About David Holden
I started my career in the kitchen, having trained at college.
Between 1985 and 1992 I worked as a chef. That's where the foundation was laid - not in a classroom, not in a consultancy,
but on the pass, in service, in the kind of environment where the pressure is real and the margin for error is zero.
I understood food cost, waste, and portion discipline from the inside before I ever looked at a variance report.
In the early 1990s I moved into stocktaking, working in partnership with my father.
That was the beginning of a specialism that has underpinned everything I've done in the thirty years since.
My Story
In 1997 I joined Allied Domecq, one of the UK's largest drinks and hospitality businesses, conducting stock and financial audits across a multi-brand pub and hotel estate including mainland Europe. Twelve hotels across the Midlands and Southern Counties. A diverse mix of branded and unbranded hospitality sites. That's where the discipline was formalised, understanding not just what the variance was, but what was causing it, what it was costing, and what needed to change.
In 2000 I co-founded Holden Stock Auditors Ltd, a specialist stock auditing and control business serving national pub and restaurant groups across the UK and Europe. Through partnerships with Live Nation, Kilimanjaro Live, and Mark Butler Associates, we delivered audit and control operations at major live music festivals and events - high-volume, high-cash environments where the stakes are serious and there is no margin for error.
Concerts. Festivals. VIP events for international promoters. The kind of operations where £1m in F&B can move through a site in a weekend and the numbers have to be right. Nearly nine years building scalable audit methodologies that gave operators reliable, actionable data rather than generic reports.
After nine years running my own business, I moved to the operating side. Six years as F&B Control Manager and Management Accountant at Hilton Birmingham Metropole - A 790-bedroom conference and events hotel, one of the largest in Europe, with a £12m F&B operation across multiple outlets including restaurants, bars, banqueting, and large-scale event catering. A dual-function role spanning both operational control and financial management, including a secondment into the hotel finance team. That's where I learned what it looks like when a large, complex operation gets the numbers right.
Then eight years as Business Manager and General Manager at Marco Pierre White Steakhouse, Bar and Grill and Hotel Indigo Birmingham. £10m combined revenue. 10,000 covers a month. Full P&L accountability. EBITDA margins of up to 25% in a high-volume F&B environment. That's the operator credential. I've been on the other side of the table. I know what it feels like to carry the number, to sit in the review meeting, and to be accountable for a P&L that might not be where it should be.
Most recently, three years as Internal Audit Manager at RedCat Pub Company, leading unannounced financial and operational audits across a 30+ site pub estate. Root cause analysis on recurring margin issues. Corrective actions embedded across multiple sites. Clear, actionable findings delivered to operations and finance leadership.
Clarity is the synthesis of all of that.
The chef who understood the kitchen.
The stocktaker who learned the numbers.
The business owner who built the methodology.
The management accountant who saw how it works at scale.
The operator who carried the P&L.
The internal auditor who improved compliance and profitability across an estate.
That's not a career that arrived at hospitality consultancy from the outside. It's one that has been built from the inside, across every part of the operation, over forty years.
What that means in practice...
When I walk into a hospitality business, I've already been in every role that touches the problem.
I know what the chef does when the food cost creeps up. I know what the stocktaker misses when the brief is just to count. I know what the GM sees in the P&L and what they don't. I know what the auditor finds when nobody's been looking.
That breadth is what Clarity is built on. Not a methodology borrowed from another industry.
Not a report that gets filed and forgotten. Practical, site-level work that finds the loss, explains it in commercial terms, and fixes it in a way that sticks.
If your margins aren't where they should be and you want to know why, that's the conversation to have. Book a Profit Review
If any of that sounds like the help you're looking for, I'd be glad to hear from you.
No pitch, just an honest conversation.