Senior Strategy & CEO Advisory

Senior strategic advisory for founders, CEOs and leadership teams facing decisions with real commercial weight. Based in Dubai, working across the GCC and international markets.

This is not consulting in the traditional sense. There are no junior analysts, no templated frameworks, no hundred-page decks that gather dust. This is direct, senior-level advisory from someone who has sat in the chair you are sitting in, inside businesses where the consequences of getting it wrong were immediate and high-impact.

Restaurant Strategy Consulting for Founders and CEOs

Most restaurant and hospitality leaders do not need more information. They need clarity on a specific decision, at a specific moment, from someone who understands what is truly at stake.

That is what this work is. A founder weighing whether to open a second site. A CEO managing a board that wants faster growth than the operations can absorb. An ownership group unsure whether underperformance is a people problem, a positioning problem, or both.

These are the kinds of situations where an experienced external perspective changes outcomes. Not because the answer was complicated, but because the question needed to be properly framed.

When Hospitality Leaders Typically Engage

Clients tend to reach out at specific points:

• Assessing whether a growth opportunity is real or just appealing
• Addressing sustained underperformance that internal teams have struggled to diagnose
• Navigating organisational change, leadership transition, or founder succession
• Preparing for investment, partnership discussions, or board-level scrutiny
• Entering an unfamiliar market, particularly the GCC or Middle East, for the first time
• Balancing personal ambition against commercial and operational risk

What these moments share is consequence. The wrong call is expensive, and the right one often looks obvious only in hindsight.

How an Engagement Works

Every engagement starts with a conversation. No pitch, no proposal template. The goal is to understand your situation clearly before anything else happens.

Initial discussion

A direct conversation about where you are, what decision you are facing, and whether external input would genuinely help. Some conversations end here, with a recommendation to pursue a different route. That is a useful outcome too.

Scoping and focus

If there is a fit, we define a clear scope together. This might be a short focused piece of work, or a longer advisory relationship spanning several months. The scope is built around the decision, not around filling time.

Working together

I work directly with founders and leadership teams. There is no handoff to a junior team. The work typically involves:

• Clarifying strategic ambition against what the business can actually deliver
• Identifying and prioritising commercial, operational, and execution risk
• Developing decision frameworks that hold up under real-world pressure
• Challenging assumptions with commercial rigour, not theoretical models
• Supporting confident decision-making at ownership and board level

Deliverables

The output depends on the engagement. Sometimes it is a structured strategic assessment. Sometimes it is a series of working sessions. Often it is both. The emphasis is always on decisions that lead to action and outcomes that can be measured.

What This Advisory Is Not

It is important to be direct. This service is not:

• A strategy consultancy that produces reports and moves on
• A management consultancy with a team of generalists
• A property agency to just help find sites

It is senior, hands-on advisory grounded in direct responsibility for performance, execution and accountability inside real restaurant and hospitality businesses. That is a different thing from observing an industry from the outside and writing about it.

Hospitality Strategy Advisory Across the GCC

Operating in Dubai and the GCC brings specific considerations that outside advisors often underestimate. Regulatory environments vary between regions. Consumer expectations are shaped by an unusually international demographic. Landlord dynamics, licensing requirements, staffing models, and cost structures all differ materially from London, New York, or Paris.

That perspective works in both directions. I support international brands entering the GCC, and Middle East-based businesses looking to expand into the UK, US, or other international markets. The strategic considerations are different in each case, but the need for experienced, grounded judgement is the same.

My perspective on GCC hospitality strategy comes from working inside this market, not just occasional visits. That matters when the advice needs to survive contact with local reality.

Who This Service Is For

This advisory is relevant to a specific type of client:

• Founder-led restaurant groups making decisions that will shape the next three to five years
• CEOs and executive leadership teams navigating complexity or change
• Ownership groups and investors seeking independent, commercially grounded input
• Boards requiring experienced external challenge alongside existing management
• International hospitality brands considering their first move into the Middle East
• GCC-based operators preparing for international expansion into the UK, US, or beyond

If you are a founder or CEO facing a decision that carries real weight, an initial conversation is often the most useful starting point.