Two operators built it. A certified team keeps the standard.
SBO is built on the nearly thirty years Philippe and Kym Rousseau spent owning and running independent restaurants on the California coast — the kitchen and the books, the floor and the people. Philippe ran the numbers and the kitchen; Kym ran the guest side, the event sales, and the payroll. It grew out of their own practice, Rousseau Business Services — her books, his systems. Today the work runs on a team that pairs QuickBooks-certified ProAdvisors with associates who have actually run operations: the books kept to standard, and read by people who know what the numbers mean on the floor. No bot reads your books — the same people do, every month.
Check your fitTwo operators, one focused team.
SBO was built by Philippe and Kym Rousseau, and the team around them is built the same way — people who have run the numbers and worked the floor, not a service reading your books from the outside.
He reads a P&L the way a cook reads the rail.
Philippe came up through a French business school specialized in small-business operations. He put it to work at Rousseau Business Services, building the systems and back office for every kind of small business — bakeries, personal gyms, tech companies — moving them off paper and onto QuickBooks back when that meant Windows 95. Then he ran it all inside his own restaurants — Stella Mare's, Events by Stella Mare's, and Le Café Stella — for close to thirty years, top to bottom: menu and plate costing, prime cost, custom-built reports and forecasting models, staff training, marketing campaigns, social media, the website, and full operating oversight. His favorite shift, though, was still on the line — expediting the kitchen — because that is how you actually feel a restaurant. He was there for the first Toast installs on the West Coast; Intuit-certified, thirty-plus years in QuickBooks.
The voice of the house — now the voice of SBO.
Kym trained in business college with a bookkeeping emphasis and event management, then became the guest-facing voice across three restaurants — customer relations, event sales, and payroll. Events were her domain, and the biggest, highest-margin part of the business. She was also the eye of the place — floral arrangements, the visual details, and the seasonal changeovers from spring through winter. The holiday productions Stella was known for were hers: Valentine's, Easter, Mother's Day, graduation and Father's Day, Thanksgiving, and the big year-end décor. And before the restaurants, she ran her own bookkeeping practice, clean books kept by hand. So she knows the guest side and your numbers both: payroll done right, tips handled clean, and the human side behind the figures — the part most bookkeepers never touch.
Built the way they built their restaurants.
SBO is not a call center with your file in a queue — it is a small, focused team of QuickBooks-certified pros who have also worked a line. We do one thing: run the back office for independent restaurants — the crucial, unglamorous part that quietly keeps a small business standing. The same people every month, reading your numbers and giving you the heads-up on what to do about them.
With its team, SBO brings thirty years of running restaurants — and thirty-plus years on QuickBooks and hands-on back-office management — the part that quietly keeps a small business standing, not just the spreadsheets.
Remote-first across the U.S. In person around Bend, Oregon and Santa Barbara, California.
Everything — books, monthly closes, calls, training — happens online, so we work with a client across the country the same way we would work with one down the street. In-person advisory is available for local owners in:
Put thirty years to work on your books.
Take the Fit Check — a few questions, every answer read by a person, and an honest answer on whether we fit. Want a look before the questions? The Free Look is free — you'll never see a bill for asking.