Development & Expansion
Owner-side oversight from site selection through construction, and hands-on opening and stabilization, so a new unit opens strong, not just open.
In this domain: Development & Project ManagementOpening Support & Stabilization
A new location puts an operator in a role they never signed up for, managing architects, contractors, landlords, and vendors while still running the restaurants that pay for all of it. Into that vacuum walks the GC’s optimistic calendar, and too often it quietly becomes the operating plan: hiring, training, and vendor onboarding all pegged to a completion date that was never going to hold. Development and expansion exists to take that role back: owner-side oversight from site through construction, and hands-on management of the first ninety days. It is the operating half of expansion: prove the unit, then commit to the next one.
The two halves of the domain meet at a specific moment: the keys turn over. Before that day, the risk lives in the building: the site, the lease, the floor plan, every decision made for construction convenience that the team will pay for on every shift after. From that day forward, the risk lives in the operation: the hiring ramp, the training, the first ninety days that decide whether a unit opens strong or spends its first year recovering. One seat has to own both sides of that handoff, with development expertise and operational judgment in the same head. That is the seat this domain fills.
The instrument that holds it together is a calendar built backward from opening day: LOI → permitting → FF&E lead times → hiring ramp → training → soft open → the 30/60/90 stabilization read — every step sequenced from opening day back, against the dates that actually move, not the dates on the GC’s schedule. Site selection gets the same rigor: trade area, competitive density, and lease terms tested against the concept’s real unit economics before signature, not after. When the calendar holds, opening week is uneventful, which is the entire point. And once the doors open and the numbers settle, the work changes names: it becomes operations and the bench, which is exactly where a well-run opening should hand off.
Tell us what’s breaking.
Take the Diagnostic →Thirty to forty-five minutes, with the Straight Read back within 48 hours.
Where Groups Call Us
The lease is signed and the organization is not ready
The site is good, the deal made sense, and the team that has to staff and run it does not exist yet. A signed lease starts a clock the org chart cannot always match, and the gap between them is where new units struggle in month one.
We build the readiness plan against the same critical-path calendar as the construction schedule, so the team is trained and in place before the doors open, not assembled after.
The GC’s schedule quietly became the operating plan
Nobody decided it. But hiring is pegged to a completion date, training is pegged to hiring, and the vendor onboarding is pegged to all of it, so when the contractor slips three weeks, the whole opening slips with it, and the carrying costs run while everyone waits on a punch list.
We rebuild the calendar backward from opening day, against the dates that actually move, and hold the construction schedule to it, so a slip in the building becomes a problem for the project manager, not for the operating plan.
The pipeline is outrunning the bench
Deals are moving faster than the leadership pipeline can supply ready GMs, and each new signing lowers the bar for who gets the keys. That trade rarely shows up in the deal memo. It shows up eighteen months later in the P&L.
We pace the opening calendar against real bench depth, so the growth rate reflects who is actually ready to run a unit, not just how many leases you can sign.
The Record
Outcomes from two decades inside multi-unit restaurant operations. Owned from the operating seat, not advised from outside.
$39M
New revenue: three large-format launches in 12 months. And not one of them drained the units around it.
Selected Outcomes →