All Posts

The feeling of a beautifully executed service is unmistakable, and anyone who’s contributed to a busy, successful restaurant knows it well. Everything worked as intended. The training you established, the leadership on the line, the efficient prep system your team developed, the bar program you built, the clientele you fostered, the equipment you maintained, and 300 other moving parts came together to create an immersive, memorable experience for your guests. You walked out a

This post is a working operator’s guide to prime cost. What it is, how to calculate it, what good looks like, and how to use it as the steering wheel of your business instead of a number you check once a month after the books close. What prime cost actually is Prime cost is the sum of your cost of goods sold (COGS) and your total labor cost, expressed as a percentage of total sales. In other words, what percentage of your revenue goes to the cost of goods and labor. The formu

Ask most operators what a bad hire costs them and you’ll get a shrug and a guess. “A few weeks of training time.” “Whatever I paid them.” Maybe a recognition that it was a hassle. The actual number is much higher than that, and the reason most operators underestimate it is that almost all of the cost is invisible until you go looking for it. The wages you paid the bad hire are the smallest piece. The real damage is in the people around them, the guests they touched, the opera

This is the second in a series of articles aimed at taking your wine program to the next level. Stay tuned for more in depth writing on how to sell wine and deep dives into wine regions and varietals. The first post in this series made the case for why your wine program deserves more attention than most independent operators are giving it. This post is about the work itself. How to actually build out a list that performs, and how to price what's on it so the program actually

Before they’ve spoken to anyone, seen a menu, or taken a bite, your guests are judging your operation. They’ve decided whether they can trust you. Whether they can relax. Whether they are going to enjoy themselves and your hospitality or spend the next two hours looking for problems. Theme parks, luxury hotels, and immersive entertainment venues have known this for decades. They build entire operations around the moment of arrival because they understand that what happens in

This is the first in a series of articles aimed at taking your wine program to the next level. Stay tuned for more in depth writing on how to build out your list, how to sell wine, and deep dives into wine regions and varietals. Wine is too often an afterthought in independent restaurants. Most lists were built by a liquor rep prior to opening. They suggested 10-12 bottles, the owner said yes to most of them, the menus went to the printer and then settled into the background

Scheduling is one of the most consequential tasks on a restaurant manager’s plate, and often one of the least systematized. As a lever that directly controls how you spend about 30% of your business’s budget, systemizing its creation and building it with intention is extremely important, and one of the fastest ways you can make improvements to both the financials and the day to day operations of your restaurant. Systemizing it also will cut down the time you spend on what is

Restaurant operators too often treat menu construction as an afterthought. Your menus play a crucial role in driving guest decisions without any extra effort from your staff. As the first thing your guests see when sitting down, they contribute greatly to their first impression and overall immersion. Their design - where items live on the menu - also drives decisions. It is important that you use that to your advantage, and not let those decisions be accidental or even harmfu

Picture this - Your restaurant is busy, the reviews are solid, and your food has legitimate buzz. Sales have improved year over year and you’ve started to build a great community of regular customers. From an outside perspective, you’re doing everything right. But you still feel like you’re losing ground. Margins are razor thin and the stress is constant. You and your team are grinding, working hard every day, but something still feels off. Sound familiar? You’re running int