Why [me]: Rachel's Story

To accountants, restaurants can seem like the black sheep of clients. Think of Rachel Dick as the exception to this rule. Rachel fearlessly entered the dark corner of the accounting world with restaurant clients and never looked back. Having worked with dozens of restaurant accounting clients, her love for the industry didn’t start in spreadsheets and certainly does not end there. 

Rachel got her first restaurant job at the ripe old age of 13 years old. Her parents had to sign a permission slip as she was under the legal age to obtain employment. She worked at a kid-friendly restaurant that may or may not have had a mouse as its mascot. While this restaurant might have been mere ‘child’s play’, she loved working. 

Growing up as an army brat, as she calls herself, she had admirable examples of what hard work looks like. Her parents sacrificed much more than the average working American, as choosing to be in the military is a commitment for the entire family. The beginning of her life was spent packing and unpacking, saying goodbye to new friends, and hoping to meet new ones in their new city. She fondly remembers her mother’s love for hosting lavish dinner parties, no matter where their new home was. Rachel would sit in the kitchen and awe over her mother’s ability to make anything from crepes to traditional German dishes with ease like she was making a microwavable meal. In these moments her love for hospitality and food budded. 

Once her globetrotting slowed down, she landed in Ohio as her high school years approached. Rachel filled her days with competitive dancing, a restaurant job she loved, and math. She had a knack for numbers and knew it would be in her best interest to continue her education in the field. 

Rachel settled on Ohio State University thanks to her parents making a bargain to give her a car in exchange for her attending a university close to home. Like any reasonable accountant, she balanced the numbers and saw the margins were in her favor.

She started as an engineering major and got pretty far into the program before realizing it wasn’t for her, then switched to accounting. Her time at OSU wasn’t the ‘all-American’ college experience one sees in movies or on T.V. She worked full-time in restaurants throughout school, opting for night classes to work the lunch shift or vice versa. 

She graduated with a degree in business finance, confused about what to do next, but more financially sound than her fellow classmates. She took her first accounting job after graduating, finally leaving the restaurant scene after having held almost every position there. 

In her early career, she bounced around a couple of companies but was not into hyper-corporate settings. While working for a housing company, she was asked to relocate to the D.C. area. Having been in Ohio for a while, she took the opportunity to pack up her things and move right down the street from MarginEdge’s future headquarters in Ballston, Virginia. She has been in the D.C. area ever since – meeting her D.C.-native husband here, developing a community, and laughing at the way locals treat any amount of snow like a national emergency. 

While her location stayed stagnant, her career did not. She transitioned back into the restaurant scene, working for multi-unit groups as their lead accountant. The job was challenging and exhilarating, reminding her why she loved the hospitality industry. 

She helped her clients build and streamline their processes from training them on how to read a P&L effectively, to managing the restaurants’ financial records which included balancing invoices and daily sales and labor costs. Eventually, she transitioned to Neighborhood Restaurant Group (NRG), a MarginEdge client. She loved NRG because she was learning a lot and working alongside phenomenal D.C. restaurants, operators, and their teams. From enjoying meals together to training them on how to effectively implement accounting operations, it felt like a family.

A couple of years into her position, she received a sales call from a restaurant management software company, MarginEdge. As the pandemic had changed the restaurant industry in every capacity, she was looking to reassess accounting operations for NRG. Eric Jeffay, current Director of Partnerships and former Sales Representative, closed the deal with Rachel and she began onboarding all of NRG’s units.

Using MarginEdge as a customer, in her own words, was “magic.” Her favorite feature was inventory processing because of its automation capabilities and operator-friendliness. She stayed at NRG for eight years and in 2023, decided it was time to leave the tiny restaurant back office. 

Rachel and her husband then took a beautiful trip to Thailand, baking themselves on the unbelievable white sand beaches and eating all the pad thai she could stomach. After her trip,  she joined the MarginEdge team as Controller in Residence in September 2023. 

While still accounting-focused, Rachel’s day-to-day now is more backseat driver than driver in control. She is our ‘go-to’ for technical accounting questions, making successful pitches to accounting firms, and working alongside our software development team on features for accountants. While she never expected there would be as much talking as there is, we can’t get enough! 

For any accountant or bookkeeper looking for a restaurant management system, Rachel’s biggest benefit to consider is when you and your operator/owner are looking at the same data, you're having the same conversation. You're able to dig into more analytics and give actionable advice instead of just continuously pointing out that labor or food costs are too high. You can dive into why it's too high and what everyone can do to fix it.

We are so thrilled Rachel joined team [me]! Thanks for sharing your story, Rachel!