Fern & Coal

HOW THE CLIMB WENT

Jess Fern opened her second site eleven months before she met Sam, and the second site was quietly eating the first. No weekly numbers, menus priced by looking at the café over the road, and the owner covering every gap in every rota — six shifts a week, "temporarily".

Kickstart 90 built the basics at pace: a Monday numbers habit (GP by line, labour versus forecast, thirty minutes), a menu re-engineered so the six best-margin dishes carried the card, and supplier prices re-tendered for the first time since opening.

The move to One-to-One coaching tackled the rota: shift leaders given real authority and a one-page standard for opening, pass and close. Jess came off the floor one shift at a time — the business had to earn each one, which is how it stuck.

A year in, food GP is up nine points, labour is under 32% without a single redundancy, and Sunday is a family day for the first time since site one opened. Site three is on the route card for next autumn — this time with the numbers first.

“Sam kept saying the rota was the business. I thought he was being dramatic. He was being accurate.”

— Jess Fern, Founder

Figures client-reported and published with written permission. Results depend on implementation.