Food-Business Consulting from a Chef Who Has Actually Run One
Restaurant operations, menu development, food-product development, catering systems, business startup, staff training, practical advisory built on more than thirty years of lived operating experience.
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Most food-business consultants have read a lot. Chef Juan has actually done it, dishwasher, prep cook, chef, chef manager, franchise owner, caterer, food-product developer, business owner. He has run kitchens teams up to twenty employees and catering staffs approaching thirty. He has built a catering company from nothing, run a franchise BBQ restaurant to $1.79 million in documented sales over three years, developed retail food products, and stepped away from the restaurant chapter of his career deliberately, not because it broke him, but because he learned enough from it to help other operators avoid the ways it can break them. Chef Juan’s® consulting is what happens when that experience becomes advisory. It’s not legal advice. It’s not book learning. It’s what he did, what he got right, what he got wrong, and what he’d tell you about all of it, for a flat, project-based fee.
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What Chef Juan Consults On
- Restaurant operations, kitchen structure, workflow, staffing, cost control, guest experience
- Menu development, concept, recipe engineering, food cost, dietary flexibility, seasonal design
- Food-product development, retail products, packaging, co-packer relationships, brand extension
- Catering systems, how to build a catering operation from the ground up (or fix one that’s stuck)
- Business startup, the first ninety days of a food business, from the perspective of someone who’s been through it
- Staff training, hiring, retention, kitchen leadership, ServSafe-informed food safety
- Brand and trademark orientation, how to think about protecting a food brand (Chef Juan can connect you to legal resources; he does not provide legal advice himself)
Who Chef Juan Works Best With
- First-time restaurant and food-business owners, the people who most need someone in their corner who has done it
- Existing operators who are troubleshooting a specific problem, margin, staffing, operations, menu
- Caterers trying to grow past a plateau
- Food-product developers, someone with a promising recipe who needs to think about co-packing, packaging, and shelf life
Chef Juan is deliberately not a restaurant-group operator. If you want to open a restaurant, he can help you, but the consulting engagement will not turn into a Chef Juan’s® restaurant. The model he’s building is closer to a boutique advisory shop, “The Indigo Road, minus the restaurants,” as he described it, than a restaurant-group platform.
How Consulting Is Priced
Flat-fee, project-based. Both sides know the scope, the timeline, and the total before we start. Hourly billing is available but not preferred, flat-fee alignment produces better outcomes.
Every engagement starts with a short intake conversation to define the scope and price the project.
Why Chef Juan’s Experience Is Different
There’s a standard Chef Juan can recognize just by walking into a kitchen. Thirty years of doing the work, as employee, chef, owner, and consumer, trains an eye for how a food operation is really structured. What you get is that eye, plus the book side that makes an operator credible: culinary and hospitality degrees, marketing degree, active ServSafe® Food Protection Manager certification, and USDA acidified-food safety training.
You get lived experience combined with the mechanics behind it. Both matter. Book learning without lived experience is theory. Lived experience without the mechanics is anecdote.
Start a Consulting Conversation
Send us a paragraph on where your food business is and what you’re trying to figure out. Chef Juan will reply with next steps.
Book a Consulting Intake Call
Or email: juan@chefjuans.com
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Frequently Asked Questions
What kind of consulting does Chef Juan offer?
Restaurant operations, menu development, food-product development, catering systems, business startup guidance, and staff training. Practical advisory rooted in 30+ years of lived operating experience.
Do you provide legal or trademark advice?
No. Chef Juan can flag issues and connect you to legal resources that helped with his own trademark work, but he does not practice law himself.
How is consulting priced?
Preferably flat-fee and project-based. Both sides know the scope and price up front.
Are you going to try to open a restaurant with me?
No. Chef Juan’s® consulting is deliberately not a restaurant-group operator model.
How do I start?
Send us a short paragraph on where your business is and what you’re stuck on. We’ll schedule an intake call. —