Every item priced, costed and bought against what it earns.
We work backward from the product mix and cut the items that are on the menu only because nobody wanted to take them off.
What stays goes on a critique log, one line per item, for problems like the portion guests leave on the plate or the dish called spicy that is not. Leadership writes the problem, the chef writes the fix, and the problem closes only when leadership has tasted the fix and approved it.
In the full-service and high-volume restaurants we have run, a daily taste plate holds the menu to spec. Two dishes and a drink are scored before lunch and again before dinner, cooked the way the guest receives them.
Proteins are bought against the plate: each supplier’s bid is judged on its plate cost once yield is counted, and the lowest price per pound does not always win.
Tell us what’s breaking.
Bring the menu, a month of product mix and your costing.
Book a call with Jon (opens in a new tab)Start with an install
The install re-engineers the menu you have, item by item, and hands your chef the change routine. This engagement adds the tasting and feature calendar, the protein buying and the beverage program.
Nothing comes off the menu until its prep is traced.
Skip the trace, and the kitchen keeps prepping for a dish that is gone. Its own components stay on the prep list, and the ones it shared with other plates stay at the old par.
Two numbers show whether a cut worked, and both get read every week: theoretical food cost against actual, category by category, and the ticket times at the Friday peak. The chef and the GMs run the product-mix read with us, then run it alone.
Example scope of work
Examples of what the scope can include; yours is written to the problem you bring.
The menu
- Menu profitability: each category’s share of sales, every discount and happy-hour program costed item by item, and in every category, the item carrying the most food-cost dollars.
- Daypart profitability: sales, checks, average check and labor by the hour, before any daypart is kept, cut or broken out.
- Written case for every menu change: whether it is change for its own sake, what the product mix says, its fit with the brand and its effect on prep, cost and purchasing.
- Pricing for every item: share of the mix, plate cost and penny profit at today’s price, with a recommended price and the cost percentage it would produce.
- Spec card for every dish and component: its flavor, appearance, texture, temperature and portion, and the way it most often goes wrong on the line.
- Tasting and feature calendar: each season’s new items run as lunch or dinner features on set days, cooked in service before they are printed.
- Rollout guide for every change: dates, adds and cuts down to prep and ingredient, station routing, purchasing and smallwares, the servers’ spiel points, and every team member tested and signed off on the new items before launch.
Purchasing
- Weekly purchase-price tracker: vendor, item, contract terms and a rolling run of weekly prices by category, read before a special or a price is set.
- Whole-muscle against pre-portioned cost: each cut costed with its trim yield and butchering labor, so the kitchen butchers in-house only the cuts that pay for it.
- Protein supplier RFP: grade, cut, aging, price by item, contract terms and yield.
The bar
- Beverage program review: every cocktail tasted for balance and costed bottle to ounce, syrups and batches written as recipes, and the classics built to one spec.
- Wine and spirits lists against sales: each bottle’s sales set against its shelf inventory, and both lists audited monthly for price.
How it runs: a standing weekly call with your managers, and time on site where the work needs it.
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 written case and the rollout date come first, then the first tasting, where the chefs cook for and correct each other |
| 02 | Senior leadership tastes at the second, where plate cost is reviewed and each dish gets a proposed price |
| 03 | The third tasting brings in marketing, training and IT, and the menu locks until launch |
| 04 | One unit runs the change first |
| 05 | Every unit then sends photographs of each dish made to spec three days before launch, and gets a visit before it goes live |
| 06 | Done when the chef costs the next change without us |
If this is the problem, bring it.
The call works out where the fix starts.
Book a call with Jon (opens in a new tab)Common questions
Will you cut the dishes our regulars come for?
Does the chef lose creative control in menu engineering?
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.