We know the kitchen. We also know the numbers.
Pre-opening project management, costed week by week, with a P&L you can actually read.
The problem
Most outlets don't fail on the food.
They fail on a lease signed before anyone ran the numbers. On a menu priced against the shop down the road rather than against what the plate costs. On supplier prices that crept up eleven months ago and nobody noticed, because nobody was looking at that line.
And on staffing. Almost every kitchen we walk into is short-handed, and the instinct is to hire. Usually the problem isn't headcount. It's prep happening at the wrong time of day, or a station sitting two steps too far from the pass.
By the time any of this reaches the bank balance, the decisions that caused it are a year or more old.
Where you are
Open without surprises
Plan the opening
A build programme dated week by week from lease to first service, with licences scheduled into it and the cash requirement attached to each stage. You will know what the site has to take to stand up before you have spent anything you cannot get back.
Find the margin you're missing
Fix the margin
A proper read on where the margin is going, plate by plate. What comes back is a change list your kitchen can start on next week, not a strategy document. Every line has a cost and a date against it.
What we do
Kitchen problems, solved on paper first.
Before you open
Once you're trading
Who we work with
The people who sign the cheques.
Owner-operators and small groups, mostly. The ones close enough to the business to change something on Tuesday and see it in the numbers by month end.
Independent restaurants
One site, owner on the floor most nights, no finance team behind them. The tightest margins and the fastest decisions.
Cafés and bakeries
High volume, low ticket, and a wastage line that quietly decides the month. Usually noticed after it has already happened.
Bars and late-night venues
Where pour cost, stock loss and staffing patterns decide whether a busy night was a profitable one. Volume alone won't tell you.
Small groups
Two to six sites, and central costs that have started to appear. Nobody is quite sure which outlet is carrying which.
Central and cloud kitchens
Yield, labour and delivery commissions matter more than covers. A few points of commission can undo a good week.
Hotel and institutional F&B
Outlets inside a bigger operation, working to targets set somewhere else, often by people who have never worked a service.
Most people call us later than they should. Earlier is cheaper, at every stage.
How we work
Four stages. Stop after any of them.
The Read
We work a full service, read twelve months of accounts, and cost the menu line by line. You keep the findings whether or not you carry on with us.
The Plan
What changes, what it costs, and what it returns by which month. One document, with an owner and a date against every line. Plenty of clients take it from there.
Implementation
We stay on site while the changes land, because a plan handed over at the door is a plan that gets filed.
Handover
Your team runs the reporting without us. If they still need us after six months, we haven't finished the job.
The first two weeks
Where we look and what we count
People ask what they're buying, which is fair. This is the whole of it, and all of it measured on your site rather than estimated from a benchmark. You keep the findings either way, with no obligation to carry on.
Where we look
- Twelve months of P&L, read line by line
- Two full services on the floor with your team, front and back
- Your main supplier terms, against what the market is paying
What we measure
- Every dish costed to the gram, at the prices you pay today
- Labour mapped against covers, shift by shift
- Waste, over-prep and staff meals counted rather than estimated
- Occupancy cost as a percentage of sales, against what the format can carry
What you get
- A written view on what to change first, and what to leave alone.
Insights
Notes from the pass
Why a Full Restaurant in Singapore Can Still Lose Money
There is a particular kind of frustration that comes from running a busy outlet that does not make money. The room is full on a Friday night.
Signing a Lease Before You Have a Model: What It Costs You Later
The lease is the single most expensive decision in a food and beverage business, and it is usually the one made with the least information. A unit becomes available, the location feels right, the agent says there is other interest, and the deposit goes down within a fortnight.
How to Read a Restaurant P&L Without an Accounting Background
Most operators receive their monthly accounts, look at the bottom line, feel either relieved or worried, and file them. The document is treated as a report card rather than a tool, which is a waste, because a properly built profit and loss statement will tell you what to do next week.
Start here
Tell us about the outlet.
Where it is, what it does on a good week, and what's worrying you. We'll come back with what we'd look at first and roughly what it would cost.