You're open. You're working. So why doesn't it feel like it's working?
Operational strategy and hands-on support for independent venues that have launched and are ready to run properly.
RUN
Run
Most hospitality businesses don't struggle because the owner isn't trying hard enough. They struggle because a handful of essential things have quietly slipped out of alignment — and the owner is too close to the operation, too exhausted, and too busy firefighting to see it clearly.
You're turning covers – sometimes a lot of them. But the money doesn't seem to reflect the effort. You're in the business every day, and yet nothing seems to work properly when you step away from it. Your team is doing its best, but something in either the service or the kitchen is still inconsistent. When you launched, the menu felt right, but now you're not sure the margins still stack up. Trade is unpredictable in ways you can't quite explain.
None of this means you've failed. It means you've done the hardest part – you've launched – and now the business needs the same quality of strategic thinking that your instincts and energy have got you to this point. The Run package is that thinking, applied consistently, by someone who has been inside hospitality at every level for over thirty years.
What’s Included
Two 90-minute strategy calls per month:
More frequent and more substantial than the Plan package because an operational business generates more decisions, more challenges, and more opportunities to get ahead of problems before they compound.
Quarterly operational audits:
Every quarter, we conduct a structured assessment of your operations: how your systems are running, where the friction is, what the numbers are actually telling you, and what needs attention next. This isn't a theoretical review – it's a working session grounded in what's happening in your business right now.
Custom playbooks and process templates:
One of the main reasons hospitality businesses become owner-dependent is the absence of documented systems. We build the playbooks your team needs to operate consistently without you having to be present for every decision: service standards, kitchen SOPs, opening and closing protocols, and the infrastructure that turns a capable team into a reliable one.
Guest experience reviews:
We assess your guest journey from the customer's perspective: first impression, booking experience, welcome, service flow, menu interaction, pacing, close, and follow-up. Most operational problems show up here before they show up in the numbers.
Workflow optimisation:
Kitchen flow, floor layout, prep systems, ordering rhythms, and supplier relationships. We look at where your operation creates unnecessary friction for your team and your guests, and we fix it.
Quarterly business and marketing strategy reviews:
Beyond the day-to-day, we step back each quarter to assess your market position, your marketing activity, and whether your strategy is keeping pace with how the business is evolving.
Ongoing support between calls:
Email and WhatsApp access between sessions — because the questions that matter most often come up between scheduled calls, not during them.
Who It’s For
The Run package is right for you if:
You've been trading for at least six months and want to move from surviving to performing
You're busy but not making the money the covers should justify
Your business depends too heavily on you being present
Your team is capable but inconsistent, and you're not sure how to fix that
You've been thinking about your menu, your pricing, or your positioning but haven't had the space or the expertise to address it properly
You're wondering whether to persist, pivot, or make significant changes — and you want experienced input before you decide
If you're still in pre-opening or your first year of trading, the Plan package may be the right starting point. If you're consistently profitable and ready to expand, look at Grow.
Commonly Asked Questions
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This is one of the most common and most demoralising experiences in independent hospitality. The business feels alive. The room is full. But the P&L tells a different story. The culprit is almost never one thing. It's usually a combination: food and drink margins that are tighter than they appear; labour costs that creep above sustainable thresholds during busy periods; menu items that sell well but cost too much to produce; pricing that hasn't kept pace with input costs; and wastage or over-ordering that is never properly addressed. What's needed is not more covers; it's clarity about which covers are profitable, which costs are controllable, and which parts of the operation are quietly draining the business. That's exactly the work we do in the Run package.
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Owner-dependency is one of the most common structural problems in independent hospitality. If the business only operates effectively in your presence, it isn’t really a business; it's a job you can’t leave. The systems that reduce owner-dependency are simple in principle but take discipline to build – documented service standards, kitchen SOPs, opening and closing protocols, staff training frameworks, supplier management rhythms, and a clear management structure with delegated authority. The deeper issue is usually that owners haven't had time to build these systems while running the business simultaneously. That's what we do with you in the Run package: build the infrastructure while the business keeps moving.
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This is a question we hear often, and the honest answer is that it depends on a proper diagnosis before a decision. Most venues that are struggling haven't exhausted the potential of their current concept; they've run into specific, identifiable problems that feel like a concept failure but are actually operational or commercial ones. A pivot or rebrand is sometimes the right answer, but it's expensive, disruptive, and doesn't fix structural issues that will follow you into a new concept. Before you make a significant change, you need to understand clearly what's actually wrong. Is it the concept? The positioning? The menu? The pricing? The operations? The marketing? The team? Each of these has a different solution. A rebrand is only the answer for one of them.
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Improving profitability almost always involves a combination of actions rather than a single lever. On the revenue side: menu engineering to shift guest behaviour toward higher-margin items, pricing adjustments that are defensible and well-communicated, and upsell training for your team. On the cost side: tighter inventory management, better supplier negotiation, reducing waste through smarter prep systems, and labour scheduling that matches actual covers rather than habit. Meaningful profitability improvements are almost always available in a trading hospitality business; they just require someone to look at the right numbers in the right way.
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Inconsistency is the enemy of hospitality. Guests forgive a lot, but they rarely return to places where the experience is unpredictable. Consistent guest experience comes from consistent systems, not consistent people. People have bad days; systems don't. The starting point is mapping exactly what the guest experience is supposed to look like at every touchpoint, then building the training and operational frameworks that deliver it regardless of who's on shift. It also requires an honest assessment of where the current experience falls short, which is easier to do by someone outside the operation than by the people running it every day.
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The Run package is for venues focused on optimising and stabilising what they have, improving profitability, reducing owner dependency, and building operational consistency within their current footprint. The Grow package is for venues that are ready to expand beyond their first site and need strategic support to do it without putting everything they've already built at risk. If you're not yet confident the current operation is running as it should, Run is the right starting point. When the foundations are genuinely solid, growth becomes a real strategic option.