Are you the type who's the first to get in the kitchen and help your family make dinner during the holidays? Do you binge Chopped like it’s a form of employment? Are you on Keith Lee timing when you go out to eat? Do you love grocery shopping and hit up every grand opening you can find? Always on the hunt for coupons and deals on food items? Do you pore over nutrition labels looking for the best ingredients? Is Restaurant Week your version of the Oscars? Then we consider you to be part of the gourmand elite! And what career path pairs well with a passion for all things food? Accounting, duh!
Let us start off in the place where the magic happens — aka where pizza rolls and pints of Häagen Dazs get assembled. Food manufacturing plants require their very own plant accountants, whose expertise of food industry products paired with their learned accounting principles help maintain the production of food products, from canned goods to frozen meals. What exactly does this entail? Well to start, knowledge of the specific state and federal laws and tax guidelines for the production and distribution of food products. That’s just the basics though. Food plant accountants also have to manage the analysis of budgets and overhead costs (such as raw materials used for making food) to find ways to manufacture food products more efficiently. On top of that, they also work cross departmentally with business development and advertising teams to ensure all departments stay within budget and keep prices controlled. This involves staying up to date on market trends, such as coupons and discounts.
While staying cost-efficient is definitely top of mind for plant accountants, they also have a key responsibility of making sure operations are compliant with government regulations (you know people don’t play about their food 😅). The opportunities are truly endless as plant accountants can work for small food production chains or large multimillion dollar manufacturing companies.
Prefer to work in the restaurant industry? Consider working at an accounting firm that specializes in addressing specific requirements of the restaurant industry. Most likely the specialties you’ll be tasked with will be related to financial planning, taxes, or auditing. The latter will be most prevalent if you work with franchises or large restaurant groups. Tax accountants specializing in this industry are especially important considering restaurants have to account for tips, which few other industries have to deal with. And then there’s financial planning, which is especially important if restaurant owners are looking to scale their business with more locations. With your help, you can support them in creating a framework that easily allows them to expand, invest in the right real estate, and have liability protection. In this role, you will also help entrepreneurs gain access to capital, an extremely important responsibility since the restaurant industry faces a lot of challenges with getting loans (more so than other industries) as restaurant equipment has a low resale value and thus doesn’t amount to much collateral.
Sounding like accounting is to your taste? (Come on, that was a good one.) Well, before you find yourself distracted by helping to make pernil or sweet potato pies, do some more research into how you can turn your passion into a successful career.
