Menu ProfitHow It WorksMarketing ServicesAboutContact Get Your Snapshot
Meet the Nerd

Derek Kirk

I'm Derek. For 20+ years I did marketing and menu strategy for big restaurant brands, the kind with a whole department for this stuff and a budget with a lot of zeros.

Somewhere along the way I became the guy who gets a little too excited about a product mix report. The one in the meeting saying “hold on, look at what item #7 is actually doing to our margin.” Nobody else wanted that job. I loved it.

Then I looked around at the independents, the places actually worth eating at, and saw them flying blind. No data department. No margin guy. Just an owner running on gut, great food, and hope. Meanwhile the chains down the street were running the numbers like a science.

That didn't sit right. So I started The Restaurant Nerd. Same discipline the big chains pay six figures for, sized for the people who actually cook.

Connect on LinkedIn
Derek Kirk
The Credentials, Since You're Wondering

I've got an MBA from The Wharton School at Penn and a BBA from North Carolina Central University 🦅. Fancy training, sure. But the real education was two decades inside actual restaurants, watching what works, cleaning up what doesn't, and turning around brands everyone else had written off.

I started The Restaurant Nerd because too many great restaurants struggle for the dumbest reason: nobody ever showed them their own numbers. Not talent. Not passion. Just nobody in the building whose job was to look at the menu like a math problem. That's the job. I'm the nerd. Let's fix your menu.

Background

Built for this

Wharton MBA

Entrepreneurial Management and Marketing. Yes, I actually use it.

20+ Years in Restaurants

VP-level marketing across multiple brands and business models. I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the “who priced this?”

Nashville Based

Serving restaurants nationally from one of America’s best food cities.

Experience includes Olive Garden, Chevys Fresh Mex, Smokey Bones, Hurricane Grill & Wings, Brooklyn Water Bagels, M.L. Rose, and Nextbite.

Ready to Talk?

Tell me about your restaurant

Where it is, where you want it to go, and what’s been bugging you about the menu. First conversation’s on me.

Book a 15-Minute Call →