Labor Costs Rose at 77% of Restaurants This Year. Multi-Location Groups Feel It Differently.

Rising labor costs are putting pressure on restaurant operators across the industry. But the impact looks different when you’re managing six locations instead of one.

At one restaurant, a labor cost spike is a conversation with one manager about one schedule. At six locations, it’s six schedules, six sets of local wage rules, and six versions of “how we usually code this” that may or may not agree with each other. The cost pressure is the same. The ability to see it clearly, and do something about it before it compounds, is not.

What the data actually shows

Restaurant365’s 2026 mid-year survey of more than 420 operators, representing close to 10,000 locations, found that 77% reported labor costs increased in the first half of the year. Recruiting and retaining staff returned as the industry’s top challenge, cited by 32.9% of operators, up sharply from just 18% at the start of the year.

That’s a real swing in six months. It also means the operators who can see labor cost clearly, by location, by role, in time to act on it, are working with a real advantage over the ones finding out a month later.

Why rising labor costs hit a portfolio differently than a single location

A single-location owner can walk the floor, talk to the manager, and get a reasonably accurate read on what’s driving labor costs up. At scale, leadership depends more heavily on consistent payroll records and location-level reporting to understand what’s driving labor costs. That’s exactly where things get inconsistent.

A few ways this shows up in practice:

• Payroll coding that isn’t standardized. If one location’s bookkeeper codes tips, overtime, or shift differentials differently than another’s, labor cost comparisons between units stop being reliable. A location that looks expensive might just be coded differently, not actually running hot.
• Reconciliation that happens unit by unit, not as a portfolio. Payroll liability accounts that get reconciled inconsistently across locations make it hard to trust the consolidated number, which is the one leadership actually needs.
• Payroll provider coordination that varies by location. When payroll journals aren’t prepared and reviewed the same way everywhere, the general ledger can show something different from what was actually run, location by location.

None of this means the underlying cost pressure is fake. It means the group often can’t see it accurately enough to respond to it fast.

What a multi-location group actually needs right now

Not a new tool. A consistent process, applied the same way at every location, with someone accountable for it.

That means location-level coding detailed enough to catch a real labor cost problem at the unit where it’s happening. It also means a consolidated view clean enough for leadership to trust without reconstructing it by hand.

Payroll journals and liability reconciliations need to be handled the same way across the portfolio, not dependent on which bookkeeper covered which location that week. And where controller-level review is part of the engagement, someone checks the reconciliation and the reporting package before it’s treated as final, not after a number raises questions in a leadership meeting.

A dedicated accounting team provides assigned professionals working inside your systems, with primary and backup coverage, so the standard doesn’t drift depending on who’s handling a given location that week. That consistency is what turns “labor costs are up” from an industry-wide headline into something you can act on, location by location.

Is your labor cost reporting keeping up with your footprint?

A few questions worth asking:

• Can you compare labor cost by location with confidence, or does coding vary enough between units to make the comparison unreliable?
• Are payroll liability accounts reconciled consistently across every location, or only when something looks off?
• If labor cost spikes at one unit, how long does it take to find out, and does the explanation hold up?
• Is there one person who owns payroll accuracy across the portfolio, or does it depend on who’s covering which location?

If those answers aren’t clear, the gap isn’t the cost pressure itself. Many operators are dealing with that right now. The gap is whether your accounting process gives you a clear enough view of it to respond before it adds up.

Schedule a discovery call with the FinAcct Solutions team for a short conversation about your business and how a dedicated team could support consistent payroll accounting and reporting across your locations. No pressure, no one-size-fits-all pitch.