Who I help · Small groups
Help for small hospitality groups, from someone who has run one
Three to ten restaurants, pubs, bars, or cafés, usually still led by the founder. Growing from one site to many breaks things that used to work. I help you build the structure of a bigger operator without losing what made you good.
How do small hospitality groups keep standards consistent across sites?
Write the standards down: recipes, specs, service steps, and opening and closing checks, so they do not live only in the founder's head. Train every manager to them, and give each one the authority and the accountability to run their site. Measure the same handful of numbers at every site, every week, so you can compare like with like. Buy centrally where it helps. Visit as a guest, not just as the owner. And make sure no single site, or single person, is quietly holding the whole group up.
Atelier Sawyer works with small hospitality groups across the UK through Grow, a twelve-month programme, and one-off reviews.
What I see in small groups
- Every site different: the same name over the door, and a different experience behind each one.
- The founder as the system: the standards hold where the founder is, and slip everywhere else.
- Managers promoted, not developed: excellent on the floor, never shown how to run a business.
- Numbers you cannot compare: each site reports in its own way, so nobody can see which one is really performing.
- Buying power unused: three sites buying like three separate businesses.
- One site carrying the rest: the flagship's cash and supplier terms quietly propping up the others.
- A founder who is tired: and a business that cannot yet run without them.
The load-bearing wall test
I once ran three pubs as a group. On paper, they were three businesses; in reality, the Sun Inn's volume won the supplier terms for all three, and its cash carried the other two. When a lease clause cost me the Sun, the other two went with it. I had built a group with only one truly load-bearing wall.
So the first question I ask any group is this: if your best site closed tomorrow, would the rest survive? Then we make sure they would:
- Supplier terms that stand up site by site, not only on the flagship's volume
- Cash reserves to carry the group for at least six months without its best site
- Managers who can run their sites without you, or anyone else, covering every gap
- A stress test of the group's profit if the best site disappeared
Build the structure first. The rest is just service.
How I help small groups
| If you… | Start with |
|---|---|
| Want the structure to grow without breaking | Grow, £1,595 a month |
| Have one site that is struggling | A Hospitality Health Check, £495, or Run, £795 a month, for that site |
| Are opening another site | A Pre-Opening Diagnostic, £695 |
| Need your tills, bookings, and stock to work the same way at every site | Digitise, quoted for groups |
| Need marketing or a website for the group | Promote or Websites, quoted for groups |
Why work with me
I have spent more than 30 years in restaurants, cafés, bars, pubs, and nightclubs.
At Mitchells & Butlers, one of the UK's largest pub companies, I was deputy manager and trainer at one of the group's top-performing houses: a 100-cover pub, a 300-cover restaurant, a garden, and a terrace, with a team of 60 and a turnover of more than £2.5 million a year. On Christmas Day we served 1,200 covers across three sittings. When the licence was transferred to me, the magistrate asked whether it was rather a large operation for a man of my years. I was more diplomatic than I might have been.
I also covered other houses for the company, and reopened one that the local authority had closed for food safety and health and safety breaches. It was trading again in less than a week, with a five-star food hygiene rating.
Later, I ran a group of three pubs of my own. I know a group from inside a large operator and from the founder's chair, and I know what it costs when the structure is wrong.
Frequently asked questions
How do I stop being the only person who can run a shift?
Write down what you do on a shift, then hand it over in stages: the standards first, then the numbers, then the decisions. Pick the manager most likely to hold the room, work your busiest nights alongside them, and then stay away for one. Give them the authority to fix things without calling you. It takes longer than most founders expect, which is why Grow runs for twelve months.
Should all my sites be the same?
They should share the same standards, not necessarily the same menu or the same look. A guest should know what to expect from the name over the door; each site can still suit its own street. Write down what must never change, and let managers own the rest. That is how you keep the standard without losing what made each site good.
Do you work with groups of more than ten sites?
Grow is built for groups of up to ten. Above that, the work usually needs more than one consultant. Where it helps, I bring in people I trust, several of whom I trained myself, and I stay accountable for the work. If a larger group needs a different kind of adviser altogether, I will say so on the first call.
Talk it through
A free 30-minute call will tell us both whether I can help, and where to start.