Help for independent restaurants, from someone who has worked the pass

What does a restaurant consultant do, and is it worth it?

A restaurant consultant finds where the money is leaking and fixes what lets it leak: dishes that are priced on hope, labour that does not match covers, service that changes with whoever is on, and an owner doing too many jobs to see any of it. It is worth it when the leak costs more than the fee. If your food sales are £8,000 a week, two points of extra gross profit is £160 a week, or more than £8,000 a year. A Health Check costs £495.

Atelier Sawyer works with independent restaurants across the UK, from a single Health Check to month-by-month support.

What I see in restaurants

• Food cost creep: suppliers put prices up a little at a time, and the menu prices never followed.
• A menu that is too long: more dishes, more waste, more prep, and a kitchen that slows down when it matters.
• Chefs: hard to find, harder to keep, and a kitchen that falls over when one of them leaves.
• Quiet early weeks: the weekend is full, and Monday to Wednesday cost more to open than they take.
• No-shows: a fully booked Saturday with empty tables at nine o'clock.
• Front against back: two teams, one service, and friction at the pass.
• The owner on the pass: because the standard only holds when you are there.

How I help restaurants

Menus that make money

Most menus are priced on a percentage: every dish and every bottle marked up to hit the same gross profit. At the cheaper end, that works. At the top, it quietly costs you money. The answer is cash margin: the pounds each item puts in the till, rather than the percentage it makes on paper. One is about your profit and loss account; the other is about your cash flow.

Wine shows it best. Price a bottle that costs you £6 for a 70% gross profit, and it goes on the list at £24: a fair price that guests are happy to pay. Price a bottle that costs you £25 the same way, and it goes on at £100. It sells once in a blue moon, and your cash sits in the cellar.

Now price it on cash margin. Once a bottle costs you more than about £15 to £20, add a fixed £20 to the cost, add VAT, and round it. The £25 bottle goes on at £55. Your percentage falls to about 45%, but if it sells six times a month instead of once, it brings in about £125 a month instead of £58.

It does more than that. Guests see outstanding value, and the top of the list starts to sell. Your wine merchant sees you buying better bottles more often, and when you sit down with the rep next year, their price list becomes the start of a conversation rather than the final word. The same works for food: a ribeye and a Barolo become a treat a couple can afford, not a once-a-year extravagance, and a menu that is generous where it counts earns you a little latitude elsewhere.

In short: percentage at the bottom of the list, cash margin at the top.

Try it on your own menu with the free Menu Margin Builder.

The kitchens I have worked

I have spent more than 30 years in restaurants, cafés, bars, pubs, and nightclubs, and there is no role in a restaurant I have not done as my job, sometimes all of them in one day. I have worked Friday nights on the pass and run the Half Moon, a fine-dining pub with high labour costs and limited covers, where every plate had to earn its place. I have opened seven venues of my own and several more for the people I worked for.

Frequently asked questions

Talk it through

A free 30-minute call will tell us both whether I can help, and where to start.