Accounting for Food and Beverage Startups
We have a deep expertise in DTC, eCommerce & CPG Accounting, from bookkeeping to inventory management to sales tax and more.

Trusted by Hundreds of CPG Startups:
Why Food and Beverage Startups Need Specialized Accounting Services
From shifting consumer preferences and demand forecasting to proper cash flow management and regulatory compliance, there are several unique challenges in accounting for food and beverage startups. Navigating these correctly can mean the difference between a startup that flourishes and one that flounders, underscoring the importance of solid financial services for any emerging business. As experts in accounting for food and beverage startups, Graphite Financial serves as an extension of your team for all of its accounting needs.
Accounting is more than just managing the books in the food and beverage industry. Good accounting can help manage inventory, assist with cost control and comply with food processing regulatory standards. When it’s done right, it can help set a startup on the path to profitability and future growth.
Some of the key benefits of specialized accounting services in food and beverage include:
Managing Inventory and Cost of Goods Sold (COGS): Inventory management is a challenge in any industry, let alone food and beverage when perishable goods and seasonal demand must also be considered. Good accounting can help track inventory levels, manage stock, and track COGS.
Managing Cash Flow: Cash is king in any startup, especially in the food and beverage industry, where large inventory purchases often don’t align with actual sales cycles. It’s important to ensure that there’s enough cash to cover operational expenses while managing inventory costs and sales timing.
Regulatory Compliance in Food Production: Regulatory compliance is essential, notably when it comes to established financial reporting standards, tax law and food safety regulations. Good accounting can help maintain proper records to avoid any legal issues or penalties.
Request a ProposalOur Food and Beverage Accounting Services
Graphite strives to be the accounting partner for your food and beverage startup. We help manage your books and empower leadership with information to assist them in making key decisions about their financial health and business.
Bookkeeping for F&B
Bookkeeping for F&B includes managing cash flow, budgeting, predicting profitability, and helping your startup’s leadership make decisions about the future of the company.
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Inventory Management and Cost Control
Graphite’s accounting professionals help track inventory levels, which thereby helps food and beverage startups manage stock rotations to avoid overstocking and understocking.
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Financial Forecasting and Budgeting for F&B
Tight profit margins in the F&B industry make proper forecasting essential. Graphite can help predict financial performance and create realistic budgets for informed decision-making.
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Compliance with Food Safety Regulations
Food and beverage must allocate funds for food safety measures, and accurate financial statements can help provide the necessary paper trail that all expectations are being met.
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Revenue Recognition for Multi-Channel Sales
Multi-channel sales can expend the customer base, but revenue recognition across multiple channels can be challenging. Graphite can help ensure best practices are followed.
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Payroll Management for Seasonal Workforce
Certain times of the year require a seasonal workforce for your food and beverage startup. Graphite can help manage payroll for fluctuating staffing needs.
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Cost Segregation & Tax Planning
Graphite can help ensure that your taxes are filed accurately and on time while maximizing deductions and credits for your F&B startup, using strategies like cost segregation.
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Investor Reporting and Fundraising Support
Startups often need capital for growth. Graphite’s expert financial reporting enhances your startup’s credibility when seeking loans and attracting potential investors.
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A True F&B Startup Accounting Team
Why CPG Startups Prefer Us
Simple: Our track record with brands & our CPG talent. We are your long-term CPG & eCommerce accounting partner, and the team we allocate to you will only be working with a handful of clients at a time, so they can be high-touch, embedded in your business, and feel like an in-house team. Here are the key reasons why startups prefer us.
Scalablity
We support from seed to exit. No more hopping from firm to firm.
A Full Stack
Each startup gets a team (not just a single accountant) that matches their needs.
Track Record
Our experience speaks for itself. 7+ years. 500+ startups.
Reporting
Startups receive robust and accurate financials each month.
Top Talent
Talent that has worked with hundreds of startups, at your fingertips.
Cost
A flexible, fractional & affordable engagement structure.
Other Firms
- Hourly pricing, large random bills
- Six months to get up to speed
- One accountant on many accounts
- Firm only handles bookkeeping
- Use whatever tools you use today
- Hourly pricing, large random bills
- Dedicated onboarding team for speed
- Dedicated team of accountants and/or CFO
- A one-stop-shop for accounting, CFO & tax
- Modern tech stacks and software
Answers to your questions
The main reasons startups choose to work with us are:
Our track record: We’ve helped countless startups grow from a few team members to hundreds of employees, and for many, we’ve scaled with them through their exits.
In-House Feel: With other firms, you’ll likely get a team from a service center that is working with 15 or 20 clients at a time. We are the opposite side of the spectrum. We are your long-term partner, and the US-based team we allocate to you will only be working with a handful of clients at a time, so they can be high-touch, embedded in your business, and feel like an in-house team.
Scalability: Hopping from accounting firm to accounting firm as you scale is not fun. That’s why startups prefer Graphite. We are a one-stop-shop. We handle everything (bookkeeping, operational accounting, CFO, FP&A, tax, etc.) and have yet to meet our match in terms of scale.
Robust Reporting: The clients that work with us receive some of the most insightful business reporting in the industry. Here is an example of our financial health dashboard that we set up for our clients. We help our operators keep a tight understanding of unit economics, growth and capital needs.
Top Talent: Our team members have worked with hundreds of startups, and have a wealth of knowledge about your specific industry.
For a quick quote, click here.
Our pricing structure is really simple and extremely fair…it has to be, as we focus on startups and growing companies. Because we are more of a long-term finance partner (which is what you want) compared to a short term “outsourced” bookkeeping firm, all of our engagements are custom.
Our engagements start at $1,250/mo and grow from there based on a startups goals and needs.
For a quick quote, click here.
Most of our clients come to us from a sub par experience with another firm, so we are used to facilitating and managing transitions. Along with your direct Graphite team, every client is also staffed with an onboarding manager who will be the one to manage the transition so you don’t have to.
Every client we work with is assigned a dedicated team, usually consisting of two to four team members. Of those team members, we will define a main point of contact. We love Slack, so if you use it, we can create a Slack instance and communicate there. We also will create an email alias so you can simply email one email address that will go to your entire Graphite team.
We are speaking with most of our clients on a regular basis. Some daily. Others have weekly or bi-weekly standing meetings. Think of it like this: However you would communicate with an internal finance team, that’s how we will communicate.
We do, yes! And we can quickly get you pricing. For a quick quote, click here.
In reality, the second you start developing your product and spending money is when you need to start keeping clean books. There are always inflection points (for example a company raising money and investors needing them to provide clean financials, or a bank requiring GAAP compliant financials in order to provide a loan) where you don’t want to be scrambling to get those things together.
Yes, you need to have some sort of cash flow (investment dollars, working capital or revenue) to pay for a service like ours, but the earlier you do so, the more money you will save in the long run and the cleaner your books will be in order to fundraise and progress your business.
Our financial planning & analysis (FP&A) support, aka Tier 2 in our service tiers, is a fully managed and always on FP&A service. On top of bookkeeping, we also handle building you a financial model and a financial health dashboard (demo here), and updating/maintaining that dashboard over time so we can provide you with full financial insights around your business.
We can also offer you a Fractional CFO to help with things like fundraising, M&A, and driving strategic initiatives.
Contact us here to speak with one of our CFOs.
Graphite works (and scales) with startups anywhere from a few founders working on their idea all the way to a growing startup with 100s of employees. We have yet to meet our match in terms of a company too large!
Our sweet spot is well capitalized startups who have found product market fit.
For most startups, you don’t need 40 hrs/wk of work from an internal finance hire or team, especially when you first hire them. Fractional work, like Graphite, provides a much more efficient approach, as you are only paying for the exact effort you need at that moment in time. You also don’t pay us for benefits, downtime or vacations, so our cost tends to be much more efficient than hiring an internal team member.
Our hubs are in New York and Florida, but our team is fully remote across the US working in all time zones.
Yes, we do handle sales tax! And we can quickly get you pricing. For a quick quote, click here.
Most companies work with Graphite for long periods of time, as our service is extremely scalable and cost-efficient. There are “bandaid” accounting services that are more so quick fixes for short periods of time, and then there is Graphite…one of the few long term partners. Most of our clients work with us for years and years, and we take many through their exits, M&As, etc.
We have an internal security team and take data security very seriously.
Yes! We are a “tech-focused” firm and recommend/setup all different types of tools and softwares to our clients. We have standard tools that we prefer and will recommend, but we can also mold to softwares you are using and prefer as well.
Meet your new startup accounting team
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Paul BiancoFounder, CEO
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Jocelyn WilsonCOO
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Chris MossaCSO
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Josh LeiderHead of Growth
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Lirjon FisnikuGrowth Manager
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Taylor PattersonGrowth Associate
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Sarah LeonardGrowth Marketer
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Michael SmithHead of Tax
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Ariel VigodnerTax, Senior Manager
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Ariton GuzeTax, Manager
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Raghav NavanathTax, Manager
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David RapoportHead of Finance