About David Holden

I started in the kitchen.

After training at college, I worked as a chef between 1985 and 1992, learning first-hand how food cost, portion control, waste and operational discipline affect profitability. The foundation of everything I do today was built in working kitchens, not classrooms or consultancy offices.

In the early 1990s, I moved into stocktaking, working alongside my father and developing a specialism in stock control that has remained at the centre of my career ever since.

Over the following four decades I've worked across almost every part of hospitality:

• Stocktaking and financial audits at Allied Domecq

• Running my own stock auditing business

• Working with national pub groups and major live music festivals across the UK and Europe

• Six years on the operating side at Hilton Birmingham Metropole

• Full P&L responsibility running Marco Pierre White's Birmingham operation

• Leading unannounced financial and operational audits across RedCat's 30+ site pub estate

Full career history on LinkedIn.

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Why Clarity Exists

Most hospitality businesses don't have a sales problem.  They have a visibility problem.  The numbers show something isn't right, but nobody can  confidently explain why....  That's where I come in.

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When I walk into a business, I've usually worked in every role connected to the problem. I understand what a chef sees when food cost starts drifting. I know what stock reports reveal, and what they don't. I've sat with General Managers explaining variances and I've conducted audits where nobody knew there was an issue until the evidence was in front of them.

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Clarity brings all of that experience together.

Not a methodology borrowed from another industry.

Not a report that gets filed and forgotten.

Just practical, independent, site-level work that identifies where profit is being lost, explains it in commercial terms, and helps put controls in place that last.

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What I Believe

Hospitality profitability is built on boring things.

• Stock checks.

• Delivery checks.

• Recipe control.

• Investigating variances.

• Following up on yesterday's numbers instead of waiting for next month's report.

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None of it is glamorous, most of it is repetitive - But great results are built on the cumulative effect of this daily discipline being performed consistently and well.

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There isn't an easy shortcut, there isn't a magic spreadsheet, there isn't a KPI dashboard that fixes poor control.

The businesses that consistently outperform are usually the ones paying attention to the fundamentals every single day.

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My job is to help identify what matters, measure it properly and make sure the controls behind it are strong enough to last.