Insights

The questions we answer before every engagement.

Costs, timelines and the parts most agencies will not put in writing. Everything here comes from eight venues we built, ran and in three cases sold, not from a content calendar.

  1. Costs

    What does it cost to open a restaurant in Sydney?

    Most agencies will not answer this without a call.

  2. Timelines

    How long does it take to open a venue?

    The honest answer depends on what you are compressing. Here is the timeline we have run eight times, what each phase actually needs, and what breaks when you shorten it.

  3. Choosing

    Launch partner or marketing agency: which do you need?

    These get used interchangeably and they are not the same purchase. Picking the wrong one is expensive in a specific, predictable way.

  4. Exit

    How do you prepare a hospitality business for sale?

    Most operators start thinking about an exit about twelve months too late. By then the things that raise a valuation take longer than the time left to do them.

  5. Costs

    What does restaurant branding cost in Sydney?

    We will not quote a brand without a scoping conversation.

  6. Costs

    How a venue fitout budget is actually structured

    A single total from a builder is not a budget. It is a number with no seams, and a number with no seams cannot be checked, compared or defended.

  7. Timelines

    What actually delays a venue opening

    Almost never the build. The weeks disappear into approvals, certificates and other people's calendars, and all of them can be worked in parallel.

  8. Timelines

    Why the licence, not the build, sets your opening date

    A build can be accelerated by spending more on it. A licence cannot. That asymmetry is why licensing, not construction, is usually the binding constraint.

  9. Process

    Working with a landlord's delivery process

    A centre is not a landlord with a mailbox. It is a delivery process with two gates, two managers and two sets of criteria, and both have to be satisfied.

  10. Operations

    The operating layer a venue actually runs on

    The test of an operating layer is not whether the venue runs well today. It is whether it still runs on the Monday after the manager leaves.

  11. Commercials

    What a commission clause has to exclude

    Every commission dispute is an argument about the base, not the rate. The clause that survives is the one that defined the base by subtraction.

Not answered here?

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