Hospitality Consulting & Advisory
Hardaway Hospitality helps hotel brands, restaurant groups, cruise and marine operators, private clubs, casino hospitality teams, and owners develop food-and-beverage experiences that are distinctive, practical, and built to perform.
Who we help
What we do
The work is designed for organizations that need more than ideas. Hardaway Hospitality helps concepts, menus, operating models, training systems, and field execution work together.
For teams creating, refreshing, or repositioning a concept.
For brands and operators ready to move from deck to pilot, launch, or field rollout.
For operators dealing with sales, labor, consistency, guest satisfaction, or profitability challenges.
Why it works
Many hospitality initiatives fail between the idea and the opening shift. Hardaway Hospitality focuses on that gap: translating a concept into tools, standards, training, workflows, and decisions that property teams can actually use.
Experience supporting concepts and programs intended for portfolio-wide use across multiple hotels, restaurants, or vessels.
Field assessments, pilot launches, on-site training, recipe testing, implementation support, and post-launch refinement.
Firsthand experience with labor, food cost, cash flow, vendor management, staffing, marketing, guest satisfaction, and daily operating pressure.
Representative work
Some work is anonymized because it was completed through partner relationships or under confidentiality restrictions. The focus here is scope, scale, and the kind of problem solved.
Supported the launch of a full-service restaurant concept for a major hotel brand, developed with a nationally recognized Food Network chef. Work included launch planning, SOPs, service standards, training tools, team tastings, on-site support, and brand-content coordination.
Supported multi-phase breakfast strategy, field assessments, minimum viable program planning, buffet optimization, guest-flow guidance, staffing assumptions, signage, SOP cards, and owner/operator quick sheets for hotel-brand use.
Developed and supported a lobby bar platform for major full-service hotel brands, including concept ideation, service narrative, food and beverage recipe development, testing, executive-chef training, and FOH/BOH implementation tools.
Modernized a multi-location hotel restaurant concept through culinary strategy, menu development, recipe testing and costing, collateral support, pricing strategy, service guidance, and rollout-ready documentation.
Created restaurant outlet guides and supported future-state food, beverage, service, and entertainment improvements across cruise and marine hospitality environments, including SOPs, proof-of-concept support, and beta rollout recommendations.
Managed project coordination, training content, SOPs, cocktail experience narratives, menu copy, vendor coordination, glassware/OS&E details, staff training, and on-site launch support for a casino-hospitality beverage program.
Named experience
Project-managed the concept and branding portion of a $5.3 million public-space renovation, helping bring a new restaurant identity to life inside Hyatt Regency Denver Tech Center.
Co-owner and managing partner experience across acquisition, concept and menu development, operations, marketing, vendor relationships, financial oversight, staffing, and wind-down decision-making.
Provided private-club food-and-beverage consulting focused on member satisfaction, dining experience, and operational improvement.
How projects move forward
Clarify the opportunity. Define the business challenge, desired outcome, timeline, constraints, and stakeholders.
Assess the operation. Review guest experience, menu, labor, service flow, training, standards, economics, and field realities.
Build the tools. Create the concept, menu direction, SOPs, training, playbooks, pilot plan, and implementation roadmap.
Support execution. Help teams launch, test, measure, adjust, and sustain the program.
Founder & Principal
Ben Hardaway brings 25+ years of hospitality experience across hotel food and beverage, restaurant ownership, concept development, culinary leadership, operations, training, and brand-level consulting.
His work sits at the intersection of creativity and execution — helping hospitality teams turn ideas into restaurant, bar, and food-and-beverage programs that can be opened, operated, trained, measured, and sustained.
Before consulting, Ben held senior food-and-beverage leadership roles with Hyatt Hotels, overseeing complex hotel F&B operations, multi-outlet restaurant programs, banquet operations, large teams, renovations, openings, and performance improvement initiatives.
As both a consultant and owner/operator, Ben understands the real pressures behind every concept: labor, food cost, guest expectations, team development, marketing, cash flow, service consistency, and profitability.
Ben is open to project-based consulting, select fractional or interim leadership work, and conversations where his experience can create meaningful impact.
View LinkedIn Profile →Start with a conversation
Share the opportunity, timing, and desired outcome. Hardaway Hospitality can help clarify the path forward and determine whether the fit is right.