The Operator's Position · Castle Peak Ventures

Your position

Three open. Customer Channel, Operating Model, Supply Chain.

Closing one matters more than closing them well.

Every restaurant holds three faces at once. The front is the relationship with the guest, who owns it, and who takes the cut on every order. The inside is the kitchen and menu, what they cost you that the guest never sees on the plate. The back is the supply line, who prices the truck, and whether the operator has any leverage when the price moves. Each open face is a place margin leaks. Hold all three and the squeeze has nowhere left to land.

How to read the score. Each face is scored from 0 to 100 based on the statement you picked. Below 40 is wide open, the face is leaking and the operator has no leverage. 40 to 59 is mixed, some defense, real exposure. 60 to 79 is held, the face is closed enough that the squeeze can't find it easily. 80+ is fully held, the face is a moat. The cost number below is what the open faces cost you in annual margin at your revenue.

The front

Customer Channel

Who owns the guest relationship. Lower scores mean the delivery platforms own your customer; higher means you do.

The inside

Operating Model

How engineered the kitchen, menu, and labor structure are. Lower scores mean traditional cost the guest never sees; higher means a model sized to the work.

The back

Supply Chain

Who prices the truck and whether you can pressure the price. Lower scores mean you take what's given; higher means you have leverage.

What the open position costs you

. of revenue, walking out three doors at once.

The total is the annual margin leaking through the three faces combined, modeled at your revenue. It's not money paid to a vendor; it's money the structure of how you operate gives up before any decision you make at the unit. Close the open faces, lower the number.

Modeled on annual revenue:

Where the leak breaks down.

The three components below sum to the total above. Each one is the annual margin you give up at that position, at your revenue. The percentage on the right is how much of total revenue that single component costs you.

The frontCustomer Channel · platform cut

The aggregator's commission on the share of revenue routed through DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub. Lower if you own more of the customer relationship directly.

The insideOperating Model · margin gap

The margin gap between your kitchen and an engineered fast-casual benchmark like Cava at 24 percent restaurant-level margin. Lower if your concept, footprint, and labor are sized to the work the guest pays for.

The backSupply Chain · price spread

The price spread on covered items between an operator at baseline GPO tier and one with negotiated buying. Lower if you have real procurement leverage with your distributors and suppliers.

You among fifty-two real operators.

Each dot is an operator on the public record, Cava, Chipotle, Sweetgreen, Nellcôte, Lemonade, Peter Luger, Antoine's. The triangle plots each operator's three position scores onto one point. Top corner is Operating Model, bottom left is Customer Channel, bottom right is Supply Chain. Operators closer to a corner favor that position. Color shows what happened to them. Your position is the black dot.

Holding the line · still operating Mixed outcome · operating, exposed Closed / restructured You

Operators near you who held the line

Operators near you whose position closed

What you get

The move plan, written to your shape.

The screen showed you where the leak is. The email is what to do about it. Three ranked moves keyed to your specific position scores, each one written in operator language with the first concrete step, the second, and the third. The named operators above with the specific play each one ran to close the gap you're sitting in, not just who they are, but what they did. The sources behind each cost-line number so you can trace the methodology back to public filings, NRA data, and the Cava and GPO benchmarks. A line of sight to where Castle Peak sees the missing layer for an operator at your scale. Plain English, two pages. Comes from Johnny directly, reply if you want to talk.

Methodology

The 52-operator dataset spans six segments. Cost-line components draw on Cava FY2025 10-K (24% restaurant-level margin), Dining Alliance and Buyers Edge GPO materials (10-30% covered-item savings range), Restaurant Business Online platform commission ranges (15-30%), and NRA 2026 State of the Industry on independent unit counts. Verdict templates key to a binary held/leaking pattern at the 60-point threshold. The number is directional, not an audit; the diagnostic email walks each component.

Where your position is leaking, and what it costs.

Customer ChannelWho owns the relationship with your guest

Operating ModelThe kitchen, the menu, the labor structure

Supply ChainThe truck, the vendors, the prices you pay

Three open. Customer Channel, Operating Model, Supply Chain.

Where the leak breaks down.

You among fifty-two real operators.

What you get