Concept Development
We collaborate closely with you to deeply understand your restaurant concept's objectives, ensuring that it not only meets but exceeds your expectations. The process of bringing your exciting restaurant concept to life begins with creating a detailed financial model. This model outlines the initial investment required to launch your concept and forecasts its performance once operational. While financial modeling plays a crucial role in restaurant concept development, it's important to note that a successful concept isn't solely built on sequential steps. Rather, it's a delicate balance of various elements. Altering one aspect can ripple through others, much like adjusting a charm on a mobile. For example, while opening a full-service burger restaurant in Downtown Atlanta might seem logical initially, a shift in your preferences or business environment, such as relocating to the suburbs with different labor dynamics, can necessitate adjustments. This adaptability ensures that your restaurant concept remains agile and responsive to changing circumstances.
PROFIT MODEL
Our core belief is simple: every expenditure should be an investment that generates returns. Whether you're seeking financing, impressing a landlord, or expanding your portfolio, you must outline the costs, revenue streams, and profit potential of your venture. A well-defined Profit Model is the foundation for securing funding because no investor will commit without a clear understanding of how your project will generate returns. If financial modeling is new territory for you, don't worry; crafting precise financial projections can be a challenge.
BUSINESS PLAN
Once your Profit Model shapes your concept, it's time to articulate it comprehensively. Our Business Plans delve into the essence of your concept, providing detailed brand narratives, in-depth market research, competitive analyses, brand filters, and operational practices. This comprehensive document ensures that investors and stakeholders gain a profound understanding of your vision. We firmly believe in allocating resources strategically, investing only where they yield returns.
CONCEPT BOOK
When it's time to present your project to potential stakeholders, a Concept Book can make the difference between a resounding "YES" and a disappointing "NO." Our Concept Books breathe life into your pitch, transforming it into visually captivating, large-format, glossy booklets that convey the essence and ambiance of your concept through compelling imagery and narrative. These books include preliminary layouts, visual representations of financial data, sample menu designs, and aspirational imagery that ignite enthusiasm and confidence in your vision.
Bringing Your Concept to Life
Once your concept is crystal clear after Phase 1, Phase 2 propels your project toward the crucial stage of hiring management. This phase involves several key steps: finding the perfect location, establishing timelines, designing the space, crafting menus, and, ultimately, assembling your management team. By the end of Phase 2, you'll be well-prepared to transition the opening process to your capable management team, taking a significant step toward realizing your vision.
Site Selection
As your dedicated advisors and advocates, we're here to protect your interests throughout the site selection process. We operate without conflicts of interest, ensuring that your success remains our sole focus. When evaluating potential locations, we help you distinguish between stars and black holes, offering guidance on lease agreements and highlighting any potential pitfalls. While we always recommend consulting with an attorney before signing a lease, we're here to help you spot and avoid most unfavorable situations, all with your success in mind.
Timeline / Critical Tasks
Effective project management is all about staying on track. Our "warboard" approach organizes your tasks throughout the project's duration, mapping out resources and establishing crucial milestones. We'll create a Critical Task List to guide your team as the opening day approaches, ensuring that every moment is optimized and no effort is duplicated.
Menu Structure
Timing is of the essence once you've secured your lease, with rent deadlines looming. Before construction can begin, the space, including the kitchen, must be thoughtfully designed. We develop high-level menus that drive your kitchen layout and equipment choices, preventing you from inadvertently building a Mexican restaurant engine for your Italian restaurant concept.
Design
While interior designers excel in creativity, they sometimes overlook design efficiency related to time and motion. Kitchen designers may be influenced by equipment manufacturers' incentives to increase your kitchen's equipment. We take control of the design process, ensuring your project operates profitably while delivering on your brand promises. Our approach optimizes the kitchen layout and equipment selection to maximize both efficiency and profitability.
Concept Decisions
With financials, site selection, menu structure, and design settled, construction can commence. During this phase, numerous small decisions must be made regarding how you'll execute your brand. We guide all these guest experience decisions through your brand filter, guaranteeing your concept remains clear and easy for your audience to understand. From service flow and lighting to employee safety, merchandising, menu presentation, website, receiving, and waste management, every detail is meticulously considered and defined to prevent any confusion.
Menu Engineering
Relying solely on a skilled chef without ongoing menu engineering can be risky. Crafting a profitable menu often requires talent beyond what's typically within budget, and relying on unrecorded recipes can lead to operational challenges. Our solution is to outsource menu engineering to create menus that achieve target profit margins, distribute workloads effectively, provide precise recipes with accurate yields, and can be executed by an affordable staff. Finding capable individuals who can execute established recipes is often more feasible than securing affordable creative talent.
Craft Cocktail Program
Incorporating a craft cocktail program is essential for restaurants with bars. Today's patrons expect more than bottled mixes; they seek fresh ingredients, house-made concoctions, and hand-crafted specialty spirits. Developing and maintaining such a program demands specialized expertise. Let us craft your inaugural and seasonal cocktail menus, enabling your team to focus on consistent execution while delivering a unique and brand-aligned cocktail experience.
Retail Assortment
Whether you're launching a gourmet market, convenience store, or adding retail components to your establishment, we can create a profitable, distinctive, and on-brand retail assortment. Drawing from our extensive experience running multimillion-dollar gourmet retail operations and installing retail components nationwide, we understand the intricacies of ordering, inventory management, merchandising, pricing, signage, and customer shopping behavior. Let us assist you in bringing your retail program to life.
Next phase is akin to firing up that machine, addressing any initial hiccups, and fine-tuning it until it runs as smoothly as a well-tuned engine.
At the point when your management team joins the fold, we consolidate your guiding principles and operating philosophies into a unified, hands-on management seminar. This ensures that your team shares a common approach and mindset. Your management squad must align their coaching and counseling methods with your brand, and they must establish a collective commitment to success as a team before they are tasked with overseeing your staff. Our Management School forms the bedrock upon which you'll train every future manager, but it requires initial creation and implementation, and that's precisely what we excel at.
Effective OPERATING PROCEDURES are the backbone of your service model and menus, and their success relies on flawless execution. However, this execution depends on the commitment of your team. We structure management frameworks to optimize efficiency while clearly defining areas of responsibility and accountability. When a restaurant consistently delivers excellent food, drinks, and service day after day, it's no fluke. We tailor systems to match your team's strengths while setting a performance standard that leaves no doubt about what constitutes excellence in the workplace.
STAFF HIRING is a critical part at this stage, where your newly formed management team begins to make its mark on the hourly staff recruitment process. We will collaborate with them to fine-tune staffing plans, create efficient hiring systems, schedule recruitment events, coordinate materials, and oversee the entire hiring procedure in conjunction with your management squad. During this phase, we offer a flexible approach, allowing us to assist as much or as little as you require. It's essential to approach hiring with a well-thought-out strategy, and we're here to help you establish those protocols.
BACK OFFICE management is integral to your restaurant's success. Without robust cash handling procedures and strict purchasing and invoicing discipline, your business can quickly become chaotic. Restaurants, being both retail and production facilities, require meticulous organization in the back office. This involves maintaining weekly profit and loss statements, implementing an open-to-buy system, ensuring invoice discipline, managing declining budgets, and engaging in annual budgeting. Furthermore, clearly defined forms and procedures are essential for effective communication with your controller or office manager.
TRAINING is a pivotal aspect of turning your vision into a reality. Aspiring to deliver exceptional food and service is commendable, but it requires effective training programs to bring this aspiration to life. Our comprehensive "train the trainer" programs extend from pre-opening orientation to continuous operations. We craft training manuals, design employee handbooks, develop training outlines, and instill training philosophies that not only nurture your new hires but also reduce turnover, ultimately saving you money and sparing you the challenges of a competitive labor market. What we establish for the opening phase seamlessly transitions into an ongoing process for hiring and training well beyond the initial launch.
MOCK RUNS
Thoroughly testing your new business venture is essential, but it's best not to use real customers if you have any doubts about the perfection of your operations. We specialize in organizing and conducting mock runs to ensure you derive maximum benefit from them. This way, when you're ready to open your doors, you can do so with confidence, knowing that your guests will receive the exceptional experience you've meticulously crafted.
INCUBATION
Following the excitement of opening day, managing new operations, a growing customer base, and a newly formed team can be overwhelming. Your managers will be preoccupied with ensuring the guest experience remains exceptional during the critical honeymoon phase. We will continue to provide advisory support for several weeks during this transition from pre-opening to post-opening. Our assistance may involve fine-tuning kitchen production, establishing efficient invoice accounting procedures, or adjusting side-work assignments and station charts to accommodate unforeseen nuances. We understand that the last thing you want is to experience a decline in quality and service immediately after opening due to your team feeling overwhelmed. Your investment deserves better.
ONGOING SUPPORT / MANAGEMENT
The presence of corporate offices serves a critical purpose: to offer support to operators and ensure they achieve results through well-established systems, not through improvisation. We can function as your virtual corporate office, conducting regular inspections of your facility, evaluating your systems, and assessing your financials consistently. We offer guidance and coaching to your managers, equipped with the ability to identify and address potential issues before they become visible to guests. If you require continuous oversight and coaching to maintain your restaurant's peak performance, we're here to assist.