Open it right the first time. Rebuilding later costs twice.
A kitchen laid out wrong, a menu priced before anyone costed it, equipment bought for a menu that changed, staff trained to a standard nobody wrote down — none of this shows up on opening night. It shows up in the third month, and by then every fix costs more than doing it right would have.
A restaurant, a coffee shop, a bakery or a QSR unit — whether you are signing a lease next week or still choosing between two sites.
Illustrative comparison. Your numbers depend on your build, your market and how far along you are.
Five formats, and they fail in different places
The route below is the same for all of them. What changes is which stage carries the risk — a bakery lives or dies on its production cycle, a QSR unit on seconds per order, a full-service restaurant on kitchen flow at peak.
Full-service restaurants
- The decisive stage is kitchen flow against the menu: how many steps a dish takes at the four hundredth ticket, and whether the pass can hold a full room. Seating plan, service standards and station design are set here or paid for later.
QSR & fast food
- Seconds are the unit of currency. Throughput at peak, the drive-thru sequence, station layout and the training that makes a new hire productive in days rather than weeks — this is the format where a layout mistake is measured in labour cost every single shift.
Coffee shops
- Almost the whole business happens in a ninety-minute morning peak. Bar layout, the sequence of the barista's movements, drink costing to the gram, and what the food offer is actually for — margin, or traffic.
Bakeries
- A production business with a shop attached. The night cycle, the baking plan against forecast demand, shelf life and what happens to what didn't sell — write-offs decide the margin here more than the price on the label does.
Cafés & confectioneries
- Two businesses in one room: production behind, display in front. The display is the whole sales floor — what goes in it, in what quantity, at what hour, and how yesterday's tray is accounted for.
Bars, hotel F&B and seasonal venues
- Also within scope. Tatyana ran restaurants, cafés, bars, bakeries and seasonal outlets across two major hotels as operating director — including opening one from zero in twenty days. If your project is a mix of formats, say so in the audit and you'll get an honest read on it.
Nothing on this list looks like a mistake on opening night
Every one of them is a decision made early, by someone who had a reason at the time. They only become visible when the money starts moving — and by then they are structural.
The kitchen was drawn before the menu existed
- A layout is a consequence of a menu, not a starting point. When the menu is finalised after the equipment is in place, every dish pays a tax in extra steps, and the cook pays it four hundred times a night.
Prices were set by looking at the neighbours
- A price copied from the restaurant down the road carries their food cost, their supplier terms and their labour model — none of which are yours. Costing comes first; the price is the last step, not the first.
Equipment bought for a menu that changed
- The most expensive items in the build are chosen earliest, from the vaguest version of the concept. What gets bought is usually a size too big, a spec too high, or the wrong machine entirely — and it stays for ten years.
No written standard, so everyone invents one
- Without recipe cards, portion specs, opening and closing routines, every shift runs to whatever its most confident person believes. That is not a people problem — nobody was given a standard to follow.
The budget has no line for the first three months
- Openings are budgeted to the door and not past it. Payroll runs at full strength while sales are still building, and the money that should have carried the ramp-up went into a finish nobody notices.
Opened on the date, not on readiness
- The lease clock is real, so the date wins. A venue that opens two weeks before the team can execute spends a year repairing the reputation it earned in the first fortnight.
None of these are exotic. All six are cheaper to prevent than to survive.
Six stages, in the order the decisions actually have to be made
The order matters more than the speed. Each stage produces documents you keep, and each one closes a set of decisions so the next stage is not a guess.
Concept and the numbers behind it
- Who this restaurant is for, what it sells, at what average check, in what volume. A financial model with three scenarios — the pessimistic one is the one that matters. Break-even, the investment plan, and the reserve for the first three months as its own line.
Menu, costing and the equipment list
- The menu built as a cost structure: recipe cards, portion specs, theoretical food cost per dish, margin per item. Only then the equipment list — because now it is a consequence of the menu instead of a bet on it.
Kitchen flow and the technical brief
- The path of every dish from delivery to pass, and of every plate back. Zones, stations, storage, the brief your designer and contractor build against. We do not draw the plans and we do not lay the pipes — we write what they have to satisfy.
Standards, roles and the training programme
- Operating standards with checklists, a food safety manual and its logs, role descriptions, a 3–7 day induction programme, and the training materials your managers teach from. Written to be handed over, not presented.
Suppliers, purchasing and control
- What you buy, from how many vendors, on what terms, checked how. Receiving rules, inventory sheets, waste logs, and who is allowed to approve what — the controls that decide whether your food cost holds after month two.
Pre-opening and the first 90 days
- A countdown plan with a readiness gate — the honest test of whether to open on the date or hold. Then the first ninety days: what to measure weekly, what a bad number means, and what to correct before it becomes a habit.
What we do — and what we deliberately don't
The second list is the useful one. Openings go wrong when everyone assumes someone else is covering a thing nobody named.
- Architecture, engineering drawings and construction — we write the brief they build to
- Licences, permits, health department filings and anything legal — that is your attorney and your local consultant
- Standing on your premises to run the build or manage your staff day to day
- Supplier introductions in exchange for a fee — we take not a cent from vendors, so the equipment list is the one your menu needs
- Hiring your team for you — we write the roles, the standards and the induction; the interviews are yours
- The concept, the financial model and the opening budget, including the ramp-up reserve
- The menu as a cost structure — recipe cards, portion specs, theoretical food cost, margin per item
- The equipment list and the technical brief for your designer and contractor
- Operating standards, food safety manual and logs, role descriptions and the induction programme
- Purchasing, receiving and inventory controls — written, with the forms your team fills in
- The pre-opening countdown, the readiness gate, and the first 90 days of weekly measurement
Everything above is delivered as documents you own — in English, in writing, at your pace. No workshops to attend, no calls to schedule, nothing that stops working when we stop talking.
Three ways in, depending on how far along you are
Prices are ranges, not brackets to be negotiated up. The range moves with the size of the venue, the complexity of the menu and how much already exists. You get a fixed figure in writing before anything starts.
Concept and viability
$9,000 – $16,000- Concept definition — audience, format, average check, capacity
- Financial model with three scenarios, break-even and the opening budget
- Menu structure and target food cost by category
- A written verdict on whether the location and the model hold together
- For the stage where the decision is still “do we do this at all, and at these numbers?”. Roughly 15–20 working days.
Full pre-opening
$38,000 – $62,000- Everything in A, plus the full menu costed dish by dish with recipe cards and portion specs
- Equipment list and the technical brief for designer and contractor
- Operating standards and checklists, food safety manual with its logs
- Role descriptions, induction programme and training materials
- Purchasing, receiving and inventory controls with the working forms
- Pre-opening countdown, readiness gate, and the first 90 days plan
- The whole route, one venue, start to opening night. Roughly 45–70 working days, run in parallel with your build.
Built to be repeated
from $70,000- Everything in B, written so a second and third location can be opened to the same standard
- Operations manual structured for multi-unit use
- Unit-opening guide and the opening budget template for the next location
- The groundwork a franchise package is later built on
- For owners who already know this is not going to be the only one. Scope and figure quoted after the concept stage.
Every engagement starts with the free written audit below — including this one. It costs you an evening and tells us whether we are the right people for your project.
Tatyana Mikheenkova Tatyana Mikheenkova
25+ years in restaurant operations. Not a consultant who read about openings — an operator who has done them, including the ones that went wrong.
Who writes it
Documents like these can be produced by any consulting firm. The difference is who writes them: someone who has stood at the pass on a Friday night with a layout that fights back knows which decisions are expensive to undo, because she has paid for undoing them.
Why openings most of all
Almost nothing in a venue is as permanent as the choices made before it ever serves a guest — the layout, the equipment, the cost structure and the habits the first team learns. All of them are decided while there is still nothing to see.
Not a cent from suppliers
She takes no commission from vendors or manufacturers. The equipment list is the one your menu needs, at the size your volume justifies, and nothing is on it because someone pays to put it there.
In writing, at your pace
There are no calls in this process, and that is a choice rather than an apology. Written work can be re-read by your contractor, your chef and your investor without anyone repeating it from memory.
Your Express Audit is written by Tatyana. Not by a model.
Anything on this page could be generated in seconds by a language model, and the result would read well and mean nothing. What you get instead is one person reading your project — the same person whose name and biography are above — and writing down what she thinks, including the parts you would rather not hear.
That is also why it takes five working days rather than five minutes, why the number of audits we can take at once is limited, and why the answer sometimes is “don't do this deal”.
- Everything arrives as documents
- Manuals, models, checklists and forms in English, yours to keep and to hand to whoever needs them.
- Questions go both ways in writing
- You ask, we answer, and the answer stays findable six months later.
- Your build team gets a brief
- Not a conversation they half-remember — a written specification they either satisfy or don't.
- 1 · Free Express Audit
- You fill in a questionnaire. Within five working days you get a written read on your project.
- 2 · Scope and fixed price
- A named figure and a named timeline, in writing, before any work begins.
- 3 · The route, stage by stage
- Each stage closes with documents delivered, so you always own what has been paid for.
FAQ
"We already have a designer and a contractor. What is left for you?"
They build what they are told to build. The brief — flow, zones, storage, the equipment list and the specification each piece has to meet — is what we write, and it is the part that decides whether the kitchen works at volume. A designer optimises for the drawing; an operator optimises for the four hundredth ticket on a Saturday.
"Can you do this without visiting in person?"
Yes, and it is how the work is built. Photos, drawings, video walkthroughs and your numbers are enough for everything we produce. What we don't do is stand on the premises running your build or managing your staff — that is your general manager's job, and the documents exist so that job is doable.
"We open in six weeks. Is it too late?"
No, but the order changes: the readiness gate, the standards and the first-90-days measurement come first, and the concept work is skipped. Say where you are and you will get an honest answer about what is still worth doing — including "nothing, open and call us in month two" if that is the truth.
"Do you take commission from equipment suppliers?"
No. Not a cent, from anyone. That is worth saying plainly because it is not the norm in this industry — a large share of what gets specified for new restaurants is specified by people who are paid to specify it.
"What happens if our concept changes halfway?"
It usually does, at least a little. That is why the stages run in the order they do: the expensive commitments — equipment, layout, build — sit after the menu and the costing, so a change of mind costs a document rather than a demolition.
"Is the free audit generated by AI?"
No. Tatyana reads your answers and writes it herself; Igor translates and formats it. That is the whole reason it takes five working days and the reason we can only run a limited number at a time. A model can produce twelve pages about your project tonight — what it cannot do is tell you which two things matter in your market this quarter, or say plainly that the location you are looking at is wrong.
"Do you have US openings to point to?"
The practice is newly launched in the US market, and we are upfront about that. The method comes from 25+ years of openings and operations elsewhere, and from the McDonald's system it was learned in. The way to test it without spending anything is the free written audit.
What this page is. A description of a service, not an offer of a guaranteed financial outcome. What an opening costs and what it earns depends on your market, your location and decisions that are yours to make.
About the ranges. Prices are ranges because scope varies. You get a fixed figure in writing before work starts, and it does not move unless you change the scope.
Legal and licensing. Nothing here is legal, tax or food-safety-compliance advice. Permits, licences and filings are handled by your attorney and your local specialists; our food safety manual is written to support that work, not to replace it.
Send us the project, get a written read on it
Free, no call, and a person on the other end of the reply. Restaurant, coffee shop, bakery, QSR unit or a mix — tell us where the project stands: a location, a lease, a drawing, a spreadsheet, or just a decision you are weighing.
- 6–10 pages
- An Express Audit of your project: what looks solid, what worries her, and what it would take to do properly.
- Five working days
- Written by hand, by one person, which is also why we take a limited number at a time.
- Yours either way
- Hire us or don't — the audit stays with you, and so does anything you fix because of it.
- Everything runs in writing — there is no call to book on this page for a reason
- Your project details stay confidential; an NDA before you send numbers if you want one
- We use your details only to reply. No mailing platform, no sequence
- We work with US-based businesses
What has to be decided now, and what can wait.
In your layout, your menu economics or your build budget — named specifically.
The full pre-opening route, a single stage, or waiting until the site is signed.