Margin Leakage Diagnostic
A four to six week diagnostic for operator-led, multi-unit hospitality groups. We find where the leakage lives, size it in dollars, score it, and hand you a ninety-day plan to recover it.
The premise
Founders, CFOs, and COOs sign Master Distribution Agreements assuming the economics will hold. Six months later, chefs are ordering off-program, distributors are retaining rebates the contract says belong to the operator, and the same case of olive oil costs three different prices across three sister locations. Nobody is in charge of the standard, because nobody can see the full picture.
The diagnostic finds where the leakage lives, sizes it in dollars, and produces a ninety-day plan to recover it.
The C-suite negotiates the MSA. Locations buy how they want. Three to five percent of controllable spend leaks quietly, and the larger the footprint, the harder it is to see.
The premise of the diagnosticWhat we examine
Your distributor contracts and trailing twelve months of invoice data move through ten defined frames, grouped into three layers. Each frame produces a quantified exposure number tied to specific contract language and specific invoice evidence.
No industry averages. No fake precision. Findings that hold up in front of a CFO.
Grounded in real contract language
Every finding in the diagnostic is anchored to specific contract language and specific invoice evidence. The clause described below is the single most consequential one for any operator pursuing margin recovery from a broadline distributor. It appears in some form in nearly every major foodservice distribution agreement.
The clause to look for
The distributor may recover the costs of providing certain services and may also be compensated for them, and treats that compensation as earned income. Receipt of that cost recovery or earned income does not reduce the operator's stated cost of goods.
Paraphrased from the standard form of broadline foodservice distribution agreements.
Translated: the manufacturer marketing dollars paid to the distributor on the back of your volume do not reduce your cost of goods, even though the distributor is being paid because of you. Most operators have never read this clause. The diagnostic finds it, quantifies the exposure, and tells you what to do about it.
By the numbers
0
Analytical frames
applied per engagement
0
Layers of leakage:
Economic, Operational, Enforcement
4to 6
Weeks from kickoff
to executive read-out
0
Day remediation roadmap
delivered with the findings
What you receive
Engagement structure
Designed to fit alongside the leadership team's operating rhythm rather than disrupt it. A status check at the midpoint and the full read-out at the end.
Who it's for
Built for groups that have grown to enough scale and complexity that margin leakage can hide across locations, concepts, vendors, and purchasing habits. Typical buyer profiles include:
About Bradley
Bradley Busenius founded BusStop Hospitality after twenty years inside the hospitality and foodservice supply chain.
Nine of those years were inside a major North American broadline foodservice distributor, in roles that ran from Account Executive through Senior Account Executive, Field Sales Trainer, and Director of Customer Experience and Contract Sales. The work covered Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, San Francisco, and New York, supporting regional and national multi-unit operators on broadline distribution, enterprise contract sales, strategic accounts, procurement strategy, and profitability improvement. The common thread across every market and every role was sitting close to operators when the spreadsheet stopped matching what was happening at the back door.
BusStop exists because that gap is fixable. After enough years of watching multi-unit groups lose margin through fragmented purchasing, weak ordering discipline, vendor sprawl, and absent operational visibility, the case for a hands-on, operator-focused practice became hard to ignore. Most traditional consulting has the wrong angle on this work: distant, slide-heavy, and disconnected from how an operator's day actually runs. BusStop runs the opposite playbook.
Bradley is based in Brentwood, Tennessee. He is a longtime Tennessee football fan, plays golf, cooks more than he probably should, and spends time around the hospitality community when he is not working. He lives in Nashville with his wife and infant daughter.
The next step
If the contract-to-execution gap is on your radar this quarter, the next step is a short scoping conversation. No calendar link, no automated sequence. Reply to the email or call and we will find a time.