---
title: Restaurant Ontology Map
description: "Most restaurant maps show what a restaurant has: tables, cast, menu items, inventory, shifts. Mine shows what the operator decided, and who carries each decision to the Guest. The decisions run in the order they cause each other. Perspective is…"
url: "https://jeffreysummers.com/docs/restaurant-ontology-map/"
updated: "2026-10-14"
category: Tools For Operators
---

# Restaurant Ontology Map

Most restaurant maps show what a restaurant has: tables, cast, menu items, inventory, shifts. Mine shows what the operator decided, and who carries each decision to the Guest.

The decisions run in the order they cause each other. Perspective is the read of the value market: who comes, what they come for, and what they’ll pay for. That decides the Product: the experience, the concept that delivers it, and how it runs at every volume. The Product decides People: the experiential roles, then the cast hired to fill them. People decide Performance: the systems, tools and shift calibration that run the experience with the cast actually hired. Profit decides nothing. It’s the scorecard, and whatever isn’t good enough sends you back to the decision that produced it.

Every decision has someone carrying it. The GM/Operator holds Perspective and Profit, the long view and the final scoreboard. A Product Lead, a People Lead and a Performance Lead each carry one across the whole building.

Every decision also runs past six actors: you, the business, the Guest, the cast, the vendors and the community. Each one has to get something real from it. The one who gets nothing is the one who stops carrying it.

At every decision, ask the same question: who knows the GX/CX standard, and who holds the relationship closest to the Guest?

Then follow it to the Guest. All 14 touchpoints, from Contemplation to Re-contemplation, are marked Elevated or Static. If one is Static, the map tells you which decision to go back to and who was carrying it.

Before you open it, answer one question: in your building, who carries each of those decisions? Then compare your answer to how I’d map mine (attachment).

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