The person costing your menu has run the section.

The short version

I came up through kitchens the long way. Apprentice at Rowley's in Baslow, the sister restaurant to Fischer's Baslow Hall, where I worked alongside Max Fischer. Chef de partie on sauce, meat and fish at The Peacock at Rowsley, a 3 AA Rosette kitchen. Sous chef and then head chef at The Lilypad in Chesterfield, which I helped build from scratch. Most recently head chef at a multi site pub group, running food development across seven sites.

I now teach professional cookery at the University of Derby. Menu Engineering Co is the consultancy alongside it: the commercial half of what I spent a decade doing on the pass.

The numbers I have actually been responsible for

Menu engineering is not something I have simply read about. It has been a core part of how I have been measured throughout my 10+ year career.

• 70 percent gross profit, held month after month in a multi site pub group, through weekly stock takes rather than an annual costing review. The same 70 percent target at The Lilypad, agreed with ownership and worked to.
• Menu development across seven sites in a pub group, each serving over 800 covers a week on fresh food, including bringing a second site into the same group standards.
• Up to 900 covers on a Saturday, which is where you find out whether a dish specification is realistic or merely correct.
• 2 AA Rosette standard evening service with a brigade of three at The Lilypad, which is an exercise in menu design as much as cooking.
• Fourth and Kels for stock and labour. I have built the costings, run the stock takes and answered for the variance.
• Five star EHO, consistently, with monthly visits.

The reason this site talks about cash margin rather than food cost percentage is that I have sat in the meeting where the percentage looked fine and the money was not there.

Why a teacher makes a better consultant

This is the part I would push back on if I were you, so let me put it directly. I am not a chef who left the industry. I am a chef who now spends his working week explaining method to people who then have to go and execute it, under time pressure, without me standing there.

That is the entire job of a menu consultant. A recommendation is worthless if the section cannot run it on a Saturday. Teaching is a daily test of whether an instruction is clear enough to survive contact with someone who has not been in your head for six months, and it is the reason the specs I write get followed rather than filed.

Career

1. May 2026now Lecturer in professional cookery, and menu engineering consultant University of Derby
2. 20212026 Head Chef A multi site pub group. Food across seven sites
3. 20202021 Junior Sous Chef The Peacock at Rowsley, Matlock3 AA Rosettes
4. 20182020 Head Chef and Manager The Lilypad, Chesterfield College Group
5. 20162018 Sous Chef The Lilypad, Chesterfield
6. 20142016 Chef de Partie The Peacock at Rowsley, Matlock3 AA Rosettes
7. 20132014 Chef de Partie Morley Hayes Dovecote, Ilkeston2 AA Rosettes
8. 20132014 Apprentice, promoted to Chef de Partie Rowley's, Baslow2 AA Rosettes

Two separate spells in 3 AA Rosette kitchens, and two more at 2 Rosettes. Dates are years, not months.

Alongside the above, freelance head chef for Chop Chop Chef Ltd, covering sites across Derbyshire when resident chefs were absent.

Recognition

• Apprentice of the Year 2012, Derby.
• Second place, Young Chef of the Year, Sheffield.
• Best Newcomer of the Year, and Cafe of the Year twice, Chesterfield, during The Lilypad years.
• Cooked for VIP guests at The Peacock at Rowsley, including Raymond Blanc.
• Trained alongside Max Fischer at Rowley's, the sister restaurant to Michelin starred Fischer's Baslow Hall.

Qualifications

• Level 3 NVQ in Professional Cookery, City and Guilds, 2017.
• Level 2 NVQ in Professional Cookery, City and Guilds, 2015.
• Level 4 Award in Managing Food Safety in Catering, the management level food safety qualification.
• Level 3 Award in Education and Training, the teaching qualification behind the lecturing post at the University of Derby.

What 3 AA Rosettes actually tells you

A Rosette is a food quality award, not a business qualification, so it is worth being precise about what it does and does not prove to someone buying consultancy.

The AA awards Rosettes to roughly five percent of restaurants across the UK and Ireland. Three Rosettes and above sits in about the top ten percent within the AA Restaurant Guide, and the AA's own criterion for three is "outstanding restaurants that achieve standards that demand national recognition well beyond their local area". AA Restaurant Guide I worked two separate spells at that level, at The Peacock at Rowsley.

What that is evidence of, for your purposes, is consistency under pressure. Kitchens at that level hold a specification across every plate, every service. That is the same discipline a costing model depends on: a spec that is written down, trained to and actually followed is what makes a plate cost real rather than theoretical.

What it is not evidence of is commercial judgement. Plenty of Rosette kitchens lose money. The credential is here because it makes recommendations credible in a kitchen, not because it proves anything about a P&L. The 70 percent GP does that.

How I work

• Numbers before opinions. I will not tell you a dish is wrong because I would have cooked it differently. I will tell you what it earns and what it costs you to keep.
• Worked remotely, from your numbers. The costing, the analysis and the specifications are written from your EPOS export, your invoices and your specs. Where it helps I will come and watch a service, because paper plate costs and actual plate costs are rarely the same number, but I am there to observe rather than to cook.
• Your chef is not the problem. The head chef usually benefits most from this work, and the engagement goes better when they are in the room from the start rather than presented with conclusions.
• Measured afterwards. Baseline first, comparison at twelve weeks. If it did not work, that will be visible, and I would rather find out than not.