New Restaurant Development & Expense Management
A new-restaurant development program run alongside an expense-management redesign — new units opened against their unit economics, and the operating cost base brought under one governance standard.
Opening new units without losing the cost base.
A new restaurant development and expense management program, led by Abdul Kunateh as Enterprise Operations Project Manager & Restaurateur. Two connected mandates ran together: opening new units to their intended unit economics, and consolidating vendors and operating expense across the existing estate.
- Organization
- A multi-unit restaurant operator
- Scale
- New-unit development across a multi-unit estate
- Role
- Enterprise Operations Project Manager & Restaurateur
- Focus
- New-unit development, vendor consolidation, operating expense
The third distinct employer in the series
The five case studies span three distinct employers. The cybersecurity and infrastructure programs sit with one; the workforce and digital growth programs sit with another. This program stands on its own — a different organization, a different operating model, and a different problem: opening new units while holding the cost of running the existing ones.
New units opening faster than the cost base could absorb.
New restaurant development carries two costs that are easy to separate on paper and hard to separate in practice: the cost of opening a unit, and the cost of running it once open. When those sit with different teams on different cadences, openings land on schedule and still miss their unit economics.
Construction spend was inconsistent across markets. Comparable builds carried different costs depending on where they happened, which made a new unit difficult to underwrite with confidence and made it harder to tell a genuine market difference from a management one.
Across the existing estate, operating expense had accumulated through a fragmented vendor base, and vendor contracts kept growing without sufficient renewal discipline. Similar goods and services were bought on different terms in different places, and agreements tended to renew on their own momentum rather than against a review — which made the real cost of running a unit difficult to see and harder to compare.
The program had to hold both ends at once: open new units to plan, and bring the operating cost base under a single standard.
One owner across development and expense.
As Enterprise Operations Project Manager & Restaurateur, Abdul's responsibilities centered on holding the development program and the expense work to the same standard:
New-store opening program
Managing the new-restaurant development program from site readiness through opening, coordinating the functions each opening depended on.
Real Estate, Construction and Finance partnership
Partnering with Real Estate, Construction and Finance so site selection, construction spend and the financial case for a new unit were worked from one set of assumptions rather than three.
Unit-economics discipline
Holding new-unit decisions against their unit economics, so an opening was judged by how the unit would run and not only by whether it opened on time.
Vendor consolidation and renewal discipline
Leading the consolidation of a fragmented vendor base onto fewer relationships and consistent terms, and putting renewal discipline around contracts that had been growing without it.
Operating-expense ownership
Partnering with Finance and Operations so operating expense had a single owner, a shared baseline and a regular review.
Cross-functional governance
Running the cadence that kept Real Estate, Construction, Finance and Operations working from one plan rather than four, across markets that had been managing construction spend differently.
Treat the opening and the operating cost as one program.
Development and expense management ran as two workstreams under one governance structure, working from one set of numbers.
Baseline the real cost
Establishing what a unit actually cost to open and to run — including where construction spend differed market to market and why — so decisions were made against a shared baseline instead of separate assumptions.
Open to the unit economics
Sequencing each opening against the unit economics it was underwritten on, with Real Estate, Construction and Finance working the same numbers and the trade-offs surfaced before they were made rather than after.
Consolidate the vendor base
Reducing overlapping vendor relationships onto consistent terms and bringing contracts onto a renewal review, which made cost comparable across the estate and simplified the work of running a unit.
Govern on one cadence
A shared review across Real Estate, Construction, Finance and Operations kept the openings and the expense work honest about their effect on one another.
Vendor consolidation and expense discipline carried the savings. The cost base came down by simplifying how the estate bought, built and operated — not by reducing what a unit delivers to its guests.
A lower cost base, and openings that held their numbers.
$3.1M
Expense Savings
16%
Unit-Economics Cost Reduction
Working with Real Estate, Construction, Finance and Operations, the expense-management work delivered $3.1M in savings, and the unit-economics discipline reduced cost by 16% against the baseline the program started with. These were collaborative organizational results; Abdul's contribution was the program leadership, the governance cadence and the vendor and expense discipline that made them reachable.
Both outcomes came from the same operating competence: one baseline, one governance cadence, and a development program judged on how units run rather than only on when they open.
Consolidation and expense discipline — not a reduction in what a unit delivers.
About These Case Studies
The initiatives featured represent selected examples from Abdul Kunateh's professional career. Certain organization details, technologies, and operational information may be generalized to protect confidential and proprietary information. Results reflect collaborative organizational efforts; case studies demonstrate Abdul's leadership responsibilities, contributions, and strategic thinking within these initiatives.
Digital Growth & Cloud Scaling
Impact in Practice
- 01Enterprise Cybersecurity Program
- 02Infrastructure & Cloud Modernization
- 03Workforce Management Transformation
- 04Digital Growth & Cloud Scaling
- 05New Restaurant Development & Expense Management
Complex Problems Require More Than Good Ideas.
They require leadership, clarity, disciplined execution, and systems capable of turning strategy into measurable results. Whether leading transformation from inside an organization or advising leaders through Kunateh Impact, the work centers on one question: how do we build organizations capable of consistently turning potential into performance?