Restaurant consulting in Raleigh-Durham
Operator-led restaurant consulting for Triangle multi-unit groups, from downtown Raleigh and Durham to Cary and the RTP lunch rush.
The common misread of the Triangle is that cheaper rent makes it an easier market. Occupancy costs here run below Charlotte’s and well below what national capital has done to Nashville’s.
The demand underneath it is durable. Research Triangle Park’s corporate campuses generate a weekday lunch-and-catering volume the rest of the Triangle doesn’t have. Duke and its health system, among the region’s largest employers, anchor Durham.
Durham’s downtown has earned a food-destination reputation that travels. The failure mode here is imported, not native: groups arriving with thin-margin, high-rent playbooks built for boomtowns, running boomtown math in a market that never asked for it.
Who runs it
RANGE was founded by Jon Peck, who spent twenty years running multi-unit restaurant groups: eight brands built and scaled, twelve openings across six concepts in three years, and more than $100 million of annual P&L owned.
Why RANGE
The upside is in how it runs
When occupancy cost is not eating the P&L, the gap between a thin unit and a strong one is almost entirely how it is run: prime cost, scheduling, waste, execution. Those lines get built with your managers.
Tell us what’s breaking.
Thirty minutes with Jon. The fastest way to find out whether RANGE can help.
Book a call with Jon (opens in a new tab)When groups call
The rent is low and the margin isn’t showing it
At these occupancy costs the bottom line should show it, and when it does not, the difference is hiding in operations: prime cost drifting, schedules built loose because the rent never forced the issue, waste nobody has had to count.
We find where the rent advantage is being spent instead of kept, line by line, and rebuild the discipline that converts it into margin.
You arrived with a playbook built for higher rents
Groups expanding into the Triangle from hotter markets often import the whole model: aggressive pricing, thin-margin volume math, a labor structure built to survive a rent this market does not charge. It reads as expensive to the guest and leaves the market’s advantage unclaimed.
We rebuild the pricing and labor model for this cost structure and this guest, so the Triangle units outperform the originals instead of imitating them.
The Durham unit and the Cary unit can’t both need you tonight
Across Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, the standard is whatever you check on the night you are there. That becomes a ceiling as the group adds a fourth location on the far side of the Triangle.
A downtown Durham Friday and a Cary family Tuesday are different nights with one brand between them. Each manager learns the standard for their own guest, and the weekly review compares the two so neither drifts.
For investors
Is the low rent hiding a loose operation?
Low occupancy costs can make a loose operation look healthy. The rent line is forgiving enough to hide discipline problems that a harder market would have exposed years ago. That is what an investor should want surfaced before pricing the deal.
We separate the margin that is discipline from the margin that is the rent doing the work, so the deal is priced on what the operation earns, not what the rent forgives.
How the engagement runs in the Triangle
Most of the engagement runs on a weekly cadence, wherever you are: the numbers, the scorecard, the standing call with your managers. Time on site is scoped to what the work needs and built into the fee, never metered on top.
What earns a trip is a walk-in and a schedule: the rent dividend gets spent in the count and the labor plan, and one visit across Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill shows where. Dallas–Fort Worth is home base.
Where the Triangle’s margin lives
The rent advantage runs metro-wide, but the demand comes in different shapes (RTP’s weekday corporate volume, Durham’s destination restaurants, Chapel Hill’s semester calendar), and each takes different work.
Research Triangle Park corridor
The corporate campuses: a weekday lunch-and-catering engine tied to the office calendar. The daypart mix decides the P&L here, and a group that engineers for it owns some of the most reliable revenue in the region.
Downtown Durham
A revitalized historic downtown: American Tobacco Campus, a chef-driven reputation, and a guest base anchored by Duke and its health system.
Downtown Raleigh & Glenwood South
The state-capital core: Fayetteville Street and the Warehouse District by day, Glenwood South’s nightlife by night, with a young-professional-and-government guest. Growing fast, with rents climbing off a lower base.
Chapel Hill & Carrboro
A college town on the UNC calendar: Franklin Street energy, academic-year swings, and a Carrboro independent streak. Volume moves with the semester and the labor pool moves with it, so the schedule has to be built around both.
Cary & Morrisville
Master-planned tech-worker suburbs next to RTP: family dayparts, national-chain density, and a well-off guest who compares every check to the chain across the parking lot.
North Hills
Raleigh’s master-planned ‘Midtown’: an upscale, mixed-use district built as a walkable second downtown, with retail-anchored dining and checks that run higher than in the suburbs around it.
If this is the problem, bring it.
Thirty minutes with Jon. The first call is free.
Book a call with Jon (opens in a new tab)The operating case
Low rent is a dividend, not a discount
Occupancy cost is the one P&L line an operator cannot fix after signing, and here it starts low. That changes the whole strategy. In Nashville or Miami, discipline is survival. The rent takes the margin unless the operation claws it back.
Here, discipline is a dividend: prime cost held tight, schedules built to the demand curve, waste counted. Every point of it lands as profit instead of closing a gap the rent opened.
Collecting what the rent leaves
Keeping the rent advantage takes work on every line the rent does not touch:
- Rebuilding prime-cost discipline (food, labor, waste) so the rent advantage reaches the bottom line instead of funding loose operations.
- Engineering the daypart mix around RTP’s weekday corporate volume where the group serves it.
- Scheduling to the UNC academic calendar where the college-town rhythm drives both volume and the labor supply.
- Re-basing pricing and unit economics for this cost structure.
How we help
- Restaurant management consulting Senior operating judgment beside your team, accountable for what changes.
- Fractional COO A senior operator in the role until your own leader can hold it.
- Restaurant turnaround When comps slide, the fix is almost always operational. We build it with your managers.
- Restaurant growth strategy Where to grow next, sequenced to what your managers can already run.