Where in the portfolio is the unrecognised growth — and which assets are quietly losing it?
A portfolio growth review reads each holding the way an outside acquirer would, locates the under-managed growth no one inside the platform is fighting for, and names the assets quietly slipping below the bar that the LP report still flatters.
Where in the portfolio is the unrecognised growth — and which assets are quietly losing it?
Restaurant-focused PE sponsor or family office with a multi-asset hospitality portfolio. Strategic operator running a stable of brands or formats where capital allocation decisions are due. Holding company evaluating a partial exit, refinancing or platform consolidation.
A portfolio growth review that ranks each asset on growth potential, capital efficiency and exit-readiness — and surfaces, for each, the one or two interventions that change the trajectory. Capital reallocation recommendation. Exit-readiness call by asset. Named structural fixes that move the LP narrative on the next reporting cycle.
Mid-hold-period when capital reallocation across the portfolio is on the agenda. Twelve to eighteen months before an anticipated exit window, when the question is which asset to sell first and which to harden. After a platform acquisition, when the management team needs an independent read on which legacy assets are actually working.
The work, broken down into the actual things we do inside the engagement.
- Asset-by-asset growth diagnostic — same-store, unit count, AUV, margin, with structural drivers behind each line
- Capital efficiency ranking across the portfolio — where the next dollar earns the highest return
- Exit-readiness call per asset, calibrated against the HERI-40 framework where applicable
- Cross-portfolio synergy and cannibalisation read — supply, real-estate, talent, brand-narrative
- Under-managed growth identification — the assets where the upside is real but no one inside is fighting for it
- Quiet-loser identification — the assets the LP report still flatters but the unit economics are slipping below the bar
- Capital reallocation recommendation, with explicit thresholds for hold, harden, or sell
- Sequencing of exits, refinancings and add-ons across a twelve to thirty-six month horizon
- Sponsor-facing narrative that the LP report can support without overstating
- Named structural fixes per asset, with owner, cost and time-to-impact
- Independent second opinion on the platform thesis itself, where the engagement is scoped to include it
Portfolio reads in European hospitality drift toward hotel-real-estate logic. Restaurant assets — chain-tier, mid-market, multi-format — need a different read calibrated against operating reality and exit-comparables that are foodservice-specific, not real-estate-specific.
Public-facing reads that calibrate how we think about this engagement type.
The PE Playbook for Restaurant Chains: What Operators Should Read Before the Term Sheet Lands
Red Lobster. Vapiano. Ruby Tuesday. Hans im Glück. Four chains, four countries, four concepts. One script.
Read insight →The Endless Shrimp Autopsy: When PE Economics Meet Operator Reality
Red Lobster did not die from empty tables. It died from full ones.
Read insight →HERI-40: A Framework for Hospitality Equity Readiness
HERI-40 is a reproducible self-diagnostic score on a 0-to-200 scale that reconciles the operational selling readiness of a European hospitality chain with the current M&A cycle phase.
Read insight →HERI-40 Section 7: Worked Example — Scoring L'Osteria Against the Framework
A line-by-line walk-through of HERI-40 applied to McWin's 2023 acquisition of L'Osteria — the only DACH premium-casual transaction in our backtest to reach a Platinum-boundary score, with a publicly reconstructible calculation base.
Read insight →Questions that come up before the briefing call.
Do you do commercial due diligence on individual targets as well?
Yes. CDD on a single target is part of the Concept Fit Assessment or, for an existing platform asset, scoped within this engagement. The Portfolio Growth Review is broader — it reads the full holding rather than a single deal.
Will you talk to operating teams inside the portfolio companies?
Yes, where the sponsor and operator agree. Quiet-loser assets are rarely visible from the LP report alone — operator interviews are part of the engagement.
Can the review feed an exit process?
Yes. Exit-readiness is one of the explicit outputs. Where the engagement extends into sell-side preparation, that scope is added — but the review itself is independent advisory work, not transaction execution.
A briefing call costs you 30 minutes. The cost of not having one is harder to quantify.
Every engagement starts with a structured briefing call — decision context, scope, fit. No prepared deck on our end.