Orange County Hospitality, LLC advises hotels, restaurants and venues on how they actually run. We start with the distinction above because it is the one that most often lands an operator in trouble — with staff, with guests, and occasionally with a regulator.
Simplified. Federal and Tennessee rules and your own policy govern
Who we are
Orange County Hospitality, LLC is a hospitality consulting company based in downtown Nashville. We work with hotel, restaurant, bar and venue operators on the operational side of their business — service standards, cost control, staffing structure and the policies that sit underneath both.
Nashville has added rooms and seats at a pace few cities have matched, and growth conceals problems for a while. A venue that is full every weekend can run poor margins, high turnover and inconsistent service without anybody noticing until the season turns.
We are advisers rather than operators. We do not own venues, manage properties or employ your staff — we look at how the thing runs and tell you what we find, including the parts nobody enjoys hearing.
Full rooms hide everything. The test of an operation is a slow Tuesday in February.
Rooms, food and beverage, events
Service standards and cost control
Because verbal policy is not policy
Demonbreun Street, SoBro
Services
Advisory work with an operator's own team. We do not take over the running of anything.
Where the money actually goes: food and beverage cost, labour percentage, waste and the difference between a busy week and a profitable one.
Rotas, section sizes and supervision ratios — and the turnover cost that a thin schedule quietly creates.
Written policies on gratuities, service charges, tip pooling, cash handling and comps — the documents that answer a dispute before it becomes one.
What "good" looks like written down, trained and checked — so quality does not depend on which manager happens to be on shift.
Contracts, minimums, deposits and the charge structure for private events — where most guest disputes in this city originate.
Pre-opening checklists and the first ninety days, or the handover when a venue changes hands and nobody can find the supplier list.
Charges & tips
This is the area where good operators most often create problems for themselves without meaning to. Every point below is about clarity rather than generosity — a guest and a server who both understood the arrangement rarely fall out over it.
A mandatory service charge is generally treated as revenue of the business, not as a tip belonging to employees — even where the business chooses to distribute all of it. That has consequences for payroll, for tip credit and for how it must be described.
Most people read "20% service charge" as a tip. If it is not distributed as one, saying so plainly on the menu and the check is the difference between a policy and a complaint. Ambiguity here is never read in the operator's favour.
Who may participate in a pool depends on whether a tip credit is taken, and managers and supervisors generally may not keep any portion of employee tips regardless. Get the arrangement written down and checked rather than inherited from the previous manager.
An event contract listing a percentage without saying whether it is a gratuity, a service charge or an administrative fee is an argument waiting to happen — with the client, and sometimes with the staff who worked the event.
How it works
Time on the floor across different shifts, not a boardroom presentation.
Costs, labour, covers and turnover put next to each other.
Findings in writing, ranked by what actually moves the number.
Your team owns the changes. We are not a permanent fixture.
Client feedback
We had a 20% automatic charge and no line anywhere explaining what it was. It had never caused a problem until it did. Rewriting one sentence on the menu ended a complaint pattern we had been living with for two years.
The advice we got included "take this to an employment lawyer before you change anything." I had paid consultants before who were happy to opine on wage law. Being told where the limit of their expertise was made me trust the rest of it.
Our weekends were packed and our margin was terrible, which I could not reconcile. The answer was labour scheduled for the peak across the whole week. Obvious once shown, invisible from inside it.
FAQ
Get in touch
What you run, how many covers or rooms, and what is not working. You will get an honest read on whether we are the right help — or whether you need a lawyer, an accountant or nobody at all.