BoldCX · The Leopard Print Plan

Busy, but notmaking the moneyyou should be?

You have built something good. It just is not paying you what it should, and no one has been able to tell you why. In twelve weeks, I will show you exactly where it leaks, and hand you and your team the fix.

Built on four questions your guests never say out loud

  1. 01 Would I even bother? The Look · everything before they walk in
  2. 02 Do I know what to do? The Landing · the first thirty seconds inside
  3. 03 Does this place work when it is full? The Flow · guests, staff and food moving
  4. 04 Did they feel like they mattered? The Feeling · the welcome, the check in, the farewell

Why now

Nobody is coming
to save your Tuesday.

There is a sentence I hear from owners more than any other at the moment. We are just waiting for things to pick up.

I understand it. You have been through a few years that would have finished most industries, and it is reasonable to think you are owed a good run.

But around a third of UK consumers say they are cutting back on eating and drinking out this year, and that is the third year running. Footfall is not coming back to what it was. It is being shared out differently.

That is the part worth your attention, because when people go out less often they get pickier about where. They are not choosing on price. They are choosing on the last visit they can remember.

Waiting is a decision. It is the only one with no upside.

Picture it in pounds. Two walkouts on a busy Saturday, a few tables that never came back, a second round nobody offered. Call it forty covers a week you should have had and did not. On a modest spend that is comfortably past twenty thousand pounds a year, walking quietly out of a door you cannot see.

Stage one · Weeks 1 to 2

The Look

Would I even
bother?

This is the stage you cannot see any more, because you park in the same spot and come in through the back. Everything here happens before a single pound is spent, and every failure is invisible to you, because the person simply kept walking.

Cheapest stage to fix. Fastest to show a result. That is why it goes first.

What you will see

  • The approach from the street or the car park
  • Signage, and whether it can be read at a glance
  • Whether the place looks open, and looks cared for
  • Lighting after dark
  • Menus and opening hours on display, and whether they are correct
  • The digital front door: your Google profile, photos against reality, hours, and whether anyone replies to reviews
Stage two · Weeks 3 to 4

The Landing

Do I know
what to do?

Order at the counter, or wait to be seated? Is anyone going to look up? Where do I sit, where are the toilets, where is the allergen information? A guest who has to work any of that out for themselves has started the visit on the back foot.

This reviews whether the room works, not whether it looks nice. A beautiful space that leaves people standing in the doorway is failing. A plain one where everybody knows what to do is not.

What you will see

  • The first thirty seconds, and whether anyone is acknowledged
  • Wayfinding: does the space explain itself without anyone asking
  • Instructions and signage that actually answer the question being asked
  • Basic facilities, working, findable and stocked
  • Allergen information, written and available without having to ask for it
  • What happens to all of the above the moment you get busy
Stage three · Weeks 5 to 8

The Flow

Does this place
work when
it is full?

Three flows, usually fighting each other. Guests moving through the room. The team moving through the same space. And food moving from the kitchen to the table, which in food service is the one that costs you most.

Flow problems always present as a staffing problem. The instinct is to add hours. It is almost never an hours problem.

What you will see

  • Guest flow, from entrance to table to toilets to exit
  • Team movement, where people cross, queue, wait, or do the same job twice
  • The pass, and how a plate travels from ready to in front of somebody
  • Ticket times, by daypart, not as an average
  • Order accuracy and remakes
  • Delivery and takeaway, which is a separate journey with its own reviews and one you never see
Stage four · Weeks 9 to 12

The Feeling

Did they feel like
they mattered?

Two halves that sound like opposites and are not. First, written procedures for everything that repeats and needs no judgement. Then coaching on the three moments that decide whether anybody comes back.

A team working out what to do next has nothing left over for the guest. A team running on rails has attention to spare, and attention is the thing people actually feel.

Standardise the process. Never standardise the person.

What you will have

  • SOPs for prep, opening, close, station setup and shift handover
  • A recovery routine for when something goes wrong, because it will
  • The welcome, written in your team's own words, not mine
  • The check in, so a small problem gets caught while it is still fixable
  • The farewell, which is the cheapest change on the list and the one regulars mention most
  • Supervisors coached to coach, so the standard survives a change of shift

This is the biggest stage, the hardest stage, and the one the result comes from. It gets four of the twelve weeks for that reason.

The shape of it

Twelve weeks,
weighted where it matters

The physical stages move fast, so you get visible wins inside the first fortnight. The behaviour work gets the room it needs, because that is the part that decides whether any of it lasts.

Weeks 1 to 2

The Look

Outside in. Signage, approach, and the digital front door.

Weeks 3 to 4

The Landing

The first thirty seconds, wayfinding and facilities.

Weeks 5 to 8

The Flow

Guests, team and food. The pass, ticket times, accuracy and the delivery channel.

Weeks 9 to 12

The Feeling

SOPs for everything that repeats, then coaching the welcome, the check in and the farewell.

Two ways to run it

With me, or by yourself.
Same plan either way.

Identical programme, identical materials. The difference is whether I am standing in your venue or on the other end of a video call.

Run it in house

You deliver it

You get the full kit and work through it stage by stage with your own team, with me behind you the whole way.

  • The complete workbook and scorecards
  • WhatsApp access for the questions that come up mid shift
  • A video call at the end of every stage to go through your scores
  • Phone support when something needs sorting now
  • Written feedback on the scorecards and photos you send in
Delivered

I deliver it

Everything above, plus me on site for the stages where being in the room changes the answer.

  • Anonymous visits, so I see what your guests see
  • On site through The Flow, watching a real service rather than a description of one
  • I run the coaching in The Feeling, on the floor, during service
  • Your baseline measured and re-measured by me
  • Supervisors coached in person

What you get

A kit, not a report

A report tells you what is wrong and then sits in a drawer. This is built to be used on the floor, by the people doing the work.

On day one

  • The twelve week workbook
  • A scorecard for each of the four stages
  • Baseline capture sheet, so there is a number to measure against
  • Photo and evidence log
  • SOP templates ready to fill in with your team

As you go

  • Prioritised fix lists, split into free, cheap and costed
  • Guest flow and team movement maps
  • Ticket time and accuracy trackers
  • Welcome, check in and farewell standards
  • Supervisor coaching guide

At the end

  • Before and after scores across all four stages
  • Results measured against your own baseline
  • A working SOP library, owned by a named person on site
  • Three weekly measures to keep watching
  • A troubleshooting guide for when it starts to slip

The result it was built on

+22%

Sales, in nine weeks

Same site. Same menu.
Same team. Same prices.

The method took seven years to build and the last three to prove on working hospitality businesses. The first site I ran the full sequence on went up twenty two per cent in nine weeks, with better margins and a lower staffing cost against every pound taken. Nobody lost hours. The same team simply served more people.

The programme is twelve weeks rather than nine because the extra three go into the part that decides whether it lasts. Getting a result is not the hard bit. Still having it next spring is.

You go from the owner hoping footfall picks up, to the one people drive past two others to reach.

The arithmetic

The bar is lower
than you think

A fixed fee against a percentage of your turnover. Here is the uplift you would need just to cover it, on a fifty per cent contribution margin.

Uplift required to break even
Weekly turnoverAnnualBreak even uplift
£4,000£208,0001.9%
£8,000£416,0001.0%
£15,000£780,0000.5%
£25,000£1,300,0000.3%

Set that against a proven twenty two per cent. Even at a quarter of that result, a mid sized site makes the fee back several times over inside the first year, and usually before the twelve weeks are finished.

Illustrative, on a £1,995 programme fee and a 50% contribution margin on incremental sales. Your own numbers get worked out properly in the first conversation, not on a web page.

The guarantee

If I cannot find it,
you do not pay.

By the end of stage three I will have named the specific moments costing you money, and put a figure against each one. If those findings do not add up to at least three times the programme fee in recoverable annual revenue, you pay nothing and keep the work.

I will not guarantee your result, and I would be careful of anyone who does. What happens after I hand it over depends on whether you and your team actually do it, and that part is not mine to promise. What I will guarantee is the part I control completely, which is finding the money in the first place.

Requires an agreed baseline before anything changes, and all four scorecards completed. Full terms provided before you commit.

Straight with you

Sometimes it
will not work

I would rather say this now than take your money and find out together. This is not the right answer if:

But if you are busy and still not making what you should be, that is almost always an experience problem. And experience problems are fixable in weeks rather than years.

Where to start

Twenty minutes,
and a straight answer.

Tell me where you think the problem is. I have been on hospitality floors for thirty years and I will tell you honestly whether this is the right thing for your site, including if it is not.

rustylloyd@boldcx.co.uk
Rusty Lloyd · Founder, BoldCX