Hospitality Consulting
Busy is not the same as profitable.
Hospitality consulting for operators whose sales are strong but margins are not. Chef Chris Willis has spent over 30 years in kitchens like yours. He finds what is actually costing you, and fixes it with your team.
Where We Look
Where operations lose money, and how we get it back.
It shows up on the P&L as food cost, but the cause is rarely in the food alone. Sometimes it’s a menu that hasn’t been re-costed since the last round of vendor increases. Other times it’s a back-of-house issue, like undocumented kitchen standards where every departure takes you a step back, or stock levels based on instinct rather than sales.
Cost Control
Plate costing, menu engineering and repricing, with the specs and standardized recipes that hold the number in place.
What this includes →
Team Consistency
Documented standards taught station by station, plus trainers inside your team who keep it running after we leave.
What this includes →
Demand Planning
Demand forecasting and order quantities built from your own sales history, documented so anyone can run them.
What this includes →
Food cost, menu and recipe development
A menu is a cost structure that happens to be printed. Most of the ones we open are still priced against ingredient costs that no longer exist — and the gap between what a dish should make and what it does make is where the margin went.
The numbers are unforgiving. In 2025, the National Restaurant Association found 42% of operators reported their restaurant was not profitable. Food and labor each take roughly a third of every sales dollar, against a pre-tax margin of about 5%. Which means one point of food cost is roughly a fifth of your net profit.
What We Measure
Cost of goods plus total labor. The number most operators are judged on; 55% of sales is a widely used target.
What your recipes say you should have spent, given exactly what sold.
What you really spent, measured from a physical count.
The gap between the two, and the number most operators never see. It typically runs two to five percentage points, and it is where portioning drift, unrecorded waste, unchecked invoice prices and product that walked all hide.
What an ingredient costs after trim and cooking loss, rather than what the invoice says. A protein yielding 70% costs 43% more per usable pound than its purchase price.
What We Do
The work starts with your own numbers: P&Ls, POS sales mix, vendor invoices, recipes and order guides, and a walkthrough of the operation.
01Plate costing
Every item broken to ingredient level on a cost card — purchase cost, yield percentage, edible portion cost, cost per portion, and the margin that falls out. Costed on edible portion, because the trim you throw away is cost you already paid for.
02Yield and butcher testing
Measuring what a case actually delivers after trim and cooking loss, so the cost card reflects reality rather than the invoice.
03Sub-recipe costing
House-made components costed once and rolled into every dish that uses them. A house dressing appearing in six items carries its error into all six.
04Recipe standardization
Exact quantities, ordered method, yields, portion tools by size, hold times, allergen flags and a plate photo — so a dish is the same on Saturday as on Tuesday, and the same in unit four as in unit one.
05Kitchen flow
A menu has to be executable by the kitchen you actually have. We look at the line, the equipment and the station setup alongside the menu itself, because a dish that fights the flow of the room costs you time on every ticket.
06Menu engineering
Every item plotted on popularity against contribution margin, with a decision attached to each: keep, reprice, reformulate, reposition or cut.
07Pricing in dollars, not percentages
A 35% item earning $18 beats a 30% item earning $12. Percentage thinking has cost more operators more money than almost anything else on this page.
08Specs, order guides and vendor review
Written purchase specifications, a cleaned order guide, competitive bids, and an invoice audit against the prices you actually contracted.
09Portion control and waste
Calibrated tools, plate-up standards, and a waste log that captures what, how much and why at the moment it happens rather than from memory at close.
What You Get
- Costed recipe cards and a standardized recipe manual.
- A menu engineering matrix with a recommendation for every item.
- Purchase specification sheets, a rebuilt order guide and yield tests.
- A prioritized action plan with a dollar value against each item.
Chef and kitchen team training
Standards do not travel on their own. A group that runs beautifully in one location and badly in another usually does not have a talent problem — it has a documentation problem, then a training problem, and nobody has had a free week to solve either.
There is a measurable cost to that. The National Restaurant Association finds a fifth of all turnover happens in the first 45 days, and that employees who go through structured onboarding are 69% more likely to still be there in three years. Operators report it takes about 19 days to bring a new kitchen hire to competency against a target of 12 — and every one of those extra days is paid at full wage for partial output.
Why This Matters
FDA retail food risk factor studies found handwashing compliance in full-service restaurants at 24%, and found better control of risk factors in operations with a certified food protection manager on staff.
What We Do
The work starts on the line during real service: how your team actually runs, and what standards are already written down.
01Station training matrix
A grid of stations against people showing who can run what — untrained, training, can run with support, can run solo, can train others. It turns “we are thin on the line” into a countable gap you can schedule around.
02Written SOPs
Receiving, storage and rotation, thawing, batch prep, cooling, reheating, holding, line setup, breakdown and cleaning. The procedures that currently live in your chef’s head, on paper, where they survive his vacation.
03Line checks
Pre-service verification of food quality, portion tools and plateware, hot and cold holding temperatures, and station organization — built so a manager without deep culinary training can still run it on a morning the chef is off.
04Opening and closing checklists, prep lists and pars
Sequenced in the order the work actually happens, with a named owner on each line and a signature at the end — an unsigned checklist is a suggestion. Prep quantities set by day of week, because a Tuesday list is not a Friday list.
05Station-by-station training
against the documented standard, on the line during real service, with skills assessed against the recipe spec rather than a quiz.
06Train-the-trainer
Certifying people inside your team as designated trainers, with a method and sign-off authority. This is the part that decides whether anything holds six months after we leave.
07Young chef development and mentorship
Named pairings, a curriculum, and a path from station-competent to promotable — because the sous chef you develop is the search you do not have to run.
08Cleanliness and inspection readiness
Mock inspections scored against your local jurisdiction’s criteria, food safety procedures, temperature logging, allergen protocols, and preparation for accredited certification exams.
09ServSafe training and proctoring
Chef Willis is a Registered ServSafe Proctor and educator, so the course is taught and the exam administered in your building rather than sending your managers out to find a class. The certification itself is issued by the National Restaurant Association through its accredited program.
10HACCP plan development
A written plan built for your operation — hazard analysis, critical control points, limits, monitoring and records. Most consultants will not take this on. We write it, document it, and train your team to run it.
What You Get
- A kitchen training manual, station guides and the skills matrix.
- Editable line check, opening, closing and prep forms.
- A train-the-trainer guide and a written HACCP plan for your operation.
- Mock inspection with a corrective action log and named owners.
Forecasting and ordering
“We have eighteen stores — what do we order?” It sounds like a software question. It is usually an authority question, and the answer is that nobody ever decided the general managers would each order on instinct. It just happened.
At three locations, the owner watches the ordering. By fifteen, the same case of chicken is coded three different ways, nothing rolls up, and no one can say what the group buys, from whom, at what price. Somewhere between 4% and 10% of food purchased is thrown away in a typical operation, and the National Restaurant Association reports that simply tracking it cuts food costs by two to six percent.
If You Already Own Software
Good systems structure the count, connect to your POS and calculate theoretical against actual. What they cannot do is build the costed recipes and clean item master they need in order to be right, decide which of four hundred variances matters this week, or hold a general manager accountable on a Tuesday morning. We are not here to replace your software. We are here to build what it runs on and the routine around it, and to stay until that routine works without us.
What We Do
This work runs on your own numbers, so it starts with your P&Ls. Without them there is nothing to forecast against.
01Par levels set from usage, not habit
A par is the target on-hand quantity of an item, and the order is arithmetic: par minus what you have. We derive them from what actually moves between deliveries, specified by day of week, because a Tuesday order and a Thursday weekend build are different numbers.
02Order guides
rebuilt per vendor and per unit with pack sizes and contract prices embedded, so ordering stops being a judgment call.
03Demand forecasting
Sales by day of week across the trailing eight weeks, trended against the same weeks last year, overlaid with your events, holidays, promotions and weather — then run through costed recipes into ingredient-level demand.
04Count procedures that produce honest numbers
Count sheets sequenced to match your physical storage rather than the alphabet, a fixed count day and time, and twice-weekly micro-counts on the roughly 20% of items that drive 80% of your cost of goods.
05Variance analysis
at ingredient level, sorted by dollar impact rather than percentage — a 30% variance on garnish is noise, a 2% variance on protein is a mortgage payment.
06Receiving and invoice audit
Trained receiving against the delivery window, credits chased at the door, and invoiced prices checked line by line against contracted prices.
07Labor forecasting
Covers and sales by daypart converted into required hours, with sales per labor hour and earned-versus-actual hours as the standing measures.
08A period-close routine
that makes your units comparable — same calendar, same method, same definitions — plus a weekly review with named owners, because a number nobody owns is a number nobody moves.
09Teaching your managers to run it
Plenty of operators have never had anyone show them how any of this works. The forecast is only useful if the people placing the orders understand where the numbers come from, so we work through it with them until it holds without us.
What You Get
- Order guides rebuilt per unit with your contract prices.
- Inventory sheets and stock levels by day of week.
- A sales forecast you can update yourselves, not one we rerun.
- Count sheets sequenced to your storage, and a period-close checklist.
- A weekly variance report ranked by dollar impact.
How It Works
Scoped first. Priced second. Then the work.
Hospitality operators generally do not want a consulting relationship. They want a specific problem handled by someone who has handled it before.
Consultation
A conversation with Chris about what is happening in the operation, what you have already tried, and what a good outcome looks like. No cost and no commitment. You leave it knowing what the work would involve and what it costs — including the honest answer if this is not work we should be doing for you.
Scope of work
Chris defines the engagement: what gets reviewed, what gets delivered, how the work will be done, and whether it needs time on site. Where a fuller diagnosis is needed first, that audit is itself the opening piece of paid work — reading your numbers and telling you what is actually wrong is the advice, not the pitch for it. You approve the scope and the fee in writing before either starts.
Your consultant
Chris leads the engagement himself or matches it to the consultant in his network with the right background for your concept, your volume and your market. One named person owns it from scope through handoff.
The work
Some engagements are built around days in your kitchen during real service. Others are analysis and system-building done off site, with on-site time reserved for training and verification. The scope decides which, and you know before you sign. Where travel is needed it is estimated during scoping and billed at cost.
Handoff
Documented findings, the work you engaged us for — recipes, standards, a forecasting method — and a plan your managers can run without us. What we put in place still has to be managed, and operations that stop managing it drift back. Where that risk is real we will say so and propose periodic check-ins, rather than send everything over and let it quietly decay.
Who We Work With
Built for operators running more than one of anything.
A single independent location often needs something narrower and less expensive than a full engagement. We will tell you that on the call rather than sell you one anyway.
Food & Beverage
Multi-unit restaurant groups, franchise operators and growing concepts — where a standard has to hold across locations and nobody can be in all of them.
Hotels & Resorts
Property and portfolio owners, on the food and beverage side — restaurants, banquets, in-room dining and resort openings.
Venues & Events
Clubs, event venues and catering operations, where volume swings hard and forecasting is the difference between a good month and a bad one.
Outside Our Scope
What we do not do.
Plenty of firms will take the work and figure it out afterward. These are the things we will point you elsewhere for rather than learn on your money:
We do not issue certifications.
We write HACCP plans, build your standards, and teach and proctor the ServSafe course on site — but the certification itself is issued by the National Restaurant Association through its accredited program, and any firm telling you it comes from them is telling you something untrue.
We do not do nutritional labeling or allergen claims.
That is regulated, substantiation-backed work, and getting it wrong is a life-safety problem.
We do not do kitchen design and construction, licensing, or pre-opening marketing.
Chris has redesigned kitchens inside an operating business; a ground-up build is a different discipline.
We do not do hotel asset management, feasibility studies or revenue management.
That requires underwriting and valuation skills we do not have.
We will not promise you a number before we have seen your numbers.
Nobody credible can tell you how many points of food cost they will recover before opening your invoices.
Who Does the Work
Chef Chris Willis
Lead Consultant · Director of Recruiting for Culinary & Operations
Chris started as a dishwasher at 13 and was an executive chef by 20, training under Norman Hart and Scott Schmucker and alongside Roberto Donna of Galileo and Peter Smith of Vidalia. In the 30-plus years since he has cooked, opened and run kitchens across fine dining, resorts and hotels — the Whiteface Lodge in Lake Placid, the Marriott on Pompano Beach, the Pittsburgh Hilton Garden Inn — and served as personal chef to Tom Clancy. As executive chef at POSH in Washington, D.C. he cooked for Denzel Washington, Robert De Niro and Patti LaBelle, and the restaurant earned Best of Washington and the city’s number one Hot Spot designation.
He has been doing this consulting work for years. In 2010 he went to Liberia to consult and train the staff at POSH at the Kendeja Resort. In 2011 he created Grist Mill inside the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown D.C. Most recently he was the consulting architect behind the relaunch of Port Tobacco Restaurant, where he built the training programs, wrote the proprietary recipes, put in the food cost and ordering systems and redesigned the kitchen inside budget.
His consulting clients include the Whiteface Lodge under HHM Hotels, Green Turtle Bay Resort and Marina in Kentucky, and Directional Capital. Since 2016 he has also run Whatchu Cookin Willis LLC, a catering and consulting business spanning four food trucks and a custom smoking trailer. He also teaches. As a culinary instructor in the Charles County CTE program he earned ACF accreditation for the program and built ServSafe, OSHA and real-world certification curriculum into it, and he has taught seminars at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh’s culinary school. He is a member of the ACF D.C. Chapter, the American Institute of Wine and Food, the Chefs’ Club of D.C. and the James Beard Foundation.
“You can be the best chef in the world, but if you can’t make a profit no one will ever hire you.”
Chef Chris Willis
Common Questions
What operators want to know first.
What does a hospitality consultant actually do?
A hospitality consultant works inside your operation to find and fix a specific, measurable problem — usually food cost running higher than it should, kitchen teams performing inconsistently between locations, or ordering that depends on one person’s judgment. The work is diagnostic first: they read your numbers and watch real service, identify what is actually causing the problem, fix it alongside your team, and document the standard so it holds after they leave.
How much does hospitality consulting cost?
Cost is driven by four things: how many locations are involved, how many days the work requires on site, how much of the engagement is analysis versus hands-on training, and whether travel is needed. Every engagement is scoped and priced individually, and you get those numbers on the consultation call and in writing afterwards rather than having to ask twice. Travel where required is estimated at the same time and billed at cost.
How long is a typical engagement?
Most engagements are project-shaped and scoped month to month, sized to the problem rather than to a calendar. Operators in this market generally want a specific problem solved and their kitchen back, and if a problem genuinely needs longer support we will say so before you commit rather than halfway through.
Do you work with single-location restaurants?
This work is built for operators running more than one of something — multi-unit restaurant groups, hotel and resort owners, and venue operators — because the problem it solves is holding a standard in more than one place. We do take single-location engagements occasionally, but an independent restaurant often needs something narrower and less expensive, and we will tell you that on the call.
Who actually does the work?
Chef Chris Willis is our lead consultant and takes the first conversation on every engagement. He either delivers the work himself or brings in a consultant from his network whose operating background fits your concept, volume and market, and one named person owns the engagement from scope through handoff.
Do you issue food safety certifications?
No. Food protection manager certification can only be issued by a program accredited by the ANSI National Accreditation Board under Conference for Food Protection standards. What we do is build your food safety standards and procedures, run mock inspections against your local jurisdiction’s criteria, and prepare your team for those accredited exams — the certification itself comes from the accredited program, not from us.
Do you need to be on site?
Partly, and the scope of work states exactly which parts before you commit. Training and verification have to happen in your kitchen, because there is no remote substitute for watching a line during service. Costing, menu analysis and forecasting can largely be built off site.
We already have inventory software. Do we still need this?
Often yes, because software cannot build what it needs in order to run. A system can only calculate theoretical against actual food cost if your recipes are costed correctly and your item master is clean, and it cannot decide which of four hundred variances matters this week or hold a manager accountable for it. If your system is well set up and genuinely being used, you may need very little from us — and we will tell you that.
Can you help us hire after the consulting work?
Yes. Millman Search has run retained executive searches in hospitality for 44 years, placing Manager through C-Suite leaders across Food & Beverage, Hotels & Resorts, and Venues & Events — so an operational review that surfaces a role to fill hands off internally rather than to a stranger. You can read about our hospitality executive search practice here.
How is this different from your executive search business?
Executive search finds you a leader; consulting fixes the operation you already have. Sometimes the honest answer to a margin problem is a new Director of Operations, and sometimes it is a re-costed menu and two weeks of training. We would rather tell you which than sell you whichever one we happen to be holding.
Get In Touch
Start with a conversation about the operation.
We’ll learn what is going on — then we’ll tell you honestly whether this is work we should be doing for you.