Restaurant Consulting Servicesfor Restaurants,Bars,Cafés & Hospitality Groups
We help restaurants, bars, cafés, food trucks and hospitality groups improve margin across menu, labor, operations, purchasing and profitability. Every engagement starts with your numbers, then moves onto the floor during real service. Most establishments need two or three disciplines at once; we scope only the work worth doing.
45 seconds · How we scope an engagement before quoting a fee.
Detailed service pages
In-depth guides to how each of these engagements actually runs, what it costs and what operators typically recover. Click any card to expand.
Restaurant consulting
Restaurant consulting for independent operatorsWe work with independent restaurants and small groups whose sales are healthy and whose margin is not. The work is diagnostic first, then hands-on: we read the numbers, watch service, rebuild whichever of menu, labor or purchasing is doing the damage, and stay until the change holds on a real Friday.Restaurant consulting · what it covers, what it costs, what moves
What a restaurant consulting engagement covers
How we work with restaurant owners
Who this is for
What a restaurant consulting engagement covers
Most restaurants that call us are busy. The room fills, the reviews are good, and the bank balance does not reflect either. That gap is almost always a systems problem rather than a demand problem, and it lives in three places: what a plate costs, how many hours are scheduled against forecast covers, and what happens to inventory between the back door and the pass.
Plate-level costing for every dish and every modifier
Menu pricing and layout rebuilt around contribution margin
Labor model driven by forecast covers and sales per labor hour
Purchasing consolidation, par levels and counting discipline
How we work with restaurant owners
We do not hand over a binder. Recommendations arrive with the recipe cards, prep sheets, ordering guides, schedules and reporting formats needed to run them, and a senior advisor is present while the team adopts them on live service. That adoption phase is where most consulting fails, so it is the part we refuse to shorten.
Typical outcomes
Prime cost reduced by five to eight points in the first two quarters
Labor scheduled against forecast rather than habit
A costed menu that steers guests toward margin without shrinking the plate
Weekly numbers the owner can act on while the month is still in play
Bar consulting: pour cost, program and late-night marginA full bar and a healthy beverage cost are two different achievements. We rebuild beverage programs around costed specs, measurable variance and a labor model that matches the actual peak — so a busy night is also a profitable one.Bar consulting · what it covers, what it costs, what moves
Where bar margin actually leaks
Program, room and the hour that pays
Who this is for
Where bar margin actually leaks
Beverage is the highest-margin category in hospitality and the easiest to lose control of, because almost every loss is invisible at the point it happens. An over-pour is a quarter ounce. An unrecorded comp is a courtesy. A 140-line back bar is a hundred slow-moving SKUs tying up cash and making variance impossible to read.
Costed recipe specs and defined pours for every drink
Weekly counts and pour-cost variance by category
Back-bar rationalisation and seasonal menu design
Comp, void and discount authorisation inside the POS
Program, room and the hour that pays
Beyond cost control, most bars have an hour that pays for the night and a service model that ignores it. Kitchens close before the bar peak. Prep is built for an evening that starts at six when the money arrives at ten. Staffing is flat across a curve that is anything but.
Typical outcomes
Beverage cost down four to seven points without raising every price
Variance readable weekly instead of guessed at quarterly
A shorter, seasonal menu that is faster to execute and cheaper to hold
Labor and kitchen hours aligned to the bar's real peak
Coffee shop consulting for cafés and multi-shop groupsCoffee is a low-ticket, high-frequency business where a queue out the door can still lose money. We work on the three things that decide a café's margin: beverage cost per drink, food attachment, and how much of the bakery case gets thrown away at close.Coffee shop consulting · what it covers, what it costs, what moves
The café margin equation
Scaling without losing the standard
Who this is for
The café margin equation
The drink is rarely the problem on its own — milk and bean cost per cup is knowable and controllable. The problem is that most shops never track it per site, so a group of five ends up with five different costs per latte and no one can explain the spread.
Recipe cards and yield standards for every drink
Cost per cup tracked per shop, not averaged across the group
Bakery and food pars rebuilt from actual hourly sales
Attachment scripts, prompts and barista training
Scaling without losing the standard
Groups usually call us at shop three or four, when the founder can no longer be in every building each morning and the shops have quietly diverged. The fix is a documented standard — recipes, pars, opening and closing routines, and a single weekly number per shop — so the next opening runs against a system rather than an improvisation.
Typical outcomes
Beverage margin improved without raising drink prices across the board
Food waste reduced by a fifth or more through data-driven pars
Higher attachment rate and a bigger average ticket
Menu engineering and plate costingMenu engineering prices and arranges a menu around two facts about every dish: the dollars it contributes after food cost, and how often guests order it. Most menus are built around neither, and quietly steer guests toward the items that make the least.Menu engineering · what it covers, what it costs, what moves
The work, step by step
Design is half the result
What operators typically recover
The work, step by step
The unglamorous first week is costing. Every recipe gets a written spec with real yields, including trim, waste and the modifiers guests actually order. Menu engineering built on estimated plate costs is arithmetic on guesses, so we do not skip it, and in most kitchens it is the single most valuable artifact we leave behind.
Costed recipe specs with real yields for every dish and modifier
Item-level sales analysis by category and day-part
Contribution-margin pricing rather than blanket multipliers
Page layout, sequencing and description rewrites
Design is half the result
Guests read the top of a page hardest and the first two items of any list hardest of all. Boxing, whitespace and a single well-written descriptive line each lift orders measurably. Price columns, dollar signs and trailing zeros invite comparison shopping down the page; plain numbers reduce it.
Typical outcomes
Two to four points of food cost recovered without supplier changes
Higher check average from sequencing, description and category discipline
A costed recipe library your kitchen keeps and maintains
A quarterly routine that stops plate costs drifting again
Restaurant operations consultingService quality that swings with the rush, or with who is on shift, is an operations problem. We rebuild the routines — prep, pars, handoffs, schedules and standards — so a good night is the default rather than the outcome of heroics.Operations · what it covers, what it costs, what moves
What we rebuild
Adoption is the deliverable
Who this is for
What we rebuild
Operations work is unglamorous and it compounds. Prep sheets that reflect real usage stop the kitchen from making twice what it sells on a Tuesday. Par levels tied to hourly sales stop the walk-in from absorbing cash. Written opening and closing routines mean a new hire produces the same result as a five-year veteran by week three.
Front and back of house SOPs, written for your team
Prep sheets and par levels built from real usage data
Labor model driven by forecast covers and sales per labor hour
Shift rhythms, handoffs and station mapping
Adoption is the deliverable
A recipe card nobody uses saves nothing, and a schedule template nobody maintains lasts one busy week. We train on live service, run the first weeks of counts and forecasts alongside your managers, and hand over a weekly scorecard that shows prime cost, sales per labor hour and variance against par.
Typical outcomes
Consistent service regardless of which team is on
Labor hours matched to forecast rather than habit
Less waste through pars and prep sheets built on real data
Managers back on the floor instead of in spreadsheets
Profitability and margin improvementBusy room, disappointing bottom line. It is the most common brief we get, and the fix is almost never one big thing — it is six or seven points recovered across food, beverage, labor, purchasing and waste, then held with a weekly number.Profitability · what it covers, what it costs, what moves
Line by line, not across the board
Holding the gain
Who this is for
Line by line, not across the board
Blanket cost-cutting shrinks the plate and the welcome, and guests notice both faster than they notice a dollar on a price. Margin work that lasts is specific: which dishes contribute, which suppliers have drifted, which shifts are overstaffed against forecast, which categories carry the variance.
Prime cost calculated correctly, then tracked weekly by day-part
Menu and beverage pricing rebuilt on contribution margin
Supplier consolidation and contract renegotiation
Par levels, counting discipline and waste tracking by category
Holding the gain
Most margin projects decay because reporting stays monthly. Monthly numbers tell you what happened; weekly numbers let you fix it while the month is still in play. We stand up a one-page weekly scorecard — prime cost, sales per labor hour, variance against par — and train managers to run it without us.
Typical outcomes
Five to eight points of prime cost recovered in the first two quarters
Supplier pricing benchmarked and renegotiated
Delivery and discounting decisions made on real contribution
A weekly reporting rhythm that keeps the gain from drifting back
Food truck consulting for mobile kitchens and route operatorsA food truck has all the same cost pressures as a restaurant, but none of the same room to hide them. Storage is tight, stops are short, and the menu has to earn its shelf space every single service. We build route economics, menu-rightsizing and per-stop cost models that turn a chaotic schedule into a predictable weekly profit.Food truck consulting · what it covers, what it costs, what moves
What food truck consulting covers
From one truck to a scalable route
Who this is for
What food truck consulting covers
Most trucks call us when the product is strong but the profit is not. The menu is too broad for the refrigerator, the best stops barely cover prep labor, and the route calendar is built around habit rather than economics. We start with the numbers: sales per stop, food cost per serving, labor per service window and permit cost per event.
Route calendar scored by permit cost, crowd and menu fit
Menu-rightsizing for storage, speed and contribution margin
Per-stop costing and break-even targets
Prep and par levels built for each service window
From one truck to a scalable route
Single-truck operators usually need the basics: a menu that fits the equipment and a route that makes money. Multi-truck operators need standards that survive without the owner on every stop — recipe cards, prep sheets, truck opening and closing routines, and a single weekly scorecard that compares every stop and every truck.
Typical outcomes
Food waste reduced by fifteen to twenty percent through menu-rightsizing
Profit per stop lifted by ten to twenty percent on modeled routes
A route calendar that weighs economics instead of habit
One weekly scorecard that tracks every truck and every stop
Hospitality management: we run your establishment for youSome owners do not need advice — they need someone to run the place. Under a management engagement, HGA takes day-to-day operational command of your restaurant, bar, bistro or coffee shop while you keep ownership and the profit. One written standard, a named manager on site, senior oversight above them, and a monthly report you can actually trust.Hospitality management · what it covers, what it costs, what moves
What full management covers
How the arrangement works
Who this is for
What full management covers
We assume the operating seat. That means the daily decisions an owner or a strong general manager would make — who works Friday, what gets ordered, what the food and pour cost are allowed to be, how a bad table is recovered — are made by us, to a standard agreed with you in writing before we start.
Day-to-day floor and kitchen command: opening, closing, service standards, guest recovery
People: hiring, scheduling, payroll oversight, training and performance management
Money: purchasing and vendor contracts, inventory and counts, prime-cost control, cash handling
Compliance and admin: licensing, health and safety, insurance renewals, POS and systems
How the arrangement works
We start with a diagnostic and handover: two to three weeks reading the P&L, the POS export, the schedule, supplier invoices and the current team, and observing live service. That produces the operating standard — the written document that defines targets, controls and decision authority for the engagement.
Typical outcomes
A venue that runs to one written standard instead of the memory of whoever is on shift
Prime cost held to an agreed target and reviewed weekly, not discovered at month end
Owner time freed from daily operations without losing control of the business
A monthly owner report you can hand to a lender, a partner or a buyer
A restaurant consulting firm that works on the floorMost owners searching for a restaurant consulting firm have already been sold a report. This page is about the difference between firms that hand you a document and firms that stay until the numbers move — what each type actually does, what the work costs, and the questions worth asking before you sign anything.Restaurant consulting firms · what it covers, what it costs, what moves
The three kinds of restaurant consulting firm
What to ask before you hire any firm
What food and beverage consulting firms typically charge
The three kinds of restaurant consulting firm
The category is broad enough to be almost meaningless without a qualifier. At one end sit the large hospitality advisory practices, usually attached to a real estate or accounting firm. They are excellent at feasibility studies, valuations and market analysis for groups opening at scale, and they are expensive because a partner scopes the work and an analyst delivers it. If you are financing a fifteen-unit rollout, that is the right call.
Large advisory practices — feasibility, valuation, market studies, multi-unit strategy
Operator-led firms — diagnostic, hands-on rebuild, implementation on site
What to ask before you hire any firm
The questions below separate firms quickly, and none of them are hostile. A good firm will answer all of them without hesitating, because the answers are how it wins work.
Who does the work — the person in this meeting, or someone I have not met?
How many years have you personally run a P&L in an operating establishment?
How many days will you be on site, and during service or only during the day?
What is the fee, in full, and what would make it change?
Typical outcomes
A clear read on which type of firm your problem actually calls for
A fee you agreed in writing before the work started, not one that grew
Changes that are running in the building rather than described in a document
A weekly scorecard your team maintains after the engagement ends
Bar and restaurant consulting under one engagementPlenty of venues are a restaurant and a bar at the same time, and the two halves are usually managed as if they were separate businesses that happen to share a roof. That is where the margin goes. This is a single engagement covering both — plate cost and pour cost, shared labor, one combined prime cost.Bar and restaurant consulting · what it covers, what it costs, what moves
Why running both halves separately costs you money
What a combined engagement covers
Formats we work with
Why running both halves separately costs you money
A venue with a strong bar and a strong kitchen has two cost structures with completely different rhythms. Food runs at a higher cost percentage and a lower margin per dollar; beverage runs at a lower cost percentage and carries the profit. When they are reviewed separately, the kitchen gets squeezed to hit a food cost target while the bar quietly loses four points of pour cost that nobody is measuring, because the bar has always felt like the profitable side.
Beverage margin subsidising a kitchen nobody has re-costed in two years
Pour cost unmeasured because the bar 'always makes money'
Bar and floor scheduled separately, so both peak-staff the same hour
Menu and drinks list priced in isolation from each other
What a combined engagement covers
We treat the venue as one P&L. The diagnostic reads both sides together: item-level POS across food and beverage, twelve to twenty-four months of accounts, supplier invoices for both, the current schedule across all departments, and live observation of two or three services — including a slow midweek one and a full Friday, because those are the two shifts that expose different problems.
Plate-level costing across the food menu, modifiers included
Pour cost by category, with variance tracking and a counting routine that survives a busy week
Drinks list rebuilt around contribution margin, not just perceived value
One labor model covering kitchen, bar and floor against forecast trade
Typical outcomes
One combined prime cost target instead of two departments defending their own
Pour cost measured, benchmarked and held rather than assumed to be fine
A single labor model across kitchen, bar and floor built on forecast trade
Menu and drinks list priced against current invoices and contribution margin
Restaurant turnaround consultant in TexasWe take on Texas restaurants where sales are still there and the margin is gone — Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. The work is diagnostic first, then hands-on in your building during real trading hours, until the change survives a Friday without us standing in it.Texas turnaround · what it covers, what it costs, what moves
What a Texas turnaround engagement looks like
Why Texas margin drifts
On the ground across the state
What a Texas turnaround engagement looks like
A turnaround is not a report. We read twelve to twenty-four months of P&L, an item-level POS export, the schedule, the lease and invoices from your top suppliers, then observe two or three services live — including a slow one — before anything is recommended. The output is a sized gap: what the establishment should keep at its current sales, what it keeps, and where the difference goes.
Cash position and thirteen-week outlook before anything else
Plate-level costing on the top fifty sellers
Menu rebuilt around contribution margin, not price increases
Labor model driven by forecast covers and sales per labor hour
Why Texas margin drifts
Rents in the strongest Dallas and Austin corridors have moved faster than check averages, new competition opens quarterly, and experienced kitchen leadership stays scarce and expensive. Operators comfortable at 62 percent prime cost three years ago are frequently north of 68 today without having changed a thing.
Typical outcomes
Prime cost down four to eight points inside the first quarter
A thirteen-week cash view the owner actually maintains
Labor scheduled against forecast rather than habit
Weekly numbers that surface problems while the month is still in play
Bar consultant in FloridaWe work with bars, cocktail rooms and beverage-led restaurants across Florida — Miami–Dade, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa Bay and Jacksonville — on pour cost, list design and the seasonal labor swings that decide whether a strong winter survives the summer.Florida bars · what it covers, what it costs, what moves
Where Florida bar margin leaks
How the engagement runs
Who we work with here
Where Florida bar margin leaks
Beverage is the highest-margin category in hospitality and the easiest to lose without noticing. Free pour typically costs a bar three to six points against jigger or metered service, wine by the glass loses yield to an unmeasured hand, and draft lines give up eight to twelve percent to foam and cleaning where nobody counts.
Pour cost by category with weekly variance reporting
Cocktail list engineered by contribution and popularity
Wine-by-the-glass yield and pricing rebuilt
Draft line yield, keg waste and par levels
How the engagement runs
We cost every pour at your actual invoice prices — spirit, mixer, juice, syrup, garnish, ice and glassware — then rank the list against twelve weeks of POS mix. Profitable drinks move to the top of each section and into every bartender recommendation; low-margin volume sellers are re-specified or re-priced; the rest come off.
Typical outcomes
Pour cost measured weekly with variance by category
A cocktail list ranked and laid out around contribution
A staffing model that flexes with the season instead of fighting it
Four to eight points of beverage margin without a headline price rise
Coffee shop consulting in South CarolinaWe work with independent coffee shops and small café groups across South Carolina — Charleston, Greenville, Columbia and Myrtle Beach — on the two numbers that decide a café's year: labor at the peak and margin per drink.South Carolina coffee · what it covers, what it costs, what moves
Why coffee margin behaves differently
The South Carolina picture
How we work with café owners
Why coffee margin behaves differently
Coffee is a labor business with a beverage attached. Labor typically runs 30 to 35 percent of sales — above cost of goods — because tickets are small and the peak is short and unforgiving. One barista too many across an eight-hour day is a meaningful share of a $1,200 sales day; one too few at 8am costs you the queue.
Drink costing including milk, syrup, cup, lid and sleeve
Peak-hour staffing built from transaction curves, not weekly totals
Throughput and bar layout for tickets per hour
Food and retail attachment to raise average ticket
The South Carolina picture
Charleston and Myrtle Beach carry heavy tourist seasonality, so a café's summer and shoulder seasons need different schedules and different par levels. Greenville and Columbia run more on weekday commuter and campus patterns, where the morning peak is sharper and the afternoon is thin enough to justify a reduced bar.
Typical outcomes
Labor scheduled against the transaction curve, not the week
Every drink costed to the cup, lid and sleeve
Higher average ticket through food and retail attachment
A seasonal plan for Charleston and coastal trading swings
Hiring a restaurant consultant: what to expect and what to askMost owners only hire a restaurant consultant once, usually while the margin is already hurting. This page sets out what the work involves, what it costs, the questions worth asking any firm you speak to, and how to tell after ninety days whether the money did anything.Hiring a consultant · what it covers, what it costs, what moves
What restaurant consultants actually do
Questions to ask before you sign anything
What it costs and when it pays back
What restaurant consultants actually do
A useful consultant is not a strategist with a deck. The job is to find where the money leaves the building and then rebuild the system that let it leave — plate costs, the labor model, purchasing discipline, or the reporting rhythm that would have caught the drift months earlier.
Diagnose the gap between what the restaurant should keep and what it keeps
Re-cost the menu plate by plate, including modifiers and waste
Rebuild scheduling around forecast covers and sales per labor hour
Consolidate purchasing, set pars and restore counting discipline
Questions to ask before you sign anything
The answers separate operators from packagers. Ask who is physically in your building and how often — some firms sell a senior name and send a junior analyst. Ask whether the fee is fixed against a written scope or billed hourly, because an hourly meter rewards slow work and puts the owner in charge of the budget.
Who is on site, how many days, and at what seniority?
Is the fee fixed against a written scope, or hourly?
What documents and systems do I own when we finish?
Which numbers will we judge this by, and measured how?
Typical outcomes
A sized, evidence-backed gap before you commit to any scope
A fixed fee against a written scope, with no hourly meter
Documents, recipes and reporting formats you own outright
Results judged on prime cost and cash, not on deliverables
