Independent Kitchen Consulting  /  Golden Horseshoe, Ontario

Could your restaurant's operation
use a fresh set of eyes?

Most owners have a sense of where the pressure is. Food cost, service flow, the way the kitchen runs on a busy night. Sometimes what helps is a second set of eyes from someone who has been in enough operations to know what to look for.

Book a Free Consult See how it works
Golden Horseshoe, Ontario
Oliver Corby
Who I Am

25 years in professional kitchens, across just about every format this industry has. Corporate, independent, hotel, catering. Closet-sized kitchens on hot plates, open fire, galleys on sailboats and trains. I've built kitchens from scratch and inherited ones that made no sense.

That background pulled me toward kitchen design and equipment, where I spent a few years in commercial sales and kitchen builds. I got a clear sense of how a space either works for a team or works against them. The last 10 years the job has become less about the food and more about the systems behind it. Where time gets lost, where money slips out, where a small fix changes how a kitchen feels for the next five years.

My job isn't to tell you what's wrong with your restaurant.
It's to help you get the one you want.
What I Do

Three days inside your restaurant, looking at the whole picture. I'll work service with your team and observe how the front and back work together, how the menu performs in the actual kitchen, how product moves and where waste shows up. If you want to open the books, we go there too.

This isn't about an overhaul or a concept change. I'm not coming in to take over, push opinions, or disrupt what your team has built. Every restaurant is different and I respect that. What I'm offering is an honest professional perspective on where operating friction might be affecting your time, cost or service, some practical suggestions for addressing it, and help putting together a first set of steps toward whatever you want to improve. On day four I write it all up. On day five we sit down and work through it together.

01

Service and flow

Where the handoffs between front and back break down. Where the pace drops and why. What service actually feels like from inside the room.

02

Menu, cost and waste

How the menu works in the actual kitchen versus how it was designed to work. Where waste is happening and what it's likely affecting. Whether the numbers add up.

03

Kitchen function and layout

Whether the space works for the volume and the menu. How prep runs, how consistent things are shift to shift, and what the layout is doing to your team's time.

04

The books

As far as you want to go. Food cost, labour, supplier pricing. Sometimes the numbers show things the floor doesn't.

How the week works
Days
1 to 3

Inside your restaurant

I work alongside your team and observe the operation across service, kitchen flow, product movement and waste. I look at the menu against what the kitchen is actually producing and dig into the books as far as you're comfortable. I'm building an honest picture of how the restaurant runs.

Day 4

Building the report

I compile everything observed into a full written report. What's working, where the gaps are, what they're likely affecting, and a practical recommendation for each one.

Day 5

Sit down together

We go through the report together. I walk you through the findings and the thinking behind each one. You ask questions, push back, and we work out a realistic path forward for your business.

The Kind of Things That Come Up

A prep system that hasn't kept up with the current menu. An extra hour of labour every morning that nobody questions.

A menu item that costs more to produce than people realize, based on how it's actually being executed on the line.

Tickets backing up on a busy Friday. It feels like a staffing problem. Sometimes it's a timing issue between the floor and the kitchen.

Food cost that has been creeping up. Not one big thing, just a handful of small habits that have added up.

A kitchen layout that works at low volume but creates a bottleneck when it gets busy.

Pricing that hasn't been revisited since the menu launched. Supplier costs have changed.

Stations set up for how the kitchen was originally built, not for what the menu needs now.

A front of house flow that works on a slow night but breaks down when the room is full.

Investment

One week, flat rate. I work around your schedule so there's no disruption to the operation. You get a full written report and we sit down together to go through it. No retainer, no hourly billing, no surprises.

If you're not sure whether this is the right fit, the first conversation is free. We talk through where things are at and go from there.

Get in touch
Flat Rate
$3,000
Canadian Dollars

One week. Full assessment. Written report. That's it.