Menu creation
A menu has to be optimal to both the guest experience and the P&L.
Most businesses lean too far one way — food that looks and tastes great but inefficient financially or food that turns a profit but is easily forgotten.
My focus has always been maintaining both. I’ve sourced from some of the best suppliers in the UK and still handed back 80+% GP. I’ve written menus in nearly every sector: fine dining, high-volume, retail and grab-and-go, event logistics and the HNW private family table.
Menu engineering and activation
I will analyse the sales split so we can make the menu work harder — reading which dishes actually earn their keep and/or the marketing heroes and which just take up space, then writing the menu to steer guests toward the dishes that are both truly relevant to your brand as well as financially optimal. In my experience this is one of the most under utilised processes on a site by site basis and has the ability to unlock serious improvements both financially and on quality of cooking.
Menu writing, planning and design
I work with you and your team to build a menu that fits your brand and your numbers — Your menu is one of your strongest marketing tools so lets understand the real D'n'A of you clients and optimise the experience beyond a list of dishes and ingredients I have spent over a decade writing and planning menus for high volume catering right through to some of the most discerning palate.
Recently some of the most successful projects I have been involved with are those that come to the table with an open mind.
Recipe development
I develop dishes that fit your operation and logistics — built around brand identity, sourcing and price point, not lifted from a trend feed.
It usually starts further out than the final dish: an instinct, a technique or a flavour worth celebrating, then pulled back through cost and consistency until it’s something the kitchen can deliver consistently. Every recipe earns its place before it gets signed off.
Recipe tastings and sign-off
Nothing goes live until it’s been tasted properly and signed off. This is where good intentions meet reality: how it holds under service, how it plates at volume, whether the cost survived contact with the kitchen and most importantly stable supply.
Product and ingredient sourcing
Great dishes start before the kitchen. Somewhere in the move to central distribution, the kitchen stopped choosing its own suppliers — provenance became a delivery slot and a relationship became a line on an invoice.
The true skill of a kitchen is knowing how to access the best ingredients and celebrate them without complicating for the sake of it. Shorter chains are where genuine dish elevation can be achieved and is fast becoming a forgotten skill..
Recipe specs and rollout
A recipe in one chef’s head isn’t an asset it’s a risk, I will create full step-by-step specs so any competent chef can produce the dish to standard in whatever form your kitchen actually uses — paper or digital.