Hospitality
Hospitality
Own vs. rent
Custom apps for restaurant groups — scheduler, online ordering, food cost, reservations — priced to pay for themselves in year one, then yours forever.
01 — The number
Scheduling app. Reservations. Online ordering — plus the commission on every order. Invoice processing. The website subscription. A typical four-unit group pays $2,000–4,000 a month renting software. The rent never stops, the price goes up every renewal, and your operation bends to fit the software instead of the other way around.
What you rent today
Numbers are typical mid-market pricing. Edit any line to your real invoice.
You rent, per year
$34,320
$2,860 a month. Every month. Forever.
Own the same stack, once
$26,750
Pays for itself in about 9 months. After that the bill stops — you keep the software.
Rent
$34,320/yr
Own
$26,750 once
Five years of rent: $171,600. Five years of owning: $26,750, paid once, plus real hosting at cost.
02 — Proof the model works
Health-department SOPs, employee handbook, onboarding documents — the paperwork every operator puts off, built in an afternoon instead of a month of nights. Concept to paying customers, shipped by an operator. Same model, same promise: you own what comes out of it.
$500
Starting price
$2–10k
What consultants charge
$0
Monthly rent
86paperwork.com ↗
03 — Who's building it
Thirty years in restaurants — dishwasher to director of operations for an eight-unit group. The last three, I've worked alongside dozens of Michigan food and beverage owners, including through the SBDC. When I couldn't find compliance software that fit how a restaurant actually operates — front of house, back of house, and the office behind both — I built my own. Then it clicked: the same is true of every tool on your back-office shelf. You could own it, built for your operation, for about what a year of rent costs.
"I'm not a vendor handing you a product. I sit on your side of the pass and we build it together — your stations, your rules, your call."
John O'Meara · Lansing, MI
04 — What you're already thinking
05 — The next move
The Subscription Audit is $1,500 flat, whatever your group size. You fill out a short questionnaire with what each tool costs you — no logins, no P&L, nothing we don't need. One week later you get your number and a plan.
You fill out the subscription questionnaire — every tool, every monthly line.
We work it through with someone on your team who actually uses the tools.
Inside a week: what you pay, what's worth owning, what's worth keeping, what you're under-using — and anything you're missing. Fixed quotes on whatever we'd build. The fee credits toward your first build.
Start the audit.
No payment now — John invoices after a short fit call.
Book the fit call.
Twenty minutes. If it's not a fit, John says so on the call.
Pick a time on my calendarAudit is $1,500 flat, invoiced after the call. Questionnaire follows.
One line to start.
Drop your email. We send the questionnaire and a price, nothing else.
Or just write John directly: jmo2323@gmail.com
Carried over from your numbers
4 units · 7 tools · $34,320 a year in rent
Website + hosting, Online ordering, Scheduling, Reservations + waitlist, Invoicing / AP + accounting
Ready to go deeper?
Take what you learned here into the full audit.
You'll pick up exactly where you left off.