Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
Location: Nashua, NH
Company Type: Privately Held, Rapidly Expanding Restaurant Brand
Reports To: CEO / Co-Founders
Direct Reports: Finance, Accounting, FP&A, IT
About the Role:
The Chief Financial Officer will serve as a strategic partner to the Co-Founders and executive team, guiding the financial direction of a fast-growing, capital-intensive restaurant brand. This leader will architect the financial infrastructure needed to support aggressive expansion, ensure disciplined capital allocation, and drive profitability across company-owned operations and future growth platforms.
The ideal candidate brings deep multi-unit restaurant experience, experience designing or supporting alternative growth models (franchise, licensing, joint venture), exposure to manufacturing / commissary environments, and a proven track record scaling multi‑unit hospitality or foodservice organizations. This is a hands‑on, highly visible role in a privately owned company where strategic thinking and operational execution must coexist.
The ideal candidate thrives in a fast-paced environment, embraces change and promotes rapid-cycle continuous improvement.
Key Responsibilities:
Strategic Leadership & Growth
- Partner with the Co-Founders and executive team to shape long‑term financial strategy, growth plans, and capital structure.
- Build financial models to support rapid expansion, including site development costing, ROI analysis, and new-market growth forecasting.
- Evaluate and secure financing options to support new builds, remodels, and strategic growth initiatives.
- Lead scenario planning, risk assessment, and sensitivity analysis for a portfolio of high‑cost restaurant openings.
Financial Management & Operations
- Oversee all financial operations, including accounting, FP&A, treasury, tax, audit, and compliance.
- Safeguard company assets, cash and financial integrity
- Pro-actively identify financial risks early and quickly mitigate them
- Establish scalable systems, processes, and controls to support a multi‑unit restaurant environment.
- Ensure accurate and timely financial reporting, budgeting, and forecasting.
- Drive cost optimization across food, labor, construction, and overhead categories.
- Implement KPIs and dashboards for store-level performance and corporate financial health.
Multi-Unit Restaurant Financial Leadership
- Ownership of company-wide and restaurant level P&L’s
- Drive visibility into restaurant-level profitability
- Analyze all sales channels, margins, labor efficiency and all controllables
- Partners with COO and Operations Leadership to translate financial analytics into actionable results
- We expect our CFO to understand how restaurants actually run, not just how spreadsheets look
Enterprise Budget Ownership
- Build and manage company-level and restaurant level budgets
- Develop, evaluate and refine budgets and investment decisions with regards to labor, construction and technology
- Build and refine restaurant pro-forma’s, renovation budgets and all strategic initiative financial models
- Perform detailed cash flow analysis and forecasting
- Evaluate and manage technology investments (POS, Labor Platforms, financial planning systems, warehouse management systems and all reporting systems)
Capital Projects & Construction Finance
- Proactively assess the company’s evolving financial risk profile as growth, development and capital needs change.
- Manage financial planning for new restaurant builds.
- Oversee budgeting, cost tracking, vendor management, and ROI analysis for construction and development projects.
- Ensure disciplined capital allocation and adherence to project timelines and budgets.
Strategic Growth Platforms & Development
- Build financial frameworks to support future growth models, including potential franchising, licensing, or joint venture structures
- Partner with development and real estate teams to evaluate new markets, site selection, and build-out economics
- Develop underwriting standards and return thresholds for all growth initiatives
- Create financial models for new market entry, expansion pacing, and capital requirements
Leadership & Culture
- Build and mentor a high‑performing finance team aligned with the company’s entrepreneurial, growth‑oriented culture.
- Serve as a trusted advisor to ownership, providing clear insights and data‑driven recommendations.
- Foster cross-functional collaboration with Operations (including commissary), Development, Marketing, and HR.
Qualifications:
- 10–15 years of progressive financial leadership experience in the restaurant industry (multi‑unit required)
- Proven success scaling a rapidly growing hospitality, restaurant, or retail organization.
- Strong background in capital‑intensive development, construction finance, and ROI modeling.
- Deep understanding of restaurant P&Ls, unit economics, labor models, food cost management, and operational drivers.
- CPA, MBA, or related advanced degree is strongly preferred
- Experience with franchising or franchise-adjacent growth models preferred
What Success Looks Like:
- Strong financial discipline across construction, operations, and growth initiatives.
- Cash flow is predictable and strategically deployed
- Strong financial discipline across construction, operations, and franchising.
- Improved profitability and unit economics across the system.
- Clear, data‑driven decision‑making at the executive level.
- A trusted partnership with ownership and a finance team built for long‑term growth.
Why Join Us
Join a founder-led, rapidly expanding restaurant brand at a pivotal growth stage, where your work will directly shape the company’s future. This is a highly visible role with real influence, strong partnership with ownership, and the opportunity to build scalable financial infrastructure from the ground up.
