How Much Do Restaurant Consultants Get Paid?

Restaurant owners hire consultants for varied reasons and in varied stages in their business, the most common need for a consultant is realized during the planning and setting up stage or business resuscitation or business improvement.

The amount paid to a consultant varies depending on the experience and expertise of the consultant, the scope and complexity of the project and the billing method agreed upon.

The most basic billing method includes per day, per task or per project and per hour.

The restaurant owner should decide which billing method would be beneficial for his business depending on his/her requirements. For example, if a project requires the consultant to report on certain hours but not necessarily for the whole day, a good payment scheme would be the ‘per hour’. If the contractor anticipates that the project would entail long hours of work or extended days for completion it would be wiser to use the ‘per project’ billing.

The range of price for a ‘per day’ assignment would be from $300 to $1,000.

For a ‘per task or project’  assignment current benchmark indicates a range of $500 to $5000.

An hourly rate of a consultant would usually be somewhere between $30$ to $100.

All of the figures indicated above would be influenced by the credentials and track record of the consultant, the critical nature of the project, the deliverables or expectations of the contractor and the timeline for project completion.

While it is true that cost is the major consideration for choosing a consultant, contractors must not dwell on the pricing game alone or employ the consultant with the lowest rate. A good restaurant owner should be able to asses where price meets quality.

In this case, it is important that the restaurant owner source candidates from colleague’s referrals. Make a shortlist of applicants and invite them to discuss the problem. Have them write proposals for the project and ultimately, analyze the proposals. It is only after this that the restaurant owner can have an educated choice and benchmark the price quotation versus the quality of work.

If at some point two candidates would have relatively the same quality of outputs then this is the time that the restaurant owner can wisely opt to hire the consultant with the lower price bid.

It is important to note that when the price structure is agreed to be ‘per day’ or ‘per hour’ the contractor must have mechanisms in place to check efficiency and productivity. Likewise the contractor must be able to define the number of hours/day for the project to be completed.

If the billing method used is ‘per task’ or ‘per project’ the contractor must be able to define review dates to ensure that the project is moving according to his/her desired pace. Likewise he/she should ask for specific action steps and indicate the milestones for each.

Ultimately, how much a restaurant consultant gets paid might be a variable of the limitations of the business owner- his finances, budget constraints, project scope, quality requirements and expected results.

Article source: Contributed by RestaurantNewsResource.com, a global restaurant news distribution service.

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