Riccardo Mariti

Restaurateur, author, and advisor.

Thirty years of building businesses that run better. From a Chelsea dining room to the world’s first Agile restaurant, written up with the co-creator of Scrum.

See selected work →

Co-author with Dr. Jeff Sutherland, co-creator of ScrumSpeaker, Agile2019, Washington D.C.Speaker, Harvard Business School, 2020Cutter Consortium expertRiccardo’s, London, since 1995

The through-line

One thread runs through all of it.

I’m Riccardo Mariti. In 1994 I walked into a small family restaurant in Florence. There was no menu. The owner told us we would love the food, because his mother was cooking. In 1995 I opened Riccardo’s on the Fulham Road in Chelsea, built on the same idea: simple Tuscan food, made properly, served without ceremony.

Running a restaurant teaches you how a business actually works, hour by hour. In 2017 I began working with Dr. Jeff Sutherland, the co-creator of Scrum, to rebuild how my team ran the room. Riccardo’s became the world’s first Agile restaurant. Team member turnover fell. Morale, customer satisfaction, and profits rose. We wrote a book about what we did.

Since then I have helped other operators do the same, and I advise on property in Palm Beach County, Florida, where I live today.

I operate first, then teach what I learned. That is the whole method.Riccardo Mariti

The work

Three doors.

Each one is a business I have run or am running now. They are separate operations; this page is where they meet.

Hospitality

Riccardo's, London

A Tuscan restaurant on the Fulham Road since 1995. Sharing plates before London had a word for them, with ingredients arriving from Italy daily.

Visit the restaurant →

Advisory

Agile for operators

Transformation work drawn from a decade of running Scrum on a restaurant floor, not from a framework diagram. Advisory, training, and speaking.

How I work →

Real estate

Palm Beach County

Buyer focused property advisory in South Florida, run as its own practice with its own site.

riccardos.realestate →

The books

Making It Happen

Two talks, printed as they were spoken. The first was given with Dr. Jeff Sutherland at the 2019 Agile Conference in Washington D.C. The second was at Harvard Business School, in January 2020.

Creating the World's First Agile Restaurant

Book one, with Dr. Jeff Sutherland

Written by Riccardo Mariti with Dr. Jeff Sutherland, the co-creator of Scrum: what we changed at Riccardo’s, what broke along the way, and the numbers that followed. It began as our talk at the 2019 Agile Conference in Washington D.C.

Harvard

Book two, Riccardo’s Restaurant Goes Agile

Where book one sets out the method, book two is Riccardo in front of a room of Harvard MBA students at the inaugural Agile Short Intensive Program, telling them the truth about the restaurant business: the margins, the hours, the team member turnover, and what it cost him to fix his own. Every word of that hour is here, including the questions the room asked back.

Not yet published.

Selected results

The claims come with numbers.

Three decades of operating businesses, and the engagements that came out of it. Every figure below is drawn from the client’s own records.

Hospitality · since 2017

Riccardo's, London

The world’s first Agile restaurant. Team member turnover down, morale and customer satisfaction up, profits up.

Read the case study →

[Sector · Year]

[Client name]

[One-line result with the number that matters. Replace from Riccardo’s records.]

[Sector · Year]

[Client name]

[One-line result with the number that matters. Replace from Riccardo’s records.]

Advisory & speaking

For operators who want the business to run without them standing over it.

I work with owners and leadership teams who want the way their business runs to match how good their product already is. That means the floor, the rota, the standing meetings, and the numbers people actually look at, not a framework handed down from software.

Advisory for a business mid-change. Training for the team that has to run it afterwards. Speaking, for conferences and private events.

See the case studies →

Contact

Get in touch.

The reply comes from me. If it is about property in Florida, that practice has its own site.

riccardo@riccardomariti.com

LinkedIn →