Open your last invoice and you'll see it before any headline does: wholesale food prices climbed again in May, up 0.6%, three times April's pace, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The chicken, the cups, the fryer oil all cost a little more, so get ahead of it now instead of reacting at the register.

Pizza Hut just sold to private equity, the James Beard Awards celebrated the smallest dining rooms in the country, and a new survey says you might be funding the wrong perks for your team.

Let's jump into today's service.

The list of companies standing between you and your guest keeps getting shorter. American Express is at it again, this time with a proposed deal to buy TheFork, a European reservation platform, just months after it pulled Tock into Resy.

The proposed $700 million deal would push Amex's dining network past 75,000 bookable restaurants worldwide, more than OpenTable. TheFork charges restaurants a fee on every cover it books, while Resy mostly charges a flat monthly rate. As these platforms keep combining, two questions matter for you: what you'll pay to take a reservation, and who owns the guest list you build.

The Move: If your reservation contract comes up this year, don't sign a new multi-year deal until it's clear how these platforms will charge. Pull your current agreement this week and check two things: whether you pay per cover or a flat rate, and who keeps your guest data if you leave. Having both answers ready is your leverage when the renewal call comes.

If you go to Restaurant Depot for cheap wholesale, the merger could hit your costs. Independent operators are saying out loud what a lot of you are thinking: if Sysco takes over Restaurant Depot, the low prices they count on could start to climb.

Sysco's roughly $29.1 billion deal for Restaurant Depot would fold a warehouse chain that serves more than 725,000 independent operators into the country's biggest distributor, per WAMC. One operator near Albany, Layla Aburas Khafaga of Meezan Kitchen, told the station she's worried about higher prices and fewer places to shop. The deal isn't final yet, but the concern is simple: the one warehouse built for small operators may stop competing on price.

The Move: This week, price the dry goods and paper goods you order most at one other supplier, so you have a backup if Restaurant Depot's prices climb. Open the account now, while a new supplier still wants to win your business. Keep shopping at Restaurant Depot, but don't let it be your only option.

The benefits you spend on may not be keeping people. A new survey from 7shifts found 72% of restaurants serve free staff meals, but only a quarter of employees rank meals near the top. What they want instead: paid time off, paid sick days, predictable schedules, and a manager who notices good work. 7shifts sells scheduling software, so take the numbers with a grain of salt. The last two cost almost nothing: this week, post the schedule earlier and praise good work on the line.

There's a new way to stop juggling reservation tablets at the host stand. DoorDash's SevenRooms launched Channel Connect, a free app that pulls bookings from OpenTable, Resy, Google, and your own site into one book and syncs your tables across them to kill double-bookings. If you run more than one booking platform, pilot it at one location, but check your OpenTable or Resy contract first.

The story from Monday's James Beard Awards isn't a chef, it's a floor plan. The Best New Restaurant in America was Lei, a 28-seat wine bar in Manhattan, per the James Beard Foundation, and two regional Best Chef winners started as food trucks. Small, focused, owner-run restaurants are taking the top awards, which plays to your strengths. You don't need more seats or a longer menu to compete at the top. Pick the thing you do best and build the room around it.

Tuesday's $2.7 billion Pizza Hut sale isn't your fight, but the empty buildings might be your opening. Yum! Brands agreed to sell the chain to a private-equity buyer and its partner in China, which usually leads to more locations closing. A lot of those are former restaurant spaces with hoods, grease traps, and parking already in place. If new construction has priced you out, watch for a closed Pizza Hut nearby and price out a conversion before you sign your next lease.

If you operate on the West Coast or in Alaska, your labor costs change in two weeks. A round of minimum-wage increases takes effect July 1, including unincorporated Los Angeles County and Santa Monica rising to $18.47 an hour, per the U.S. Department of Labor. Alaska and several California hospitality rates go up the same day. These dates are set, not proposals you can wait out. If you're affected, update your pay rates and posted wage notices before July 1 to stay compliant.