Operations and margin audit

Margin erosion is almost never one thing. It is a supplier price that moved and was never renegotiated, a portion that crept, a menu where the three best-selling items are the three worst performers, a rota built around availability rather than demand, and a wastage figure nobody has looked at in six months. Individually none of them justify attention. Together they are the difference between a good year and a difficult one.

An audit finds them, ranks them by what they are actually costing, and tells you which to fix first.

What I do

Cost structure and margin analysis. Where the money goes, line by line, and which movements are structural rather than seasonal.

Menu engineering. Every item classified by contribution margin and popularity — which items to promote, reprice, reformulate or remove, with the margin impact of each.

Service delivery review. Observed service across trading periods, against the standard the concept is selling and the price it is charging.

Team structure and capability. Whether the structure fits the operation, where capability gaps sit, and what turnover is actually costing.

Supplier and procurement review. Pricing, terms, consolidation opportunities, and the controls that should exist between order and invoice.

A prioritised plan. Every finding with an owner, a date, and an estimate of what fixing it is worth. Ranked, so the first month’s work is the work that matters most.

Who this is for

Owners and operators of hotel food and beverage divisions, restaurants and bars in the UAE and the wider GCC who can see a problem in the numbers but do not have an independent read on its cause — or who suspect the operation has drifted from what it was designed to be.

It is also useful before an investment, a refurbishment or a change of management, when you need an honest baseline rather than an internal account.

The experience behind it

Twenty years carrying food and beverage P&L, most recently a nine-outlet division at SLS Dubai Hotel & Residences — café, high-volume Italian dining, fine dining, cigar lounge, cocktail bar, pool bar, nightclub, in-room dining and banqueting — with full accountability for departmental commercial performance.

The advantage of an operator’s audit is that the recommendations have to survive contact with a real service. I have been on the receiving end of consultant reports that could not be executed. I do not write those. The full background.

Common questions

How long does an audit take?

Typically two to four weeks from first site visit to final report, depending on the number of outlets and the state of the data. A single-outlet review can be shorter. Multi-outlet hotel divisions take longer, because the interesting findings are usually in the differences between outlets.

What access is needed?

Recent P&L history, sales data by item, current recipes and costings, supplier pricing, rotas and payroll summary, and permission to observe service unannounced. Incomplete data is normal and is not a blocker — it is usually a finding in itself.

Do you implement, or only report?

Either. The audit ends with a prioritised plan, and many owners take it from there. Where implementation support is wanted, that is scoped separately once the findings are known, so you are not committing to work before anyone knows what it is.

What does the audit deliver?

A written report with findings ranked by financial impact, a menu engineering analysis, a prioritised action plan with owners and dates, and a working session to take the operating team through it. The team hearing it directly matters more than the document.

How are engagements structured?

Fixed scope agreed before starting, phased against milestones. Scope is driven by outlet count, data quality, and how much is delivered on site.