We partner with industry leaders and developers to create, optimize, or operate hospitality businesses.
You've likely seen us around town in
We are a one-stop hospitality agency built by operators who know what it takes to create successful businesses.
Wits' End is a hospitality operator and consulting agency built for hotels, restaurants, and property developers. Our team has opened properties, run kitchens, carried P&Ls, and lived the early mornings and late nights that define this industry. We enter each project as if it’s our own business.
We work with independent owners, flagged properties, and hospitality groups that need real support spanning across the lifecycle of a business. Our services cover brand development, optimizing operations, developing trainings, deep analytics, and more. Engagements often begin with time on the floor, a close look at the numbers, exposure review, and a full systems check. We do not believe in advising a brand or property we do not yet fully-understand.
Clients often come to us at key moments: a launch, a reset, a leadership gap, a brand refresh. They stay with us because we deliver what we promise, in the places where it counts.
OUR VALUES
↓CORE PILLARSFour pillars shape how we show up for our clients. They are easy to say and harder to deliver. That’s exactly why we hold ourselves to them.
Personal
Every client gets senior attention. You know who is your contact, and you know how to reach them. We staff small and deliberate teams so work never gets lost in a handoff, or buried in a pipeline. When you call, you speak with the team that already knows your property. When you call our main line, you speak with a person…never a machine.
Helpful
We measure ourselves by how much easier your week becomes. That means practical deliverables, clear next steps, and work your team can actually use rather than polished documents that never leave a drawer. If an idea cannot be executed on your property, we do not put it in the plan.
Proactive
We try to bring solutions to challenges before they become a real issue. If we see something in the numbers, the reviews, or the floor, you hear about it from us first, with a recommendation for what to do next. You should never be the last person to know about your own property.
Precise
Hospitality margins are thin and guest memory is long. Our work is built on clean data, careful calculations, and recommendations we are willing to defend. You get a real answer, not a hedge. When we are not sure, we tell you that too, and then we do the work to become sure.
WHAT MAKES US DIFFERENT
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We bring a “people-first approach to optimizing businesses, backed by data.”
Chris Lauber
FOUNDERChris is a decorated hospitality veteran who founded Wits' End after years running hotel and restaurant operations, many from the ground up. His career spans pre-openings, re-openings, turnarounds, and multi-unit oversight. It’s the kind of leadership built through long nights in service and longer mornings with the P&L.
He started the agency because colleagues, chefs, and restaurateurs kept telling him they were at their wits' end with the industry. Costs were up, talent was scarce, and profitability kept slipping. As Chris puts it, the industry needed ”a people-forward approach to optimizing businesses, backed by data." He believes it’s hard to expect team members to care about work when they’re struggling with finances, working three jobs, or feel their own job doesn’t care about them first.
That belief shapes this agency. Wits' End can advise, operate, or work side by side with your team, scaling around what a property actually needs. Chris leads a bench of operators, chefs, analysts, and designers who share his bias toward the practical, and he remains the point of contact on nearly every engagement. The clients who hire Wits' End are hiring him as much as the agency.
LET’S GET STARTED
If something here sounded like the help you’ve been looking for, we’d love to hear from you. Share a little about your property, the challenges you’re facing, or what you are hoping to change. There are several ways to connect with us, so select the one you prefer: