The Bridge, built: payments reconciliation for a 40-location restaurant group
Fictional scenario — a worked demonstration, not a case study
The pattern pages tell you what The Bridge is. This page builds one — ten slides for a fictional deal, a rep selling a reconciliation platform to the CFO of a restaurant group whose three finance staff match POS deposits to bank statements by hand. Every slide is shown with the job it's doing in the arc.
Ten slides on one arc
Before the slides themselves, the shape. The Bridge runs three acts — map the ground, measure the chasm, build the span — and every slide in this deck sits somewhere on that curve. Note where the weight falls: five of the ten slides land before the product is ever mentioned.
The build
Slide by slide, with the job each one is doing. Read it as a rep would assemble it — nothing here is decoration, and any slide that couldn't name its act would be cut before the meeting.
How month-end works at Harvest & Vine today
The current reconciliation flow, drawn as the controller would draw it: 40 locations, three POS generations, deposits matched to bank statements by hand. No vendor logo anywhere.
The three people who carry it
Named roles, not headcount: two staff accountants and the controller herself, 26 combined hours a week, every week, at month-end worse.
Where you told us you want to be
The destination in the CFO's own words from discovery: "close in one day, trust the number." Locked before anything is measured against it.
The distance, in your numbers
26 hours × 52 weeks × blended loaded rate ≈ $71K a year — plus last quarter's two uncaught write-offs. Arithmetic shown, every input the buyer's own.
Why it actually costs this much
The root cause: each POS generation exports a different format, and nobody owns normalising them. Not "reconciliation is hard" — a specific, fixable structural fact.
The span: one format in, one ledger out
The platform introduced as the mechanism that closes the named gap — a normalisation layer, not a feature tour. Capabilities appear only as they map to slide 5's cause.
What changes, in the same units
The after-state priced in the units the gap was priced in: hours per week, close time, write-off exposure. Same yardstick, other side of the chasm.
A group like yours that crossed
One proof story from a comparable multi-location operator — the evidence beat that lets a pragmatist CFO follow.
The first ninety days
Three steps, small enough to feel safe: connect two pilot locations, run one parallel month-end, then roll the region. A borrowed Mission beat, closing the loop.
The ask
One next step, sized to slide 9's first step — not a contract, a pilot decision the room can make today.
Slide 4's arithmetic, shown in full
26 hrs/week (2 staff accountants + controller)
× 52 weeks = 1,352 hours a year
× ~$52.50 blended loaded rate ≈ $71,000 a year
+ two uncaught write-offs last quarter (counted separately, on purpose)
Fictional numbers — the point is the shape: every input is one the buyer can check, the write-offs aren't blended into the hourly figure (mixing certain and probabilistic costs invites the buyer to reject both), and the total is stated once, in one unit.
Why this is a Bridge
The vendor doesn't exist until slide 6, and by then every claim the product will make has already been set up as a measurement the buyer helped verify. Slides 1–5 are the persuasion; slides 6–10 are the paperwork. Reverse that ratio and you have the deck everyone else brought.
The full pattern — psychology, fits, failure modes — is here. The words for its first three slides are in the playbook script.
Everything in the library