Scotch Game provides restaurant leaders quick access to proven growth expertise, on-demand and scaled to your needs. With deep experience in driving revenue and middle-of-the-P&L growth, Scotch Game creates the impact restaurant leaders need.
Most restaurants often can’t escape the day-to-day running of the business, creating long-term margin risk. The only sustainable way to maintain and build profits is by intentionally and actively managing growth and innovation.
Chris Ciavarra started Scotch Game in 2017 after serving as chief marketer for Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. for nearly a decade. During that time, the company enjoyed a 6x stock price improvement and gained more than 30% market share. As Chris engaged in this and subsequent roles, he began to see models, concepts, and techniques that worked across different restaurants–and, in many cases, across industries.
Understand where and how the main drivers of growth could perform better.
Timeline: six to eight weeks.
For diagnostics, we engage deeply with the leadership team and other key stakeholders to understand areas that link to growth. This information, coupled with a review of other pertinent information such as recent and current strategic plans, customer and competitive research, and business analytics, helps form an executive-level report that covers major findings and recommendations for where and how to improve.
Two offerings are included in this service area:
Tackle a specific challenge or address a key growth opportunity.
Timeline: three to four months.
Work typically runs along one of two tracks:
Given the nature of the work, we work closely with someone on the leadership team and any key functional members as needed.
Projects are initiated with an intake that allows for a basic project plan to be completed to provide visibility into key activities and timelines that will lead to a written executive-level recommendation.
Making the organization more commercially viable can take different paths: building strategy, design/development, providing leadership, better enabling execution–or a combination thereof.
Timeline: three to nine months.
The Fractional CMO operates on two levels, supporting growth-related functions to maximize day-to-day activities while simultaneously building the capabilities to drive and deliver longer-term growth. The engagement is structured through specific meetings designed to provide the needed support while minimizing any additional load on the company.
Work often begins with a Growth Audit to ensure clarity into the remit and alignment in delivering across all the critical functional areas.
It covers planning, marketing, product development, pricing, process improvement, brand, team leadership, and budget management.
Fractional CMO services can also be delivered along a narrower project focus for leaders looking for prescribed help with a specific problem or opportunity.
Extending an initial engagement or gaining new insights.
Timeline: three to six months.
Leadership and Coaching is a powerful way for restaurant leaders to access outside expertise on-demand and as needed.
For some companies, this is an extension of the initial engagement, but in a more prescribed manner, where the leadership team and appropriate functional area(s) can continue calibrating as they move along. For others, it is a valuable stand-alone service.
While every company is different, goals typically follow one of three forms (or a combination thereof):
In most cases, we work directly with someone in leadership. Meetings are co-developed with the company and tend to be standing topics centered on business performance and plan execution. Based on the culture and nature of work, most companies will work either through weekly check-ins or via monthly business reviews where we spend a half or a full day discussing the business.
Deeply integrated strategy, longer-term results.
Timeline: 18 to 24 months.
Results Guarantee provides all of the benefits of the Fractional CMO program but with a deeper level of transformational support through longer-term leadership. Extending the relationship ensures long-lasting results by integrating the strategy into the company more deeply.
To help make this arrangement work, the starting rate for this service is lower than the Fractional CMO. A performance trigger based on mutually agreed-upon goals is included in the compensation plan. Should this trigger be hit, the assumption is that the company has realized some commercial benefit, which would lead to some commercial benefit in the relationship.
“Chris has allowed me to have confidence to truly understand who our customer is and what characteristics of our brand people truly desire. Scotch Game has eliminated the guessing game for us. Now we feel confident with our message and our target market.”
“When thinking through where best to grow, Scotch Game provided the critical thinking that allowed the company to make solid business decisions. His ability to communicate and influence helped the team have the confidence to move forward.”
