Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas
Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas
what we do · post-opening
Three lanes. Nine sub-buckets. One retainer for the restaurant that's already open.
Most restaurants get opened once and left alone. That's where they start to drift. We stay past opening night to run the marketing, audit the operation, and build the systems that keep every shift dialed in.
Pre-opening? See services →
lane 01 · the reach
"showing up between shifts is half the brand."
Everything that happens between shifts. Online. In the feed. In the inbox. In the search bar. The ongoing work of staying in front of the people who matter.
Social media strategy and execution. Email campaigns. Photography refreshes on a cadence, not once at open. Copywriting that sounds like you, not like a brand template. Community management. Answering DMs and comments with the voice of the house, not a bot.
Site management on the site we built or the site you have. SEO for the terms customers actually search. GEO and AEO. The work of making sure AI-powered search engines and chatbots recommend you when somebody asks for dinner in your neighborhood. Local SEO, Google Business Profile, schema, structured data.
Loyalty, clubs, merch, events, LTOs, PR. The repeatable vehicles that turn casual customers into regulars and regulars into evangelists.
lane 02 · the pulse
"every restaurant drifts. the only question is when you find out."
Every restaurant drifts. Systems slip. Menus get stale. Culture erodes. We audit the parts of the business that don't have a dashboard. On a schedule, not when something's already on fire.
Service quality. Kitchen flow. SOP drift. We walk the floor, shadow the shifts, and report back on where the operation has deviated from what you designed. Quarterly, with a same-day recap and a written report inside a week.
Menu engineering refresh. COGS creep. Labor variance. We take the data you already have and tell you what it actually means. Which dishes are carrying the menu. Which are quietly losing money. Where the cost is coming from and what to do about it.
Team health. Leadership pulse. Hiring and retention. The hardest thing to measure and the first thing customers feel. We interview the team, read the room, and give you an honest read on what's going on under the surface.
lane 03 · the signal
"we don't sell AI. we install it."
This is C+O's R&D track. The tools, automations, and data work most restaurant groups don't have and most agencies can't build. If something is new in the industry, this is where it shows up first. Where we deploy it for the clients who want an edge.
Ordering. Scheduling. Reporting. Customer communication. On-premise workflow development. If a task is repeatable, we automate it. Which frees your team to do the work only humans can do.
POS data. Sales mix. Customer behavior. We pull the numbers, build the dashboards, and translate what the data is telling you. Monthly report, quarterly strategy session.
Reviews. Competitors. Market signals. Brand mentions. A live pulse on what's being said about you, about the block, and about the category. So you see things moving before they hit.
the math
Hiring a full-time COO in DFW runs $150K–$220K plus benefits. A full-time Creative Director adds another $110K–$160K. That's a third of a million dollars a year, before you've seen a single Saturday night's impact.
Most independent restaurants don't need that. They need the capability, not the headcount.
A fractional partnership with us gives you both roles, on a retainer, for a fraction of the fully loaded cost. The work gets done. The seat doesn't stay empty. The P&L doesn't take the hit.
| Full-time COO | Full-time Creative Director | Copper+Oak (fractional) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual cost | $150K–$220K + benefits | $110K–$160K + benefits | fraction of a single role |
| Time to impact | 90-day ramp | 90-day ramp | week one |
| Operator experience | depends | rarely | every partner has run the room |
| Coverage | one discipline | one discipline | both, plus intelligence |
This isn't a scaled-down version of the full-time role. It's the right shape for a single-unit or small-group independent restaurant. You get the strategic partner you actually need. Without building the overhead to keep them busy.
before opening night
Three pre-launch stages under one studio. Brand, space, operations. Most of our post-launch partners didn't open with us. That's fine. Some did. The work meets you where you are.
brand · space · operations
Naming and positioning. Lease vetting through certificate of occupancy. Financial architecture, F&B program, and on-premise systems. The work between idea and open door.
see the pre-opening workhow we engage
Monthly retainer with a multi-month minimum so the math has time to play out. Pricing scales with scope. À la carte where it fits.
01 → 03
Presence, Health, and Intelligence run as one retainer. The full operating system after open. The version we were built for.
start the conversation01 or 02 or 03
Just Presence, just Health, or just Intelligence. For partners who already have parts of the business handled and need depth in one area.
start the conversationÀ la carte
Individual disciplines. Just Content Marketing. Just F&B Audits. Just Automations. Sub-buckets, not lanes.
start the conversationin pilot · 2026
On-premise automation. Data sovereignty. Ongoing workflow development, built inside the restaurant.
Most restaurant tech lives in the cloud. Which means your data lives there too. On somebody else's servers, under somebody else's terms, priced on somebody else's roadmap.
We built a different option.
The Oak Box is a small compute device we install on-site at the restaurant. It runs local automation workflows, local language models, image and video ingestion from your cameras, and the integrations that connect your POS, your reservation system, your ordering platform, and anything else you're running. Your data stays on your premises. Your workflows run even when the internet goes down. Your monthly cost includes ongoing development as we build out new automations inside the device.
It's included in the Intelligence lane for the restaurants we pilot with in 2026. Ask us about it when we talk.
Your data stays in the building.
Workflows keep running through internet outages.
New automations get shipped to the box month over month.
the questions we get
Ten questions we answer every week. Short answers. Honest ones.
Both, and neither. Copper+Oak is a studio: operators and creatives under one roof, retained to do the work a full-time COO and full-time Creative Director would do, at a fraction of the cost. We don't hand you a deck and a retainer invoice. We do the work.
Yes. Every partner at the studio has run restaurants. It's the only category we take on. If you're a bar, a coffee shop, a brewery, or a food-forward concept adjacent to restaurants, we can probably help. Tell us what you're doing and we'll be honest about fit.
Single-unit independents, small groups (2–6 locations), and independent multi-concept operators. Not chains, not franchises, not corporate brands. If you're still close enough to the floor to feel every shift, you're in our range.
Agencies sell deliverables. We sell outcomes, and we sit in the seats a full-time hire would occupy. COO and Creative Director. You get strategic ownership, not vendor output. We show up to the ops meeting. We own the number.
Post-launch work compounds. We ask for a multi-month minimum so the math has a chance to play out. If something isn't working inside that window, we'll say so and unwind it honestly. We'd rather lose an engagement than keep billing for work that isn't moving the needle.
Yes. À la carte is explicit. If you only need Content Marketing, or only need F&B Audits, or only need Automations. Tell us. We'll scope just that, price it honestly, and leave the rest on the shelf until you're ready.
No. Plenty of our post-launch partners didn't use us pre-launch. We'll audit what you have, identify where the gaps are, and build the retainer around your actual starting point — not an idealized one.
A compute device we install in your restaurant that runs automations, AI, and integrations on-premise. It's ours. You don't buy it. It's bundled into the Intelligence retainer for our 2026 pilot partners. The pitch is data sovereignty (your data stays in the building) and a recurring pipeline of new automations shipped to the device month over month.
Loudly, yes. We use AI internally to move faster on research, drafting, analysis, and automation. We tell clients when we've used it on their work, and we're clear about what the tools can and can't do. We don't hide it and we don't hype it. The rule is: the output gets judged on the output. The tools are a studio decision, not a client one.
Tell us where you are. What's open, what's drifting, what the pressure points are. We'll get on a call, walk the floor or walk the numbers, and tell you honestly whether we're the right fit. Most of our partnerships start with a short conversation, not a proposal.
your move
We read every email. We answer every email. Tell us what's drifting.
start the conversationwe answer every email