Overview
Since 2004, Nikki Bloom’s professionalism, financial analysis skills, and organizational skills have helped enable Lehigh Valley Restaurant Group to operate and grow with heightened levels of efficiency. Her detail orientation, accuracy, and penchant for problem solving have helped solidify our Accounting & Finance Department as the backbone of our organization.
What makes her truly special is her exceptional communication skills and zest for creating and improving systems, procedures, and tools to ease critical decision making in increasingly user-friendly ways. Whether it’s aiding HR with accounting related questions, helping the Catering Department with payment processing or researching and discussing the financial feasibility of delivery, Nikki is consistently eager to accurately and patiently answer all finance related questions to assist all team members and departments.
History
Nikki grew up in Allentown where she enjoyed an active social life, took tap and jazz dance lessons, and played softball. Nikki graduated from Parkland High School and attended East Stroudsburg University where she earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology in 2001. With ambitions towards human resources, she achieved an Associate of Arts Degree in Business Administration from Lehigh Carbon Community College in 2002. She applied for an HR position with US Foodservice, now US Foods, a Lehigh Valley Restaurant Group vendor in Allentown, but was hired as a Credit Coordinator instead and soon discovered she had interests and abilities in accounting. Through this Red Robin connection, she gained an interest in LVRG and less than two years later was hired here, first as an Administrative Assistant and nine months later into our Accounting Department where she has since thrived. Initially, Nikki was one of our Staff Accountants supporting up to 10 restaurants. Four years later, she was promoted to Accounting Services Supervisor, assisting the CFO in preparing financial statements, the year-end audit, and the yearly budgeting process, while supervising two Staff Accountants and one Accounts Payable Specialist. In 2015, Nikki achieved an Associate of Science Degree in Accounting, earned another promotion to Manager of Accounting and Finance, and in 2017 became our Controller.
Specialties
- Reconciliations
- Financial Reports
- MS Excel
- Problem Solving
- Financial Liaison
- Financial Analysis
- Troubleshooting
- New Technology Adaptation
- Financial Procedures
Key Initiatives
Behind all good management decisions lies the factoring of financial concerns. Nikki and her team have helped to automate our financial data input and streamline our budgeting process to allow more time for necessary analysis.
One of Nikki’s most impactful efforts entailed working many months with our vendor to set up and enable our cloud based reporting tool, which has proven invaluable to our organization’s effectiveness and overall success. Managers and Executives can sign on to gauge anything from sales performance and labor costs to the effectiveness of discounts and promotions to best-selling items over specific time periods. Nikki continues to update and adapt our cloud reporting tool to produce custom reports to satisfy evolving needs.
Nikki Bloom aims to enable faster, easier, accurate, and efficient financial decision-making. Judging from the results she’s produced, her efforts continue to accomplish her mission.
Scope and Focus
- Manages Manager of Accounting and Finance, Payroll Manager, two Staff Accountants, A/P Specialist and Payroll Processor.
- Responsible for cash management, financial statements, and accounting support to all 21 restaurants with $72M in revenue.
- Provides, accurate, accessible, and up-to-date reports and tools that enable Executives and Managers to make sound financial decisions.
- Integral part of year-end audit process with outside CPA firm.
- Prepares yearly budgets and presents to GM’s.
- Presents financial results at quarterly board, annual shareholder, and quarterly general manager meetings.
- Develops and maintains cloud based operations reports.
- Maintains fixed asset software of yearly capital expenditures and depreciation.
- Assists in covenant calculation and communicates with lenders.
- Continually evaluates and creates improvements for ease of use and increased accuracy, speed, and efficiency.
- Participates in activities that helped LVRG raise over $1 Million for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) since 2010.