How To Scale To 100+ Restaurants Without Diluting Your Brand

Episode Summary

Scaling in hospitality breaks when brand intent and operational reality drift apart. Amy explains why restaurants are different from traditional consumer brands: the “product” is not just food and drink, it is also service, environment, and how teams deliver the experience. That makes operators a core part of the brand, not a delivery layer.

Drawing on her experience growing and supporting brands at scale, including the rapid expansion of Miller & Carter from 20 to 100 locations in a managed estate, Amy shares what actually protects consistency: clear brand purpose, codified standards, strong operator relationships, and disciplined pilots that let teams “break” ideas before rollout. The result is a practical playbook for scaling without dilution, and without month-after-month surprises.

Learnings From The Episode

Amy has spent her career sitting at the intersection of brand, marketing, and operations. Across restaurants, pubs, and hotels, she’s seen the same pattern repeat: brands do not fail because someone forgot the logo guidelines. They drift because systems are weak, leaders panic under commercial pressure, and ops and brand stop working as one team.

Ops is not a delivery layer, it is part of the product

A key reset Amy shares is simple: in hospitality, operators are not the “middle step” between head office and the guest. They are the experience. If ops do not fully understand the brand vision, values, and what “great” looks like, the product breaks at the point of delivery.

That is why brand and ops must be close partners. Not occasionally aligned, but structurally linked.

Trust is built before things go wrong

Amy’s approach to alignment is practical:

• Invest time in real relationships with ops counterparts
• Listen, spend time in venues, and stay grounded in operational reality
• Bring ideas backed by customer insight, not personal opinion
• Show up as pragmatic, not theoretical

When the relationship is strong, launches improve. And when something goes wrong, teams solve it together instead of blaming each other.

What misalignment really costs you

When brand and ops drift, the damage is rarely dramatic on day one. It erodes over time:

• Initiatives roll out with low engagement
• Marketing spend gets wasted because execution is inconsistent
• Frontline teams disengage because “head office ideas” do not match reality
• Guests experience inconsistency and lose trust
• The gap between brand intent and brand execution grows until the brand feels unclear

Miller & Carter: how 20 became 100 without losing what made it special

Amy breaks down what allowed a managed estate to scale rapidly without turning into a “corporate machine”:

1) Refine the offer first
Before scaling, get clear on purpose and double down on what you are best at. For Miller & Carter, that meant focus: steak, and the steak experience, positioned for special occasions in suburban locations.

2) Codify everything that protects consistency
Brand standards, dish specs, service signatures, and comms guidelines. Codification matters because you cannot be in every room as the estate grows.

3) Build culture and shared ownership
Brand was not “marketing’s job”. Everyone became a brand ambassador. The early GM group was brought into the scaling journey, so growth felt collaborative, not top-down.

4) Train leaders before handing over keys
New managers spent three months in existing venues before running new sites. They learned the brand in practice, not in a slide deck.

5) Invest in a proper opening machine
Rapid growth needs dedicated opening teams and trainers, or the existing estate suffers while leadership chases new launches.

Protect the “untouchables” when commercial pressure hits

Amy shares a clear example: rising red meat costs created pressure, but steak quality was protected because it was central to brand trust and repeat visits. Instead of weakening what guests come back for, leadership adjusted other levers (pricing, sides, labour model, cost structure).

The lesson: great leaders know what cannot be compromised, even when spreadsheets are shouting.

Why brands lose their way (and how it starts)

Amy outlines common causes of drift:

• Lack of brand clarity: teams interpret the brand differently across regions and venues
• Commercial pressure: short-term decisions create long-term confusion
• Misaligned promotions: discounting without purpose trains guests to wait for deals and weakens brand recall
• Failure to evolve with consumer trends: no long-term brand strategy, only short-term campaigns

Over time, guests lose “vivid recall”, meaning your brand stops being the obvious choice for a specific occasion.

The diagnostic: brand intent vs brand execution

When Amy enters a new brand, she first asks: is the problem the intent or the execution?

Brand intent: purpose, positioning, promises, values, and whether that aligns with the target guest’s emotional and functional needs.
Brand execution: what the guest actually experiences, measured through data (POS, booking patterns, frequency, spend), venue observation, team feedback, and review sentiment.

It’s detective work. You need numbers, but you also need to stand in the restaurant and feel the friction.

Stress-test ideas operationally, before rollout

Amy’s mantra is practical: let operators break it before you roll it out.

A good pilot:

• Uses engaged managers who will collaborate honestly
• Tests across different conditions (quiet vs busy, large vs small sites)
• Measures the feasibility for team workload, guest experience, and commercial outcome

The “sundae launch” lesson: popularity can still be a failure

One of Amy’s most memorable mistakes was scaling a dessert range too aggressively. The sundaes were popular, but:

• Machines couldn’t handle the throughput
• Recipes were too complex and slowed kitchens
• Portions were so large that dessert penetration dropped (two guests shared one)

The takeaway: test beyond “does it sell”. Test equipment limits, prep time, service speed, and basket behviour.

Service: clarity, confidence, and autonomy

Amy defines great service as confident, welcoming teams with the intuition to anticipate needs. Service breaks down when teams lack:

• clarity on what good looks like
• training and menu knowledge
• confidence and support
• autonomy to act without fear of getting in trouble

When that happens, service becomes scripted and transactional. And the guest feels it.

Marketing in hospitality is end-to-end

Marketing is not just bringing guests through the door. It is also:

• shaping the in-venue experience with ops
• using guest feedback loops to iterate
• improving repeat visit, not only acquisition

The strongest operators treat marketing as strategic stewardship of the full guest journey.