The Role

Restaurants fail because nobody does the budget work early enough. You are the person who does it early. You are the first Cocozza expert an operator works with: before an architect is hired, often before a lease is signed, you walk the space, scan it, draw the first layout, and put the first real number in the operator's hands. That number decides whether the dream fits the space and the money. In most construction jobs the estimate supports the sale. In this one, the estimate is the product.

The work is a series of budgets; each built from the information that exists at that moment, each more precise than the last, ending in the fixed price the project is built against. It is estimating, design and client work in one seat, and that is deliberate. Most companies split this work in two and lose the best of both: the estimator prices work someone else designed and never meets the client; the designer draws work someone else prices and never owns the number. We built one seat for the person who can do both, because Budget/Lease/Design/Build does not work any other way. If you have spent your career being good at both and asked to be only one, this is the seat. You will be the first person in it, building it the way you always thought it should be built.

You report to the Managing Director for early-stage budgets and to a Senior Project Manager once a project enters its design phase. You work daily with our Principal, our project managers, our trade partners, our suppliers and our operators; they are there to support you as much as you support them.

What You'll Own

1. Every budget, first dollar to fixed price — accurate, on time, and defensible line by line.
2. The client's first impression of Cocozza — the walkthrough, the scan, the first layout, the first real number.
3. The pricing system — the templates, checklists, and cost database that make every budget faster and better than the last.
4. The knowledge transfer — budget reviews that leave our project managers able to explain and defend the numbers without you in the room.
5. The feedback loop — every finished project's actual costs, reconciled and delivered to you by the project manager who built the job, measured against your estimate with the lessons carried into the pricing book.

What You'll Do

• Meet new clients and gather what exists: floor plans, equipment lists, photos of the mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, the concept, and the client's target number.
• Scan the space with modern capture tools, produce accurate dimensions, and draw a test fit — a first layout of the client's concept in their actual space.
• Write design and mechanical narratives with our Principal, so the client and the trades are working from the same understanding of the project.
• Build the scope of work with our subcontractors: lead them through the space on a walkthrough, collect their pricing, and price finish materials with our suppliers.
• Review the scope and then the budget — internally first, then with the client — and fold their changes back in.
• Produce a landlord budget when a client is still negotiating their lease: the work a landlord could reasonably do or pay for, used to sharpen the negotiation.
• Update the budget at each design milestone as kitchen drawings, filing plans, and design specs arrive — carrying every documented change forward, so the client always knows exactly why the number moved.
• Deliver the contract budget — the fixed price.
• Ask the builder's questions at pricing time: when the tile meets the wall, what happens there? Who furnishes the blocking? Etc.
• Build the company's pricing book — unit costs, assemblies, trade rates, finish benchmarks — and direct the internal takeoff resource so every budget line carries a description anyone could build from. Every budget you finish makes the next one smarter.

How Success Is Measured

Two numbers, reviewed weekly:

• Budget turnaround — two weeks from complete information in hand to a budget ready for review, at every stage, on every project.
• Estimates that hold — actual costs, reconciled by the project manager at closeout and delivered to you, measured against your estimate on every comple