New brand development for high street restaurant chain

Case Study

Synopsis

A leading High Street restaurant chain was looking to diversify and develop a new brand positioned to take advantage of emerging food trends.

The client required Ann’s significant breadth and depth of experience from an operational and system perspective to structure and drive the new brand development, bring together all stakeholders and secure sign off from the Board.

Once secured, Ann scoped, costed and managed all aspects of the programme, ensuring opening of the pilot site to time cost and budget, with all critical business processes and systems in place for Day 1. Additionally, Ann developed and secured buy in to a go / no go decision matrix based on the business defined key performance measures, and scoped, costed and defined the Phase 2 plan (assuming a go decision)

Client

A leading High Street restaurant chain was looking to diversify and develop a new brand positioned to take advantage of emerging food trends.

Ann was brought in by the Global Finance Director and the IT Director having previously worked with both of them before and being known for her ability to hit the ground running, bringing flexible structure to the most complex and challenging situations.

What help were they looking for?

Specific elements included:

Scoping and defining new processes and systems required for the new brand, and identifying changes to any central systems
Scoping, costing and managing the full programme of works for pilot site go live (all property, business and IT elements)
Defining what a roll out could look like, associated costs and timings, identifying and securing buy in to go / no go decision matrix

Timelines

The concept was approved in principle at the Board in May, and kicked off at the start of June, with the ambitious target of opening the first site by the end of October.

Full proposal and sign off had to go to the Board once the initial site had been secured, and full costing and forecast revenue calculated.
Ann drew up the critical path, identified all critical milestones and helped develop the individual functional plans, including directly developing

and managing the IT plan. Critically Ann secured and maintained senior cross functional buy in to ensure progress was in line with the plans, and any mitigating actions were implemented swiftly.

Critical deliverables

Pilot site opened to time and budget, with all pre-defined business critical processes and systems in place
Key performance indicators and decision matrix agreed and in place with review points agreed
High level plan for Phase 2 defined and costed together with a transition plan ensuring appropriate internal resource identified and back fill process agreed