What it is for
Who the framework is for, and when it starts to matter.
The framework is for the restaurant group that has built a brand people love and wants it to run at five, ten or twenty locations without losing what made it work. The moment it matters usually arrives earlier than expected.
By then the people who built the first restaurant cannot be in every unit, and the standard starts to vary by location before the numbers show it. The pressure is to act fast, and acting fast is how a group ends up fixing the symptom it can see instead of the problem underneath. A multi-unit operation usually fails that way: labor gets cut when the constraint is a schedule tied to last week’s sales, or the menu grows when the line cannot execute what is already on it.
The framework is the discipline that slows the first move down just enough to aim it, then keeps every move after it in order.
Why the order is fixed
Each step takes in what the one before it produced.
Anyone can put five words behind five letters. What makes this a method is that each step takes in what the step before it produced. Run them out of order and a step works from a guess instead of an answer.
What each step takes in, and what it hands on
- Recognize
- Takes inThe operation as it runs: service at more than one unit, the P&L period against period, and what the operator knows that no report shows.
- Hands onA diagnosis in writing: one cause, named.
- Align
- Takes inThe diagnosis.
- Hands onOne agreed problem, a written definition of done, and decision rights.
- Narrow
- Takes inThe agreed problem and its definition of done.
- Hands onTwo or three fixes, in order, each tied to a number read weekly.
- Generate
- Takes inThe short list.
- Hands onSystems the managers run every shift, with nobody checking.
- Elevate
- Takes inThe running systems and the managers running them.
- Hands onA bench that holds the work, and the next unit back to Recognize.
What breaks out of order
Five ways to run it out of order, and what each costs.
Running the steps out of turn fails in specific, predictable ways, and each failure looks like progress while it happens. Each step’s page covers its own:
- Skip Recognize, and every later step works on the story the business arrived with.
- Skip Align, and the managers run one plan while ownership measures another.
- Start at Narrow, and the team focuses hard on the wrong lever.
- Start at Generate, and the group builds good systems for a problem nobody agreed on.
- Start at Elevate, and people get trained against standards that do not exist yet.
On the home page you can pick a starting step and see what it costs.
Same sequence, different findings
One order, and different findings in every group.
The order never changes. What each step turns up does. A labor problem and a brand problem both start at Recognize, both get agreed in Align, and both get cut to a short list in Narrow. By the time Generate starts, they can look like two different pieces of work: a rebuilt labor model in one group, a written concept and the training that carries it in the other.
That is also why the framework travels between groups and between units. Every opening is a chance to run it again, with the bench from the last one doing more of the work.
Where to read more
RANGE’s own account, and the writing filed by step.
This site explains each step and the order. For how the five steps run inside a RANGE engagement, read RANGE’s own account, and for the sequence told as one story, the first issue of Built Not Born.
, Built Not Born
Why a good fix fails in the wrong order
A composite opening walks all five steps in order and shows why a sound fix collapses when it jumps ahead of the step it depends on.
, RANGE Insights
The RANGE Framework: How We Diagnose and Fix Multi-Unit Restaurant Operations
Read this first: it defines all five steps, gives a question that tests each one, and shows what breaks when the sequence gets shuffled.
