Lodestar
A hospitality consultancy. New York.
Lodestar
What We Do
Each is principal-led, scoped from a diagnosis, and shaped to the brief. None is template work.
Launch & Stabilization — Pre-opening through 90-day stabilization. Concept integrity, team architecture, and operational standards installed before opening — then held through the first ninety days, when most projects begin to drift.
Turnaround & Repositioning — Diagnosis and reversal of operational decline. Where standards have softened, revenue has plateaued, and the gap between promise and delivery is widening. Revenue architecture, guest experience, and brand recalibration — embedded, not advised.
Operational Excellence — Ongoing advisory for operations holding standards under pressure. Drift prevention as a discipline. Standards, training systems, and culture held to the original promise.
Owner’s Representative — Operational oversight for HNW principals, family offices, private equity, and hotel groups holding hospitality risk on a balance sheet. Reporting, accountability, and embedded leadership that protects investment and holds operating teams to the original vision.
Three decades inside the operations of the highest tier of global hospitality — including Eleven Madison Park, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, the Tin Building, and the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Founder. Thirty years of operational leadership at the highest tier of global hospitality.
Paul Downie operates at the intersection of culinary excellence and operational precision, with three decades at the highest levels of global hospitality.
As General Manager of three-Michelin-star Eleven Madison Park, he led the team to the #1 ranking on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. At Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, he ran what was then the #4 restaurant in the world, earning two Michelin stars in two years. His eighteen-year association with Starr Restaurants — most recently as Director of Service and Hospitality — included serving as an integral part of the team that opened nine restaurants in sixteen months.
He is known for clear judgment under pressure: translating complexity into decisive action across owners, leadership, and frontline teams. The work begins with diagnosis — where performance is being lost, where intent has drifted, what is being tolerated that should not be — and is held through to execution.
Selected outcomes
Pre-opening operational architecture across eight restaurant openings in a single year, $100M+ capital deployed.
Turnaround and relaunch of a two-Michelin-star operation following a mid-service crisis — brand and bookings intact.
Six simultaneous concept openings; 500+ hires across a single integrated F&B program.
Lodestar is principal-led. Engagements draw on a bench of senior specialists, engaged by need, by brief, by name.
Design
Food and Beverage Programming
Hotel Operations
Talent Acquisition
Real Estate
Each specialist is selected for senior-level credentials in their discipline. The bench expands by referral and verified work, not by self-nomination.
Engagements are bespoke, selective, and confidential. They begin with a conversation.