In 2026, MK Hospitality was engaged by the de Barra Group to conduct a full concept-level audit of the three proposed food & beverage venues at The Grand Hotel, Fermoy: a bar, a fine-dining restaurant, and a café as part of the group's acquisition and development of the property.

The engagement was structured across four interconnected workstreams: an individual review of each venue's positioning, identity and standalone coherence within the Fermoy and North Cork market; a dedicated Michelin readiness roadmap and gap analysis for the restaurant, led by MK Hospitality's Michelin consultant covering what needs to be in place at opening and in the years that follow; a review of the management and culinary leadership structure across the estate; and an integrated assessment of how the three venues function together as a single guest journey rather than three separate businesses sharing a building.

Our work involved a site visit to Fermoy, extensive market and competitor benchmarking against comparable Irish hotel-restaurant and gastropub operations, and direct conversations with ownership throughout. The resulting report gave the de Barra Group a rigorous, commercially grounded evaluation of the project as it stood, and a clear set of ownership decisions to work through ahead of the next phase.

Our findings and recommendations became a major input into the group's decision-making, reshaping key elements of the project ahead of the restaurant's Michelin Star pursuit. The Grand Hotel is currently in development, with the restaurant targeted to open Spring 2027.