Restaurants • Wineries • Hospitality Venues • Hospitality Advisory
Turning good venues into great businesses
You’re busy. So why isn’t there any money in it?
More than one in ten Australian cafés and restaurants closed last year, double the rate of the economy as a whole. Most of them weren’t empty.
Hands-on hospitality advisory for restaurants, wineries and venues across Australia, built on thirty years of running them.
What We Fix
Solving the problems that cost your venue money, people and momentum
Things owners actually say to us…
“I'm the only one who knows what to do, and the only one who does it right.”
The real issue isn’t your team. It’s that the standard only exists in your head. Nothing has been written down, taught, or measured, so nobody can meet a target they can’t see. We build the operating standard, then train and hold the team to it, so the venue runs to your level whether you’re there or not.
“I'm working 16 hour days and it's still not enough.”
You’ve become the operating system. Every decision routes through you because no structure exists to make it without you. We install the rosters, prep systems, ordering discipline and daily rhythms that hand the day back to your managers. The goal is a venue that doesn’t need you on the floor to be excellent.
“Service is different depending on who's on.”
Inconsistency is a training and accountability problem, not a personality problem. We define what the guest should feel at every touchpoint, then build the shift structure and briefings that make it repeatable.
“We do good service.”
Service is what you deliver. Hospitality is how the guest feels when they leave. One is transactional and easily beaten on price. The other is what makes people drive past three other venues to get to yours, and it’s the only thing your competitor can’t copy. We design the guest journey that turns a meal into a reason to come back and tell someone.
“Every week I'm stressed about making payroll.”
That’s a labour model problem showing up as a cash flow problem. We take labour to a percentage of revenue by daypart, fix your rostering against actual trade patterns, and cut hours that produce nothing without cutting the hours guests feel.
“Then I'm stressed about paying suppliers.”
Cash flow, not profit, is what closes venues. We work cost of sales, supplier terms, order frequency, waste and stock holding until the cash cycle stops working against you.
If these problems sound familiar, that is what the Venue Performance Review finds, and the 90-day roadmap fixes.
WHO WE ARE
Experienced Hospitality Advisors
We turn businesses into profitable, brand-led destinations through high-performing teams, disciplined operations, and memorable guest experiences.
That promise comes from thirty years inside the industry, not beside it: from managing multi-site large chain venues in Canada, to building and running our own award-winning venues on the Mornington Peninsula, running the floor for Neil Perry at Rockpool, directing a $25M luxury precinct with a team of 350, and delivering ground-up builds like the 300+ seat restaurant at Crittenden Wines.
The approach is simple: Ensure the strategy is clear, get the team and culture right, create the conditions for genuinely unforgettable guest journeys, then make sure the right systems are in place and stay close to the data. Everything is in the execution. The Ball Group exists to bring that directly to owners and operators serious about building something lasting.
How We Work
A clear path from problem to performance starts with a Review
1
Review
Find the real problem.
A fixed-scope diagnostic across your people, customer, profit, product, communication & IT, and environment. 90-day roadmap delivered inside a week.
2
Advise & Implement
Turn the roadmap into action.
A focused 6-week or 12-week engagement to define and embed the strategy, build the systems, structures and operational improvements identified through the Review.
3
Embedded Advisory
Make the gains stick.
Ongoing hands-on advisory, including one day onsite each week, keeping the team accountable and performance moving in the right direction.
The Venue Performance Review
Find Out What’s Really Holding Your Venue Back.
A fixed-scope diagnostic that gets beneath the symptoms and identifies what’s actually affecting profitability, consistency and performance.
- 2 days onsite + 2 days offsite + 1 day presentation
- 6 operational streams
- 90-day action roadmap
- Delivered inside a single week
Find Out What’s Really Holding Your Venue Back.
A fixed-scope diagnostic that gets beneath the symptoms and identifies what’s actually affecting profitability, consistency and performance.
- 2 days onsite + 2 days offsite + 1 day presentation
- 6 operational streams
- 90-day action roadmap
- Delivered inside a single week
FEATURED PROJECT
Real People, Real Results
“In nine months we cut food cost by 4% and labour by 8%, and that turned into a swing of just under $240,000 to the bottom line year on year. That’s what turned it around. Not a marketing push, not more covers, just control. The Pier went from a venue with good sales and a profitability problem to a genuinely profitable business, and it stayed that way because the systems Josh put in are still running it.”
$240,000
Swing to the bottom line, year on year – The Pier
300+
Seat restaurant built and handed over – Crittenden Wines
Trusted by wineries, cafes, restaurants & venues across Australia
