Stabilize & Rebuild
When same-store sales are sliding or margins are slipping, the fix is almost always operational, and it happens on the floor, in the numbers, not in a diagnosis you file and forget.
A restaurant turnaround is the structured recovery of a struggling operation: find the real cause of the slide (traffic, frequency, check average, or execution), stabilize the operation, then rebuild the few things that actually move the business. Most struggling restaurants don’t have a concept problem; they have an execution problem that’s been treated as everything but. Comps slide and the instinct is to discount, add to the menu, or spend on marketing. And the most expensive mistake in a turnaround is a confident fix aimed at the wrong cause.
RANGE leads turnarounds from inside the operation. We find the real problem first, because the fix for each cause is completely different. Then we stabilize the operation and rebuild the few things that actually move the business, in the order it can absorb.
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Who takes the seat
RANGE was founded by Jon Peck, twice a Chief Operating Officer. Most recently at FB Society, and before that at Vandelay Hospitality Group.
A turnaround is not advice. It is someone standing in the operator’s seat with agreed decision rights, on a daily cadence, answerable for the numbers that move. That is a named person, not a firm. And it is the reason the authority question below is settled on day one rather than negotiated in the middle of it.
The Record
Outcomes from two decades inside multi-unit restaurant operations. Owned from the operating seat, not advised from outside.
+4.5%
Comparable sales, year over year, after a brand reposition
−200 bps
Labor as a share of sales, against the prior staffing model
22%
Store-level EBITDA margins held through an inflationary stretch
When you need a turnaround
The signals are usually clear, and usually operational:
- Same-store sales have stalled or are sliding, and the concept used to work.
- Margins are slipping. Labor or food cost has crept up and no one can say exactly why.
- Execution has drifted. Guest experience varies wildly by unit and by shift.
- A unit or two is dragging the whole group and consuming all of leadership’s attention.
- New ownership or capital needs the operation performing to the level the deal assumed.
The operational reset
A turnaround is a sequence, not a single move:
- Diagnose. Time in the units and in the numbers to find the real cause, not the symptom.
- Stabilize. Stop the bleeding: the labor model, the cost leaks, the execution failures hurting guests now.
- Rebuild. The few systems and standards that actually move comps and margin, sequenced to stick.
- Hand off. Leadership owns the recovery, with the playbook and the cadence to hold it.
Stabilization has a triage order, and the first two weeks follow it. Cash and vendor terms first (who has you on COD, who is about to cut you off), because a turnaround dies faster from a stopped delivery than from a slow month. Then the schedule against the real sales forecast, not last year’s. Then a menu-item contribution cut, because the bottom of the menu is often quietly funding the slide. Then the manager reset: who owns which number, reported by Friday.
What comes out of those weeks are artifacts, not advice: a labor model rebuilt against the forecast, a costed menu with the losers cut or repriced, a scorecard every manager reads the same way. In one stabilization, food-cost variance went from 8% to under 3%, not by squeezing the spec, but by closing the gap between the spec and the shift.
And the authority question gets settled on day one: the owner stays the owner. RANGE stands in the operator’s seat with decision rights agreed in the scope, on a daily cadence through the acute phase, then hands the cadence back.
The sequence is the same everywhere; the diagnosis never is. A Denver group coming off the boom, an Orlando operation whipsawed by visitor volume, and a Palm Beach room that makes its year in a season each break differently. The market read comes first.
What we won’t do
Honesty is part of the job. Some businesses are in trouble for reasons a turnaround can’t fix: a concept with no market, a location that can’t work, or a balance sheet that needs new capital more than it needs new operations. We’ll tell you that early, before you spend money chasing the wrong fix.
Where the concept is sound and the problem is operational (which is most of the time), the recovery is real, and it holds because your team builds it with us, shift by shift.