A brand audit and repositioning for established restaurant groups that have drifted, outgrown their story, or want to move somewhere new. We read the whole business, then rebuild the brand from what is true.
The problem
It happens quietly, to good brands. You grew, opened more sites, chased covers through the quiet months. The founding idea spread across teams until no two people described it the same way.
Slid toward discounts and tactics, and started following the category instead of leading it.
Got bigger and more complex, and the old story no longer fits the group it has become.
You want to move up, or move on, and need a clear, evidenced base to move from.
Three starting points, one fix: see the whole picture, then act on it.
REfire the audit
A complete audit reads the whole business at once, across five lenses. It is far more data, from far more places, than any one person or agency can hold in their head. The system can.
Thousands of data points · dozens of sources · five lenses · one honest picture
One lens on its own is useful. Read together, they point to a single move.
The numbers show a dozen dishes carry two thirds of the profit. It is clear which to push, reprice or retire.
Social and reviews say the brand lands hardest when it talks about provenance and craft, not discounts.
Those hero dishes lean on a few key suppliers, worth naming, so the provenance claim is true and the margin holds.
Three findings from three lenses become one coordinated move, instead of three that quietly fight each other. The menu earns more, the story is finally true, and every channel says the same thing. No single tool or agency connects those dots. The system does.
One plan needs one home: your Brand Core.
The Brand Core
Every decision the audit reaches is written into one living document: the Brand Core. Far more than a guidelines deck. It holds the strategy, the identity and the live commercial picture, and the whole brand runs off it.
Strategy & positioning
Identity & guidelines
Live & commercial
Changing the Core is not a costly rebrand. It can be as precise as a sharper message or a shift in tone of voice. Because everything runs off the Core, that one change flows outward on its own, from the marketing to how you hire.
A plan on a shelf is wasted. So we keep it live.
The day-to-day
The Brand Core powers the Refire Engine, the platform your marketing team runs the week on. The strategy you shape with us lives in the Core, so everything the team makes comes out on brand.
We work the direction out together, then write it into the Brand Core so it is clear, agreed, and never lost as people and agencies change.
Every brief and every draft is drawn straight from the Core, so nothing your team makes drifts off brand.
Your in-house team produces the work, faster than before, and all of it lands on brand.
Who is behind it
Refire is led by Ben Hedley, founder of Brandhed. Fifteen years building and turning around premium hospitality brands, from the Fat Duck Group to Burger & Lobster, working alongside chefs and founders like Heston Blumenthal and Richard Corrigan. Now bringing that judgement, and a system, to restaurant groups ready to reignite.
The first step is a founder discovery session: an hour on what the brand was, what it has become, and where it could go. No commitment, no system required.
Book a discovery sessionBen Hedley · Brandhed · ben@brandhed.com
Your data is handled properly: we ask only for what a lens needs, keep it walled off from every other client, never use it to train AI, and sign an NDA before you share a single file.