Consulting / Restaurant Turnarounds
How to fix a restaurant that's losing money.
Turnaround consulting from the guy who took Burger King's worst district to best, then led the SWOT Team Burger King built to turn around its largest franchisees worldwide. Now he does it for owners who are tired of guessing. We find out why sales or profit fell, fix things in the order that pays back fastest, and stay until it shows up on the P&L.
Signs you need a turnaround
The problems usually aren't where owners think they are.
Owners blame the economy, the new place down the street or the weather. Sometimes that's real. More often the slide started inside the building: a service system nobody's holding, a menu that drifted, costs that crept up a point at a time.
- Sales are down year over year and you can't point to why
- You're busy, but there's no money at the end of the month
- Food or liquor cost is well over where it should be
- Reviews mention slow service, the same complaint, over and over
- Managers are working hard but nothing changes
- You're covering payroll from your own pocket
Our turnaround process
What we actually do
Read the numbers
Twelve to twenty-four months of sales, your P&L against budget, prime cost, product mix and labor by daypart. We compare your trend against the market so you know if the problem is you or the street.
Walk in as a guest
Greeting, pacing, check-ins, lighting, music, the to-go handoff. We document the guest experience step by step, the way your guests feel it.
Model the fix
Cash first, then cost, then the guest experience, then sales. Every fix comes with an FP&A model: upside and downside clearly defined, in dollars.
Deliver and track
Fixes built to run themselves or make the problem disappear: written standards, cost controls, schedules and a scorecard. Then weekly and monthly calls to track results against the model.
Reset the culture
Numbers follow culture. We reset the standard of hospitality in the room: how guests are greeted, how the team talks about them, what gets celebrated and what stops being tolerated. We run five award-winning rooms on exactly this.
Train the people
Service training, pre-shifts that actually teach, and manager coaching, so the fix lives in your team and not in a binder on a shelf.
Common questions
Restaurant turnaround FAQ
How do I know if my restaurant can be saved?
If the concept still has guests who love it and the location still has traffic, it's usually fixable. The real question is whether you have the cash runway to get through the fix. A diagnostic answers both in a couple of weeks.
What's the first thing you fix?
Cash. We look at prime cost (cost of goods plus labor) first because it's the biggest controllable number on your P&L and the fastest to move. Sales growth comes after the leaks are plugged, or you're just pouring more water into a bucket with a hole.
How long does a restaurant turnaround take?
Cost fixes often show up within one to two monthly closes. Guest experience and sales recovery take longer, usually a few months, because guests need to come back and notice.
Do I have to replace my manager?
Not necessarily. Often the GM has never been given a written system or held to one. We'd rather build the system and coach the person you have. If it's still not working after that, you'll know for sure.
What makes you different from other restaurant consultants?
You work with Zach directly, start to finish, and we stay on weekly calls until the numbers move. No camera crew, no seminar pitch, no handoff to a junior associate. And because we own and operate award-winning restaurants ourselves, the advice comes from someone who has to live by it. Owners are usually great at fixing other people's problems and blind in their own building. That outside set of eyes is the whole point.
Read: How to fix a restaurant that's losing money, step by step
