Operator-led restaurant consulting for Tampa Bay multi-unit groups, from Hyde Park and Westshore to Ybor City and St. Petersburg.
Across Tampa Bay the symptom repeats: the food did not change, the service did not change, and the reviews got harder anyway. Years of relocations have filled its dining rooms with people who used to eat out in New York, Chicago and Miami, and they brought those standards with them. Most operations were built for the bar before they arrived.
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
Accountable to the guest’s verdict
Holding one standard across units, with the P&L that pays for it, is work we have done. Training, standards and systems get built with your team on both sides of the water, and the guest’s verdict is the measure we answer to.
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
Your locations answer to different guests now
The Hyde Park unit is holding and the St. Pete location keeps missing, or the downtown restaurant draws the new arrivals while an older location keeps serving the Tampa that was here before them.
We find where each unit stands against the expectations of the guest it serves (pricing, service standard, concept fit) and rebuild the operation for the market it is in.
You’re growing into a market that expects more than the one you built in
The playbook that earned your first units their following was written for a more forgiving Tampa. Every new opening now faces the upgraded guest on day one, and a standard that was good enough in 2018 reads as ordinary against what the relocations brought with them.
We raise the operating standard before the next opening tests it, so growth builds the reputation instead of spending it.
The new guest meets the restaurant that still needs you
You’ve built something that works, and it still holds together only when you are there: a risk when the bar is rising and the version of the restaurant that runs without you is the one most guests now meet.
The operation your best night proves has to be the one every night delivers. Your managers learn to score a shift against that night, so a gap shows up the week it opens, not in a review.
For investors
Has the operation kept up with the guest?
A group riding the relocation boom can show strong top-line growth while its operating standard falls behind the market’s: a gap that reaches the guest data long before the P&L an investor is underwriting.
The read we bring says whether the operation can hold the standard this market now demands, or whether the growth is borrowing against it.
How the engagement runs in Tampa Bay
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 the standard each unit is measured against, because you cannot see it from the numbers: a Water Street dinner and a Central Avenue dinner on the same weekend, judged the way each guest judges them. Dallas–Fort Worth is a direct flight.
Two cities, one bay, and a bar that keeps rising
The guest, and what that guest expects, shifts across the bay. A concept built for downtown Tampa’s relocation crowd is not automatically a fit for a St. Petersburg guest across the water.
Water Street & downtown Tampa
The built-from-scratch downtown district, still proving out block by block: high rents, a corporate and convention guest, and expectations set by out-of-state arrivals. The occupancy cost demands volume, and the guest here judges it against the last big city they lived in.
Channelside & the waterfront
Cruise, event, and residential redevelopment. Volume arrives with the cruise schedule and the arena, and the visitor and the new resident expect different things from the same restaurant.
Hyde Park & SoHo
Established, walkable neighborhood dining off Bayshore, with a local guest who comes back weekly and notices a slip before any review does.
Westshore
The region’s business district: airport-adjacent, hotel-heavy, and expense-account-driven, with a weekday lunch and corporate-dinner rhythm that lives on business travel.
Ybor City
Historic, nightlife-weighted, and tourism-driven, with volume that spikes late and on weekends, and a late crowd that tests whether the kitchen and the standard hold past midnight.
St. Petersburg & Central Avenue
Across the bay, an arts-driven, independent, chef-forward scene along Central and the Grand Central District: a different guest than downtown Tampa, more local, more loyal, and quick to spot a concept that was designed for somewhere else.
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 check rose, and so did every fixed cost
The new Tampa Bay guest has eaten at a higher standard, pays a big-city check without flinching, and expects the room, the service, and the plate to justify it.
When the plate does not justify the check, the weekly report is the last to know: repeat visits soften first, and the reviews follow.
The squeeze comes from the cost side at the same time. Rents reprice upward with the demand, and property-insurance premiums since the 2022 and 2024 hurricane seasons have climbed enough to move the fixed-cost line on their own: money that used to be available for the training and staffing depth the new standard requires.
Raising the operation to the new bar
We close the expectations gap from the operations side:
- Rewriting the steps of service and the pre-shift to the check the new guest is paying.
- Absorbing rising rents and insurance premiums without cutting what the standard depends on.
- Fitting each location to the guest it serves: corporate Westshore, neighborhood Hyde Park, independent St. Pete.
- Training each new unit’s team to the upgraded bar before its first service.
- Coaching each manager to hold the bar on the nights the director of operations is on the other side of the bay.
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.