What F&B projects are missing: someone to direct them

Imagine you have €300,000 to invest in opening a restaurant. You have an idea you believe in, you have found the right premises and you are ready to start. Now you face one of the first important decisions: who do you bring in first? The architect, the accountant, the F&B manager, the chef or another professional?

Many entrepreneurs ask themselves this at the start of a new business. But there is another question, just as important, that too often goes unanswered: who will direct the whole process, making sure every choice is consistent with the business, operational and financial goals?

Highly qualified professionals can be involved in creating a Food & Beverage and Hospitality business, each with specific skills and clear responsibilities. And yet, even with an interesting business idea and a significant investment, a project can reach opening day with problems nobody foresaw. Not necessarily because someone did a poor job, but because there was no overall vision connecting the phases and decisions of the project.

That direction is what so many F&B projects are missing.

The F&B and Hospitality Project Manager

The role that provides it is the F&B and Hospitality Project Manager. It is not a new profession: project management is an established discipline with well-defined methods, tools and responsibilities. What is still rare is its specific application to creating new restaurant and hospitality businesses.

It is important to tell this role apart from that of the F&B Manager. The latter mainly runs the business: its organisation and its operating and financial results. The F&B Project Manager directs the path that leads to the business, from the first concept to launch. They are different but complementary responsibilities, and they should talk to each other from the very start.

To do this well, however, knowing project management methods is not enough. It takes in-depth knowledge of the industry, gained through direct professional experience or thorough training in F&B management.

Understanding how a kitchen works, how the floor is organised, the dynamics of service, production processes and the economics of a restaurant makes it possible to truly grasp what each professional needs and to anticipate the consequences of design decisions.

Method lets you direct the process; industry knowledge lets you understand what it contains. Effective direction comes from bringing the two together.

The right moment

When you bring this role in matters just as much. Too often a project starts from the space, the materials, the furniture and the equipment, and only later asks how the business will actually work. It should start from the business idea and its translation into a business model and a concrete operating format.

Before physically designing a restaurant, you have to define which restaurant you want to create, who it will serve, what experience it will offer and how it will work every day. This does not limit the designers’ creativity: it gives them clear information and goals to build on.

A concept cannot simply be something the owner likes: it has to be buildable, manageable and financially sustainable. Here the Project Manager adds value not by replacing the individual professionals, but by putting them in a position to make informed decisions while there is still room to change them without compromising the project.

The budget should be read the same way. It is not just about staying within an overall figure but about understanding where the investment creates value over time. A choice that looks cheap during construction can become a recurring cost for the whole life of the business. Conversely, spending more at the design stage can bring major savings in operation.

When operations pay for design mistakes

An F&B consultant is often called into a restaurant that is already open and not reaching its targets. The venue may look great, the food may be interesting and the staff well trained, yet costs are too high, service does not flow or productivity falls short. Sometimes the analysis shows that the problems do not come from day-to-day management at all, but from decisions taken long before opening.

A consultant can certainly analyse the organisation, propose corrective measures and improve processes. But when the problems come from the layout, the building systems or equipment already bought, fixing them can mean significant new investment. Operations end up being asked to solve problems that should have been addressed during design.

A hundred covers, then seventy

Imagine a restaurant designed for a hundred covers, with a business plan built, among other things, on seating that many guests. The architect has studied the rooms, materials, lighting and furniture, choosing one-metre square tables perfectly in keeping with the venue’s look.

The restaurant is built, the furniture bought, the table setting defined and the plates the chef asked for ordered. Opening day finally arrives. It is during service, though, that the first problems appear. When the room is full and staff start moving between the tables, it becomes clear that the clearances are not enough, the aisles are too narrow and guest comfort does not match the intended level of service. To deliver a proper experience, the real number of covers has to drop from a hundred to seventy.

Thirty fewer covers can be a significant departure from the financial forecasts the project was built on. One fix would be to reduce the tables from one metre to eighty centimetres. But by then the plates the chef asked for have already been bought, chosen for the menu, the plating and the planned table setting.

On a smaller table those plates may no longer leave room for glasses, cutlery and the rest of the service. Now you have to choose: keep the original tables and give up some covers, replace furniture you have already bought, or change the plates and risk interfering with the chef’s culinary and production work.

It is the classic domino effect. The problem is never the single choice: it is not having weighed its consequences on the whole system in advance.

A kitchen has to work

The same mechanism can play out in kitchen design. Imagine the systems are already installed and the equipment bought by the time the chef is brought in. The chef may need different or additional equipment to deliver the planned menu. At that point buying a new appliance may not be enough: the available electrical power, the building systems or the layout itself may need rethinking.

Workflows are another weak spot, often underestimated. Think of floor staff coming back with dirty plates while others leave the kitchen with finished courses, or clean tableware forced through the dirty-return area. These movements happen dozens or hundreds of times in every service: a few seconds lost each time turn, over the months, into extra hours of work, lower productivity and higher costs.

“Ormai”

This is exactly when one word keeps coming back in projects. In Italian it is ormai: “by now, it’s too late”.

• “It’s been decided by now.”
• “We’ve already ordered it.”
• “The systems are already in.”
• “The place is already open.”

That “by now” can be very expensive, because at that point you are no longer choosing the best solution, only the one that is cheapest to change. An F&B Project Manager cannot remove every surprise, but can greatly reduce the risk of reaching decisions that are hard to reverse, by encouraging timely, informed assessments.

Bring in the expertise early

Of course, entrepreneurs also struggle to find qualified staff, especially when launching a new business. Bringing in a chef, a floor manager or other operational roles long in advance can be a serious financial commitment at a stage when the business earns nothing yet. That does not mean doing without the expertise you need during design.

The point is not to hire the staff earlier, but to involve the expertise earlier.

This expertise is not an accessory to the project but an integral part of building it. Just as you budget for architectural design, systems and equipment, you should budget for the expertise that will make the business truly functional. Saving on a key skill during design can mean far higher costs after opening.

Translating between languages

Faced with problems like these, it is natural to ask who is to blame. In reality the question is rarely about any one professional’s competence: each may have done their job correctly with the information they had. What may have been missing is someone tasked with coordinating the different skills, checking that every choice fits the others and the overall goals of the investment.

The architect thinks in terms of space, proportion and aesthetics; the chef considers production processes, preparation and timing; the floor staff weigh movement, service organisation and the guest experience; the owner looks at the project through financial sustainability and return on investment. The F&B Project Manager does not replace any of them: they understand each language, connect the expertise and steer the process so that every decision serves a shared goal.

Back to that initial €300,000: the fundamental question is not only which professional to bring in first, but who will take responsibility for directing the path that turns that investment into a business that truly works.

The best time to solve a problem is not when the restaurant is open. It is before you have created it.