Restaurant consulting in Salt Lake City
Operator-led restaurant consulting for Salt Lake City multi-unit groups: beverage programs, labor models, and unit economics designed inside Utah’s liquor rules from day one, not retrofitted to them.
A Utah unit’s license decides what its bar can earn before anyone writes the drink list: licenses are limited, tied to population quotas, and carry food-sales requirements that shape how the program can be built.
The market moves fast underneath that framework. The Silicon Slopes corridor from Lehi to Draper keeps filling dining rooms with young, well-paid tech workers, while Park City swings a winter that can carry the year against shoulder seasons that have to be survived.
In Salt Lake the job is a beverage line built for the statute and labor sized to the swing, and your team builds both with us.
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
Tested after the lifts close
Anything built for a Park City February gets judged in May, when the lifts are closed and only the locals are left. Your managers run the program through that month with us.
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
One beverage line is carrying two rents
Pull beverage as a percentage of sales unit by unit and the pattern is usually plain: the downtown restaurant earns everything its license allows, while the Sugar House location runs a program that was never designed for its license type. So one bar is subsidizing two occupancy lines and the consolidated P&L calls it fine.
We read each unit’s beverage economics against what Utah’s framework permits it to earn, then rebuild the program, the pricing, and the mix where the gap lives.
You’re opening faster than the season can carry it
After a big Park City winter, a second mountain location or a valley expansion starts to look paid for. But a labor model sized for ski-season peaks loses money once the season ends, and Silicon Slopes wages make the valley hiring pool tighter.
The beverage and labor systems that hold across both the peak and the trough get built with your managers before the group commits to the next site, so growth strengthens the platform instead of doubling its seasonal exposure.
The business still needs you behind the bar
You built the beverage program and the standard yourself, and you are still the one holding both together.
A second manager at every unit learns the beverage program and the license math, so the margin holds on the nights you are somewhere else.
For investors
What do the numbers look like after ski season?
Ski-season numbers hide how exposed the beverage program or the labor model is the rest of the year.
We read what each unit keeps through the off-season before a term sheet is signed.
How the engagement runs in Salt Lake
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 in Utah is the license: a beverage program has to be read once against the license its unit holds, behind the bar. RANGE is based in Dallas–Fort Worth, a direct flight away.
Downtown, the Slopes and Park City keep different calendars
Convention weeks set downtown’s, the tech campuses set the Slopes’, and the snow sets Park City’s. A beverage program built for one can misfire in another.
Downtown Salt Lake City
The business, convention, and dining core around City Creek: expense-account and event volume, and a growing residential base.
Sugar House
Walkable, young-professional, and redeveloping, with rising rents and a beverage margin that depends on which license the unit holds.
9th & 9th and the east-side neighborhoods
Small independent districts where the regulars live a few blocks away and notice the first slip.
Silicon Slopes (Lehi to Draper)
The tech corridor south of the city: fast suburban growth and a weekday guest who comes from the corporate campuses.
Sandy & the south valley
Affluent, family-driven suburbs where the national chains set the baseline. An independent wins here by out-executing them, not out-spending them.
Park City
A resort-and-ski economy up the canyon: Main Street destination dining and high check tolerance in season.
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
The bar can’t cover for the kitchen
In Utah the beverage lever is set before the doors open, so when food cost or labor slips, the bar cannot make back what the kitchen loses.
Built around the license
Utah’s liquor rules and the ski calendar shape every line of the work:
- Designing beverage programs, and the margin around them, for Utah’s alcohol framework from the start.
- Sizing labor to the ski calendar, so the shoulder months cost what they earn.
- Opening new units whose license, bar program and schedule were planned as one decision.
- Building the managers who run downtown and Park City without the director of operations carrying both.
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.
Other markets
Florida
Mountain West
- Salt Lake City
- Denver
- Scottsdale & Phoenix
- Las Vegas