An operator beside you from the site search to the keys.
The architect, the contractor and the landlord are each making decisions about a restaurant you will run for ten years, while you run everything else.
We sit in those meetings with you, starting with the questions a landlord answers before you commit: what drawings exist, the size of the utility services, the age of the rooftop units, who handles demolition and what the signage criteria allow.
Tell us what’s next.
Bring the site, the lease draft and the build budget.
Book a call with Jon (opens in a new tab)The build is where operating costs get locked in.
The dining-room and equipment layouts get walked by an operator before the plans go to the engineers, because every station the drawing adds is a position to staff on every shift until the lease runs out.
The POS terminals and cameras go on the plan about sixteen weeks before opening, while moving one is still a pencil change.
The build cost is held against three numbers: the pro forma, the approved budget and the bid summary, category by category from sitework to smallwares, with the tenant-improvement allowance netted out so the variance against each is a cash number.
One calendar runs the whole build, from lease signing through the permit set, city approval and construction to the last day of training, because a delay hides for weeks when permitting, build-out and hiring run on separate calendars.
A hood or walk-in order is tracked from the day it is placed, and a change order is priced before it is approved. Every item, from the tile to the POS, carries a name for who specifies it and a name for who installs it.
Example scope of work
Examples of what the scope can include; yours is written to the problem you bring.
Before the lease
- Site criteria before the first tour: the square footage your prototype or concept brief sets, the dayparts the site must serve and the kind of center it belongs in.
- Real-estate assessment per site: conversion, prototype or free-standing, lease or own, and build cost per foot against what your open units earn per foot.
- Lease read before signing: rent by year, the percentage-rent breakpoint, CAM, delivery condition, the work letter, the TI allowance and rent commencement.
- Seating mix by table type: twos, fours, large and community tables, bar, lounge, patio and private rooms, set against the dollars per seat your units earn.
Every project
- Development pipeline with a gate per step: real-estate committee, LOI, lease, premises acceptance, kitchen design, permits, certificate of occupancy and key handover.
- Capital request per project: estimated cost, the sales it should add, the return and the quarter the money is spent, rolled into one cash-outlay plan across every project.
The build
- Kitchen equipment plan signed off by operations: the fabricator’s plan and the bar list read against the menu and the station list before anything is ordered.
- Plan review before the permit set: floor drains, electrical and network points, and TV and AV runs shown on the drawings, with the kitchen elevations issued.
- Contractor selection: bidders prequalified on bonding and the restaurants they have built, bids leveled line by line, and the equipment package bid on its own.
- Licenses on the build calendar: entity and tax registrations, the sales-tax permit ahead of the liquor application, then health, fire, signage and patio.
The handover
- Pre-inspection walks for every green tag: sprinkler, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, hood suppression, health and building, each ahead of the inspector.
- Site acceptance before key handover: drain lines jetted, videoed and smoke-tested, the grease trap pumped, and every piece of equipment and every walk-in run.
- Operator’s punch list, apart from the contractor’s: walked area by area with the manager who owns each, and signed by operations before the final payment.
- Closeout before the contractor leaves: manuals, warranties and as-builts in hand, maintenance scheduled by day of the week, and the warranty walk booked with your managers before the one-year warranty runs out.
How it runs: the weekly project meeting on the calendar and the budget, joined by call, and on site for the walks each gate turns on.
Fees are set by the scope and the value of the outcome, agreed before the work starts, with any time on site built in, never by the hour, the day or the visit.
The order of the work
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| 01 | The site criteria are written before a site is toured |
| 02 | The LOI waits on the real-estate assessment, and the lease on the lease read |
| 03 | From design to the key handover, one weekly meeting with every party |
| 04 | Done at opening, with the operator’s punch list signed and the closeout in hand |
If this is what’s next, bring it.
The call works out where the work starts.
Book a call with Jon (opens in a new tab)Further reading
Why the best site takes your best operatorCommon questions
What’s the reporting cadence during a build or rollout?
Aren’t you a fourth party at the table?
At what point in a project should we bring you in?
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.