Most restaurant projects don't fail because of bad design

They fail because nobody was watching the gap between what was designed and what actually got built.

That's what an owner's representative does. You sit between the operator, the contractor, the design team and the consultants, and you make sure what's being delivered matches what was promised, on time and on budget.

In hospitality, the details matter more than in most sectors. A kitchen extraction system that's undersized by 15% won't show up until service one. A bar counter that's 50mm too high won't get flagged by a fit-out contractor who's never worked behind one. An electrical layout that doesn't account for POS positions creates problems you'll live with for years.

An owner's rep catches those things because they've opened restaurants before. They're not project managers in the traditional construction sense. They're hospitality operators who understand how a space needs to function when it's full on a Friday night.

The role typically covers design review, contractor coordination, FF&E procurement oversight, kitchen commissioning and pre-opening programme management. On larger projects, it extends to brand standards compliance and stakeholder reporting.

It's not cheap. But it's significantly cheaper than fixing problems after handover.

If you're spending seven figures on a restaurant fit-out and you don't have someone on your side of the table who's done it before, that's a risk worth questioning.