The Solution
Get clear on the one decision.
Then get your team to actually do the work.
Restaurant Transformation Coaching is for independent restaurant pros who are done reacting. We name the one decision you’ve been avoiding, build the standard around it, and install it so your team holds it — even under pressure — instead of everything running through you.
30 minutes. A real diagnosis. No pitch.
What members say works · 30 minutes a week, one-on-one with David or a senior coach. Your numbers, your week, your next decision.
01 · The Diagnosis
“I’m slammed” is not a problem.
It’s a symptom.
When you tell me you don’t have time, you’re really telling me you don’t know what deserves your attention. That’s not laziness. That’s leadership without a decision framework. Every owner I’ve coached since 2003 has hit this same wall — and almost none of them named it correctly on their own.
02 · The Decision
There is one decision underneath your busy.
A manager you’ve been carrying. A budget you’ve never built. A partner who’s draining the business. A menu item you should kill. A standard you stopped holding. Whatever it is — you already know it.
The reason your restaurant feels like a prison isn’t that the work is hard. It’s that you’re using the work to avoid the decision.
Here’s what avoiding the decision is costing you.
- Time. Missed games. Missed dinners. Missed years.
- Confidence. You stop trusting your own decisions. You over-correct. Then you over-correct the other way.
- Personal freedom. The thing you started the business to have.
03 · Install the standard
A system isn’t installed when you announce it.
It’s installed when behavior changes.
The Restaurant Prosperity Formula™ is a step-by-step process, not a generic curriculum. We figure out where your restaurant actually is (most owners are wrong about this), then install the right systems in the right order — hot food hot before cash flow budgeting, pre-shift meetings before advanced controls. And we don’t stop at handing you a checklist. We make the standard clear, train it, give it an owner, and put it where the work happens — so your team follows it even when you’re not standing there.
The right systems at the right time — installed so they actually stick.
04 · What working with me looks like
Restaurant Transformation Coaching
Your weekly 30-minute coaching call
One-on-one with David or a senior coach. Built around your numbers, your week, and the specific decision in front of you. This is the reason most members say the work actually moves.
Weekly group coaching call
Diagnosis-first conversations, never lecture-only. You bring the situation, we name what’s actually going on, and you leave with the next decision.
A guided budget you actually use
Most owners have never built a real one. We build it with you, line by line, in the first 90 days. After that, you run your week against numbers instead of vibes.
A menu engineering process
Every item costed and categorized, with a decision on each one — keep, kill, reprice, reposition. Most owners haven’t done this in years. We do it together, once, and then it becomes a quarterly habit.
A customized learning path — for you and your managers
Not a video dump. A sequenced path built around where your restaurant actually is, with manager access so you can point them at the work instead of doing it yourself.
Live support, multiple paths
Drop-in Help Desk + Food & Beverage Fix It every other Thursday. A success coach assigned to you. A member mentor — a veteran owner matched to your situation. A help desk for the questions that can’t wait. Different doors for different questions — all of them open.
05 · Outcomes
What changes when you stop being the system
For every $500K in annual sales, my members typically find $50K–$115K already on their P&L — money they were leaving on the table before they could see it.
“When I started the program, our sales volume was $600K with a 65% prime cost. David paid for himself in the first six months and today we’re at a 55% prime cost and our sales volume quadrupled.”
Ellie Grenauer
Glen Park Tavern
“Within 6 months of joining David’s program I had stopped borrowing from my personal savings to make payroll and had $70,000 in the bank.”
Emmy Barnick
Restaurant Owner
“Since working with David I manage my restaurant by the numbers, not micro-managing the staff, and I no longer have to be in there all the time. It now runs better without me there.”
Dan Dunsky
Restaurant Owner
06 · Who this is for
This works. But not for everyone.
This is for you if
- You’re an independent restaurant pro
- You’re tired of being the only one who can get things done right
- You’re decisive, you take action, and you’re willing to admit what you don’t know
- You have the means and the willingness to invest in a real transformation
This is not for you if
- You’re looking for hacks or magic
- You’re not willing to do the work or be coached
- You blame your team, your market, or your customers
- You’re not in a financial position to invest in change
07 · Questions
Before you book the call.
What makes this different from other restaurant coaches?
Most restaurant coaches sell you a system, a course, or a template. I sell one thing: clarity under pressure. Before we implement anything, we name the one decision you’ve been avoiding. Then we build the system around that decision — not the other way around. Tactics without clarity create organized chaos. That’s what most coaches deliver. I won’t.
Is this right for me if my restaurant does $300K? $5M?
Both. The math scales. Owners at $300K typically find $30,000–$50,000 already on their P&L — money leaking out before they can see it. Owners at $5M find more, scaled to size. What we work on isn’t size-dependent; it’s clarity-dependent. The single-unit owner running on adrenaline and the multi-unit owner whose team isn’t trusted to decide anything are solving the same problem. Different scale, same diagnosis.
How long until I see real results?
Most owners see their first measurable improvement within 60–90 days — a 3-7 point reduction in food cost, a 5-8 point improvement in labor. That’s not the win, though. That’s the proof. The real win is when you stop being the system that holds the restaurant together. That takes longer — usually a full year — and it doesn’t happen because you bought a course. It happens because you finally got clear on what mattered.
I’ve tried coaches, courses, or consultants before — what’s different here?
I’d want to know what didn’t work and why. My guess: they gave you tactics for a problem you couldn’t yet name. New checklists for a kitchen that doesn’t run on the old ones. Software for a manager who can’t be trusted with a spreadsheet. None of it sticks when the underlying decision is still being avoided. We do the decision first. The work compounds from there.
I don’t have time for another commitment.
That’s the diagnosis, not the objection. If you don’t have time, you have a clarity problem — and adding more tools will not fix it. Here’s the honest answer on the hours: this work is roughly four to six hours a week. The weekly group coaching call is two hours. Your one-on-one coaching call runs 30 to 60 minutes. The live help desk and the weekly food & beverage fix-it call are drop-in — pop on when you have a question, pop off when you don’t, max two hours each but most members are only on for ten minutes. Plus self-paced lessons you watch on your own schedule. That’s the time. If you can’t find four to six hours a week to lead the business that’s paying for everything else, you don’t have a time problem — you have a leadership problem. We can solve the leadership problem. Nobody can give you the four to six hours.
Do my managers need to be involved?
Eventually, yes — and that’s the point. We start with you, because your team is mirroring you. You can’t ask your managers to be calmer than you are. Once you have clarity, we start pulling your managers into the systems, the meetings, and eventually the decisions. By month six, your weekly manager meeting looks different. By month twelve, your role in it does too.
Is there a long-term contract?
No. The work compounds over time, and most members stay because the results compound with it — but you’re not locked in. If we get six months in and you’ve gotten what you needed, you’re free to go. If we get one month in and it isn’t working, same. The right answer isn’t to chain people in; it’s to build something they don’t want to leave.
What if my books are a disaster and I’m embarrassed to show them?
This is the most common thing I see, and it’s the easiest one. We work with messy books all the time. Many owners haven’t done a real P&L in months. Some have never done one at all. None of that disqualifies you. What disqualifies people from this work isn’t messy books — it’s the unwillingness to look at them. If you’re willing to look, we can clean them up. If you’re not, no coach can help you.
Ready to find your one decision?
The Profit Finder Call is 30 minutes with Ryan James on my team. He’s a former member who turned his own restaurant around using this exact work. He won’t sell you. He’ll diagnose whether we’re the right fit — and tell you the truth either way.