ABOUT

Organizations that thrive have the ability to adapt and evolve from within to meet the demands of their environment, while rebelling against the status quo that stifles their growth.The Kitchen Collective was born out of the necessity for restaurants to meet the growing demand of consumers for chef-inspired, fresh and healthy meals, delivered via a convenient platform, while ensuring that the stakeholders starting with the front-line crew and all the way to the operators, investors, landlords, and vendors were part of a thriving financial ecosystem.

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After the Great Recession, restaurants witnessed a substantial increase in expenses. As the cost of real estate, food, and labor grew, so did competition. Heavy competition prevented restaurants from increasing menu prices to keep up with their ever growing costs.

 

As profits decreased, there was also a shift in consumer habits and expectations.

Millennials and Generation Z guests turned to fast-casual options for their meal solutions. The fast-casual hybrid offers fresher and healthier options than fast food, while being more convenient and less expensive than casual dining options. Fast-casual pricing and menus lend themselves to the right balance of price and quality that consumers expect for a fresh and convenient meal; all the while being designed with pick-up and delivery in mind. Ultimately the shift in consumer demand for better meal options that can be served fast on-premises or delivered were creating a substantial shift in consumer habits prior to the COVID-19 health crisis.

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Evolving Fast-Casual into Fine-Casual

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The Kitchen Collective was formed prior to the pandemic to help operators adapt to become more profitable by adapting to the structural changes that were taking place in the restaurant industry by assisting them with evolving their brands into “Fine-Casual”. 

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The Kitchen Collective has worked on both spectrum of the industry. We have assisted casual dining restaurants to leverage their existing brands and rollout fast-casual models of their restaurants, and elevated simple cafes to fast-casual concepts to help increase sales and customer counts. By getting a better understanding of the ownership's needs and goals, we are able to position the brand for profit and unit growth by evaluating and upgrading every element of the concept from reformulating existing recipes or introducing new menu items, to help reduce food cost and increase guest frequency, to launching tech initiatives that reduce labor cost or improve team morale. For brands that already have a solid financial position and are prepared for growth, our team can assist with funding the project through investors, lenders, and/or franchising.