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Ford McDonald Consultancy works across the whole food and beverage proposition. Most clients come to us with one problem, and stay for the connected ones — because a menu, a kitchen, a range and a team all have to agree with each other before a business trades well.
Our service lines
We develop the concept before anyone draws a wall. That means the offer, the customer journey, the capacity and the commercial model, then spatial layout, interior design brief, back-of-house kitchen design and equipment specification. We project manage from conception through to opening night, and we have two RIBA Awards for Architecture — an accolade never before achieved by a restaurant group.
- Offer development and positioning
- Spatial layout and customer flow
- Back-of-house kitchen design matched to foodservice requirements
- Planning, supply and installation of bespoke kitchens
- Full design and delivery in partnership with specialist restaurant designers
Food halls, food markets and own-label ranges. We have worked with teams of specialist buyers to define ranges that sell: what to stock, at what price, on which fixture, sourced from whom. This is the discipline that decides whether a food retail floor makes money.
- Product ranging, pricing architecture and category review
- Own-label and packaging development
- Merchandising, fixture planning and floor layout
- Supplier selection, sourcing and contract negotiation
- Retail operating standards and margin management
New restaurant concepts and the repair of existing ones. We review what a kitchen actually produces, what the menu actually earns and how service actually runs, then change it in the order that returns money fastest.
- Menu engineering and dish-level profitability
- Kitchen productivity, equipment and workflow
- Service standards, training and front-of-house systems
- Operational review and turnaround programmes
- Bar, café and grab-and-go formats
Opening a business is largely a staffing problem. We recruit from senior management and head chefs through to full opening teams, then put induction, training and documented operating standards in place so the standards survive the first busy month.
- Senior appointments and head chef search
- Full opening-team recruitment
- Induction, service and product training
- Operating manuals and standard operating procedures
- Training for novices through to experienced staff
Numbers first. We appraise sites, test the assumptions behind a business plan and build the capital and operating budgets a project has to live within, so that the design stage does not commit you to a build you cannot afford.
- Feasibility studies and site appraisal
- Capital budgets and kitchen installation budgets
- Sales forecasting and financial modelling
- Investment appraisal and business plans
- Ongoing performance review
The clearest way to judge a consultancy is by what it delivered. Our case studies set out the brief, the strategy and the result for each engagement — including the projects that did not proceed, and why.
- InterContinental Hotels Group — luxury and boutique F&B strategy
- Tsvetnoy Central Market, Moscow — three floors of food
- Jumeirah / Burj Al Arab — restaurants and bars for a 7-star hotel
- The Savoy — Tea Shop & Patisserie
- LEGO Brand House and the Eden Project
How we work
- Understand the brief. We audit the existing estate or the proposed site, the market around it and the commercial targets it has to hit.
- Develop the proposition. Concept, offer, capacity and financial model, tested against what the local market will actually pay for.
- Design and specify. Layout, kitchen, equipment, ranging and merchandising, with budgets attached to each decision.
- Build the team. Recruitment, induction and training run in parallel with the build so the site opens staffed and briefed.
- Open and stabilise. We stay through opening and the initial trading period, then hand over documented standards.
Not sure which service you need?
Most projects start with a short conversation and a scoped review. Describe the situation and we will tell you where the real constraint is.
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