This study is designed to address the issue of benchmarking firm capabilities to turn undesirable financial performance around in the U.S. restaurant industry. Following the three-stage learning process of benchmarking, this study finds that if a restaurant firm experiences value loss for the first year after a reasonable stable or well-performing time period, its strategic foci should be placed upon sales and liquidity boosting firm capabilities while holding back cautiously capital expenditure projects and the desire to raise leverage.