annoyed the heck out of my six siblings with my little fake kitchen. I had a full menu. It was all Play-Doh based foods and I accepted Monopoly money as payment. Had a cash register in the stove. Basically, they were my captive restaurant goers. I was running the front of the house, taking the money and making the Play-Doh food. So, I mean, I was full contact, pretend restaurant running when I was, I don't know, five or six. But a few years later, my dad was a salesman and he came home with this scientific calculator and I am dating myself, but he came home with this calculator. I thought, wow, that does math. Wow, that's so cool. So, that year for Halloween, I think it was seven or eight, my dad helped me make a calculator costume for Halloween, right? Yep. So, I went, I patrolled the neighborhood that Halloween, wearing a calculator costume. Every kid on the block roasted me. My siblings, they all roasted me. I was made merciless fun of, but for the longest time, it was kind of embarrassing anytime people in my family brought it up and then a photograph was uncovered. But it was a really proud moment for me going around and collecting candy dressed as a calculator for Halloween. I felt incredibly nerdy and made fun of, but I didn't know what my future was going to hold. For me, thinking about that in hindsight, it's kind of what I do now. Rachel Stainton: Yeah. Trish Fields: But honestly, I'd always been interested in what was happening behind the scenes. And then as I got older and realized that bookkeeping was something I wanted to do, the whole... Every aspect of it just intrigued me. And how do you make money doing this? How do you wrangle all these things? The people, the paper, the food, all of it. So, it's always been an area of interest to me. Something about I just called to me and I dove in. Rachel Stainton: After seeing the photographic evidence of Trish's calculator costume, I've realized I now need a full archive of every Halloween outfit from every guest on Science of Service. It's a non-negotiable and it's going on the writer for season three. Those childhood stories genuinely track though. Plenty of six year olds go all in on the toy kitchen phase, but not many carry that curiosity all the way through. Pair that with a lifelong love of numbers, and suddenly it makes perfect sense why Trish fits so naturally into the world of hospitality operations. What started as a Play-Doh menu and Monopoly money has turned into a sharp eye for how restaurant businesses actually run and more importantly, how they make money. Trish Fields: Honestly, the numbers are kind of the easy part. They're pretty cut and dried. But a lot of what we do additionally is navigating the people. Half of the meetings I have with my clients are... We spend talking about the books, obviously, but we talk about what else is going on behind the scenes. Problems they're having with their staff or things they want to do on the menu. Is this a good idea? I mean, it's a little bit of counseling. Actually, it's a lot of bit of counseling, to be fair. Maybe that's what I like so much about it. We have a lot of contact with our clients and having that kind of contact really informs us of what's going on with the numbers in their business. And I can see what they're working on and things that they maybe hadn't thought about planning for. So, there's a lot of people work involved. Rachel Stainton: Yeah. So, getting into the more data side of things, obviously there is a lot of financial data generated by restaurants, more than like a lot of other businesses, right? You've got your POS, you've got delivery platforms, payroll, inventory tips, all that stuff. With so much financial data, operators can tend to fixate on like one or two numbers and tune out the rest, right? Do I have money in my bank account at the end of the month? Don't worry about the rest. What do you find that they're most commonly missing and where do you find the nuggets for them that will really move the needle in terms of their financial success? Trish Fields: Yeah. A lot of the numbers that they're looking for, they're the standard ones. They're your prime cost. They're honed in on that, obviously. They're the easiest places for money to leak out through food costs, labor costs, of course, beer wine and liquor, if they have that as well. Those are all places where money can just disappear magically. There's two kind of big gaps that I think people don't really look at. The delivery platform, net revenue, restaurant owners see the deposits going into their bank account, but they don't see the economics of it. There's a lot of things that are bundled into that number. Yeah, I got this great deposit for a week's worth of DoorDash or Grubhub, but what makes up that number? They don't generally dive into that, and that's actually becoming a larger part of what we do now. And that takes a little bit of work. You have to look at your actual versus theoretical cost on that. And then there's added costs, which is marketing. Say you do a buy one, get one, that comes out of your margin. That can be a large number. So, you're not just looking at the dollar amount that hits the bank account. You really need to look at what's behind that number and do it often, not just monthly. Do it every time the deposit hits the bank. It should be broken out and that's really a place where the numbers can deceive you. And if you're not watching them, that can be problematic. Another thing that a lot of restaurant owners don't bother with, they only look at the P and L side, right? So, that's telling you part of the story, but the health of your business can be determined by looking at your balance sheet. And that's where your assets and liabilities sit. A lot of people don't want to talk about that or inventory, but that's where all the bodies are buried on your balance sheet. And it's a good thing to review and a good bookkeeper will help you take a look at that and maybe help. It shows the health of your business long-term, and that's something that you should really be looking at. In addition to your regular prime costs and other margin numbers. Rachel Stainton: Can we dive in a little bit more into the third party delivery income? Trish Fields: Sure. Rachel Stainton: Obviously, that's a huge part of most operators today. Ever since COVID, it continues to grow. You talked a little bit about making sure that you're covering or aware of all of your costs that go into that. Can you talk a little bit more about what's underneath that deposit number and how bad can it actually get for operators if they're not paying attention to that? Trish Fields: Sure. Restaurant owners are used to pivoting sometimes daily, more than likely hourly, but during COVID, that changed a lot for a lot of people. A lot of restaurants pivoted to doing deliveries for third parties. I'm sure their revenues have grown a lot in the last five years. But one of the things that you need to remember about third party deliveries, there's the commission fee, then there's a marketing fee if you're running any specials or it's getting your product placed higher up on the page, just like any other advertising is going to cost you money. But there are marketplace fees and credit card fees that can be additional. And there's one area I'm sure a lot of restaurant owners are aware of, but maybe don't track like they should marketplace facilitator tax. So, it depends on the origin of the sale. And sometimes in some localities, those third parties remit the sales tax for you and restaurant owners really need to make sure that they know if it's being paid for them. I had a client a few years ago, I noticed their sales tax numbers didn't look right. So, we looked into third party deliveries and it turns out two of the delivery companies had been remitting sales tax for this client. The problem is the client or the restaurant rather had also been remitting sales tax. That is double paying sales tax. So, that margin you had on that food was negative. Luckily, this could be fixed. We did go back for two years and recovered quite a bit of overpaid sales tax. It took a little doing, but if you can track that from the very beginning, that would never would have been a problem. And that's why having a system of bookkeeping is really important. Rachel Stainton: It's wild how often the most important numbers are hiding in plain sight, especially when so much of that third party data is bundled up to look deceptively simple. Something we also picked up on in the last episode. Without unpacking what's actually behind those deposits, operators run the risk of not seeing the business clearly. And honestly, paying double taxes or making mispayments are way more common than anyone's comfortable admitting. It's the kind of thing that someone like Trish can spot pretty quickly and thankfully potentially turn into a rebate instead of a loss. So, if that side of the business ever feels a bit murky or frustrating, there are steps you can take to get clarity before you end up on the wrong end of a very expensive sales tax hammer. Trish Fields: Actually, the third parties I think have gotten the memo about their reporting being absolutely... Well, their reporting isn't as it should be. Let's put it that way. So, a couple of them have come out with better reporting on a monthly basis. You'll get a finance report and it will tell you, it's in kind of small print at the bottom, but it'll tell you that this amount of sales tax was remitted for you and then basically not to pay it. But the reporting's getting a little better, frankly. And there is third party software that helps you dive into the third party delivery fees. Rachel Stainton: Would that be like sixth party? How are we? Trish Fields: Yeah. How many steps can we get away from this data? The thing is, the data's all there. You need to interpret it and find tools that help you do that. Whether it's on a spreadsheet, you can download all the raw data if you like. And there's a lot of other data in there. Wait time on a delivery, there's so much of it there for you to digest. Of course, we're more interested in the finance part of it, but restaurant owners really should dive into that. There's a lot of information there that could be helpful in the future. But yeah, there could be some red flags that you need to watch and pulling that data at least once a month, I would say more often, would really help inform your decisions on what to sell on a third party, if to sell on third party delivery platforms, et cetera. Rachel Stainton: Yeah. Another area that we've talked about before that things can get quite murky for operators is inventory. Why do you think that's so consistently overlooked? And what does somebody who knows what they're looking at when it comes to inventory actually reveal that the owners are missing if they're not on top of that or doing it as regularly as they should? Trish Fields: Sure. Inventory is overlooked and it's painful to do or can be. Yeah. Most people rely on the clipboard method. I prefer a more tech forward approach. It's a lot easier to do, but it means you getting up early before service and going into the walk-in and counting everything and the reach in and wherever your dry storage area, nobody wants to do it, but it is crucial. If you're not doing inventory, your food costs that you're calculating are theoretical, not actual, right? So, it's based on what you should have used according to your recipes if you have those spelled out. And your actual number could be very, very different. Spoilage, portioning errors, that can be huge. Waste and even theft, none of that's going to show up on a theoretical number. So, I encourage everyone to do inventory. And you can do various iterations of that, just counting your proteins, your large ticket items. But I would definitely encourage everyone to start doing inventory and having a system for it. I mean, the difference between your theoretical and actual cogs could be 2%, 5%. It could be a lot. And if you're doing two million in revenue, you could be losing 40,000, 100,000, anywhere in there, and even more. And that's not a rounding error. That's somebody's salary, a repair you've been putting off for five years, a new pizza oven, the difference between a profitable year and a year of loss. It's super important. Rachel Stainton: I mean, if reading reports already feels like pulling teeth, then inventory and basically building spreadsheets from scratch has to be some special circle of operational hell. But those reports are a real foundation. Without it, the fallback is just theory, what should be happening. And in the meantime, the waste, the leakage, and silent profit killers are just slipping through the cracks. If this is an area of the business that makes you want to rip your hair out or start Googling self-help book titles, we've got you. Just take a breath, check out the show notes and browse the carefully labeled and well-stocked advice. It's the perfect anecdote for when you've got the inventory blues. So, we know that inventory is a pain and can be managed, but what else falls under the banner of blind spots in restaurant operational finances? Trish Fields: I kind of touched on this before, but when we start with a new client, we like to start at the beginning of the year. So, we're doing a little bit of forensic accounting. I go back and look at things that have happened in the past year, depending on how much access we have. But a lot of times when we do that kind of analysis, we'll find things that the restaurant owner or owner manager was not aware of. This is a good example. We had a client that had a reservation for their banquet room and all these reservations come through a third party and they were not being tracked at all. So, coming in as a revenue item, I started realizing after I did a little deep dive into the books from the previous year that you're recognizing this revenue, but I'm not seeing the revenue hit the balance sheet. So, I wonder, this has got to be some sort of mistake. So, I look and I look and I look and it's been three years and none of that revenue from the reservation system had been deposited. So, that says to me, "Okay, we've got an issue. Why isn't this being tracked?" We found the information we needed and the third party that was the booking party had over $150,000 worth of reservation revenue, never been dispersed. We did, reported it and they ended up getting that money in one lump sum. Rachel Stainton: Wow. Trish Fields: Yeah. It was a huge win for us. Chalk that up to watching these reports, watching your balance sheet, watching your P and L, more importantly, maybe watching it a little more often than just a static once a month report. Rachel Stainton: Yeah. Trish Fields: You need a little more than this. So, that was a huge win. It was very exciting for us to find. Rachel Stainton: Now that is more than just a win. 150 grand just sitting there waiting for someone to connect the dots. That's the kind of fine that changes the trajectory of a business. And it really drives home the point. Those wins happen when you've got someone in your corner, someone who has the time, the curiosity, and the expertise to go digging. And with the right eyes on the numbers, operations do more than just stay compliant. It's a way to uncover value, reclaim cash, and protect the business from losses you had no idea were happening. Next, when it comes to shining a light on sections of the business that feel out of reach or even a little neglected, there's a huge wave of technology rushing into the industry, promising to bring clarity, visibility, and a whole lot less guesswork to those blind spots. And most of it, of course, is powered by AI. For Trish, a detail-driven calculator clad expert, this is definitely on her radar. Trish Fields: Honestly, I love to see what's coming out with AI. It's great at doing a lot of things. I think in this realm, it's sweet spot, it's speed and pattern recognition. Things that maybe you and I wouldn't pick up on, but a half a percentage change in something over time, maybe we wouldn't notice it, but AI can. And in the reporting world, it's a great tool. It can't replace you or I, and just doing the kind of analysis yet, but it's an amazing tool. What it can't deliver is judgment. So, it can't walk through the restaurant and know why your food cost jumped this week. It can't anticipate your chef leaving or that you ran a special that just didn't go well or that your delivery drivers might be stealing from you. It's great at reporting and analyzing, but it really needs to be handled by somebody that understands it and can use it properly. And in the hospitality world, this is a people industry and AI can't replicate what happens inside your restaurant in your dining room. It can't read a room, build a relationship, but we can use it for analysis and I think it's really, really useful. Rachel Stainton: Yeah. And can we talk a little bit about labor in AI? Where do you see AI making the biggest difference in how operators manage their workforce and their wage costs? Trish Fields: Labor is huge. It's really hard to schedule humans to work. You're not sure what this week is going to bring, but you can use AI to anticipate it based on previous weeks. You can plug all this, the holiday information in there and try to predict what kind of coverage you're going to need with staff. We kind of like to reverse engineer it in a way. When we help somebody figure out their labor costs, like why is their labor cost 45%? Well, maybe you have a lot of people standing around, but it's time to look at those numbers and realize maybe we need to look at what number we need to hit. Do we need to hit 25% margin on labor? I mean, that would be great. Rachel Stainton: Yeah. Trish Fields: It's not always possible, but you can look at how you need to get there and kind of reverse engineer it and use AI to do that. This is the number I need to hit. Help me figure out how I can work this schedule and schedule people appropriately for our busy times of the day. To be honest, I feel like some of the scheduling software can help you with that a little bit, but using some software to help you get to that number might be better instead of just guessing. I feel like a lot of people just guess. Rachel Stainton: Yeah. It's like gut instinct, right? Trish Fields: Yeah. Well, I'm going to need coverage. It's going to be busy today. I mean, you can always be wrong about that if a holiday doesn't go the way you think it's going to go. But honestly, looking at your past numbers is a really great indicator for that. And scheduling sort of to where you want to get to that 25%, 26% labor cost is a good exercise to do. Rachel Stainton: Yeah. And I know it's very buzzy AI, right? But what does actually using AI in your bookkeeping practice look like on a practical level for you and how has it changed what you're able to deliver to your clients? Trish Fields: Yeah. I use a couple of different tools to help me. I will generally do an analysis of a P and L or a weekly one. I use some of it, a specific tool for doing some analysis with me. I'll plug some numbers in. I'm like, "Let's take a look at this and take this apart and try to re-engineer it." The margins we need to get to. Sometimes, it's an ingredient cost like this one's gone up. There's a few tools out there for AI analysis. A lot of it is related to items that the restaurant owner is selling. A lot of POS systems are building that in now. It can do an amazing amount of work analyzing actually benchmarking, which is kind of wild. And I don't know if it's intimidating to them to use it, but it can generate a lot of really interesting information about what items you're selling and it maybe help you market to it. Right now, AI is great for that and spotting trends. Rachel Stainton: Where are you seeing the real tangible value with AI right now for you and for your clients? Trish Fields: Data analysis, pattern recognition, and it's pretty great at writing honestly too. If you can train your model, whatever tool you use, there's so many of them out there. Train it to your voice. It can be useful in communication, but data analysis is becoming better and better day by day. And also the introduction of AI agents to do some routine tasks that might help you. Even if it's just sorting through your emails, things that need to be handled. We use it a lot for that. And I think there's a huge value in that right now. Like I said, I'm super excited to see where it will go. Just with communications, data analysis, all of it. There's so much that can be done. Rachel Stainton: So, you obviously are very tech forward. You embrace it. You're excited about it, which is fantastic. For an operator who wants to build a smarter restaurant tech stack, what do you recommend and are there any categories of tools that you think are genuinely non-negotiable right now that they have to have? Trish Fields: So, when we start working with a client, we insist that they use restaurant specific financial management platform. We use Margin Edge. There are others out there, but that's the non-negotiable. We also specialize in QuickBooks, which is accounting platform. There's others on the market that we can use, but really we need something that understands recipes, inventory, that can scan invoices to bring all that data. The second most important thing obviously is a POS system that will talk to that software. Otherwise, it's pointless. The POS system has a ton of data in it and something that will connect to it is super, super useful. There are accountants and bookkeepers that will just pull in a monthly summary of all that, all that data that comes in from your POS system, that vendor information, all of that, and they'll just summarize it in a journal entry. We do not do that. We want daily information and something that's automated that we can look at, audit, make sure it's correct, check it against your POS system. We want our data to be correct. Otherwise, your reports aren't going to make any sense or be accurate. Beyond that, inventory management, which is sometimes included in the restaurant specific software, even a basic inventory management, you need to take inventory. I know it's a pain, but it's got to be done. That's how we know what our number is. Labor and scheduling for your workers. Scheduling software is super important. You can make a work schedule, optimize it, that will help you with your labor cost. And building a good stack. Many people are overwhelmed by the amount of options there are for their tech stack, but start simple, but I really encourage everyone to embrace the restaurant management software. Rachel Stainton: From integrating AI to implementing an effective tech stack, starting simple makes total sense. And looking at the sheer volume of tools out there, the features, the integrations, it can feel overwhelming before you've even begun. When it comes to AI, the opportunity is already here. Whether it's speeding up routine tasks, spotting trends that protect your margins, or even helping you get a better handle on labor costs, there are real practical gains to be found, and they don't have to come from a complete overhaul. Small steps can go a long way, or if you're ready, a bigger leap with the right guidance, because tools on their own don't move the needle, people do. Someone like Trish, who understands both the potential and the limitations, and knows which levers to pull to actually make a difference. And as she pointed out, it's not just about having the data. It's about working with it properly, building a tech stack that goes beyond a once a month snapshot, reconciling, checking, questioning, finding the data that actually means something for your operation. So, what does that kind of oversight unlock and why is it worth considering dedicated experienced support? Trish Fields: To be honest, in the beginning, we just provided monthly reports, but we rapidly came to understand that this kind of reporting is really looking at something in the rearview mirror, and weekly reporting is much more important to get a better view of how your restaurant's doing. A weekly report will help you decide what you can do next week to improve on your sales, your labor, all of that. It can help you also realize that some of your costs have gone up. Weekly reports are more indicative of what's happening in the restaurant and enables restaurant owner manager to make decisions on a weekly basis instead of monthly. I feel like operators that get the most out of their bookkeeper are bookkeepers that treat them as a partner, someone they can communicate with on a regular basis instead of, "Hey, here's your report. Good luck." We like to have at least monthly meetings so we can talk about what's happening, but I have clients that I've had a weekly meeting with for five years and half the time we talk about their finance reports and half the time it's a counseling session, like I mentioned before, but that's really important. Being a partner, not like an employee, but it's a strategic partner that can help them analyze what's happening. I'd like to have information on what's happening in my client's restaurant and tell them, "Hey, these are areas that need improvement. Tell me what's going on and maybe we can figure out a way to make this work better for you." Rachel Stainton: Yeah. And it's like establishing trust and having that frequent relationship versus that once monthly email, I guess it makes me think of table touches at a restaurant, right? If the manager comes around, if you're a regular, they come and say hi, you get to know them. It builds that trust. It builds that relationship. Trish Fields: Sure. Rachel Stainton: And ultimately, you're going to have better outcomes, right? Trish Fields: Yeah. And one complaint I hear from a lot of new clients is that I haven't seen reports for 90 days from my bookkeeper. I'm like, "Well, so let's figure out why that is. And ultimately, what would you like to see?" We need to be very engaged in your restaurant. And for some people, some restaurant owners maybe don't want that much involvement. It could be too much, but honestly, I feel like that's part of my job. We are very high contact. Rachel Stainton: If you caught our last episode with Raffi Yousefian, you might remember him talking about meaningful data and how that becomes a real point of difference when your finances are in the hands of someone experienced. Trish shares that same view, but adds another layer, trusted partnerships, the kind of relationships that support operators day-to-day, take the pressure off and actively look for opportunities, not just issues. So, with that in mind, let's get into some of Trish's practical advice on where to focus first, particularly if you're making plans for the next month or next quarter and maybe feel a bit apprehensive about what the future holds. Trish Fields: If you do delivery, I would look at that with a fine tooth comb. You should really be looking at your profitability on that. There are lots of factors involved, the channel fees, the merchant fees, the marketing fees, and not just look at the net revenue from that. Every fee, every commission, pull 90 days worth of it and go through it with a fine tooth comb. If you have an elevation fee, which is generally your markup for third party, some people don't do that at all. But this delivery, this cost of this plate costs you 15%, 20% and you're not marking it up. That could really increase some revenue for you and help cover some of those costs. And I'm not talking about marking it up 50%, although I'm sure some people do to make that profitable, but it's really something you should take a very close look at. I think it's a really valuable thing to have and offer. A lot more people are eating at home now, and I feel like that could make a huge difference for you. For people that don't do delivery, different kinds of restaurants, look at your ingredient cost. I mean, your prime costs can kill you. It really can. And if you're not taking a deep look at it and just guessing, get out the pricing dart board, you're doing yourself a huge disservice. You should really take a look at that number. Food cost plus labor cost equals prime cost and you should be looking at that. It's an expression of your percentage of sales and it should be looked at every week. I don't think monthly is good enough. It should be done weekly. It should. By the time it shows up on your P and L, you had a bad week, it's too late to make a pivot to something else or make a change and you should really be looking at that. Rachel Stainton: Do you have recommended benchmarks? I know typically in the past it's been what, like 50% to 55% to 65% prime costs. What are you seeing with your clients? Trish Fields: Sure. We just helped somebody that has 70% food costs. That is unsustainable. Rachel Stainton: Whoa. Trish Fields: So, I had a feeling it was in their food cost and couldn't really determine why. So, we started looking at their invoices and they didn't see that the cost of one of their main ingredients, one of their proteins had gone up 40%. So, that's when you look at that. I mean, that's why it's important to have some sort of system where you could identify those changes in market price and make an adjustment accordingly. Maybe you need to use a different cut of meat. Maybe you need to switch the protein in that dish completely. But knowing when that price moves over a certain percentage point is really important. Rachel Stainton: Okay. Final question. Yeah. You mentioned having an AI assistant handle some of your workflow, but you said you're still looking for a human assistant, somebody with a name, a face or phone number. What is the one task that you will absolutely never trust to a machine to do for you? Trish Fields: That's a good one. I can't just send somebody a report with a AI analysis on it. First of all, and expect them to read it. I would like to be there to talk to them about it. And like we talked about before, it's a table touch. How are things going? Let me know what's happening. But you're never going to be able to have AI do that for you. And it needs to be a human and it needs to be the person that's knee-deep in your books, I think, and can interpret them for you and chat with you about them. So, I would never trust the AI to do that. And there are some things, nothing can replace that sort of human touch. And in my view, that's what hospitality is all about, and that extends to me too, and the work that we do with our clients. Rachel Stainton: If hospitality is about anything, it's people. Well, the food and drink don't hurt either, but it's the connections and the conversations and that instinct to read a room and respond in the moment that keeps people coming back for more. Even with a head full of numbers and a childhood calculator costume to prove her credentials, Trish knows there are some parts of the industry that technology just can't quite get to the heart of. What it can do though is give you better visibility, sharper insight, and the confidence to make decisions before small issues turn into big problems. My thanks to Trish for sharing her perspective and for showing how the right mix of tech, data, and human expertise can turn confusion into control. And as always, if you're looking to put some of these ideas into practice, Halloween costume inspo' or otherwise, we've pulled together a few key takeaways and resources for you in the show notes. I'm Rachel Stainton, and if you enjoyed this episode of Science of Service, please rate, review, and subscribe. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.