He needs to consider the value of what he will be learning as well as the savings achieved by implementing suggestions and avoiding mistakes. The last one I did in pizza was a three day project away from home (but in Colorado so expenses were not more than several hundred) plus a few hours before and after reviewing numbers and writing a report. In total it cost the client a bit over $4,000 for which I received a very nice thank you at the time and a followup letter a year later stating that the money spent had saved them several times what they paid in just the first year.
I have done a fair amount of this in the last 18 years. Most of my work has been on valuation and preparing for sale and/or creating and using information systems in business than operations. I charge $100 per hour if I am at home and $1,000 per day plus expenses away from home. Those rates have not changed in 10 years when I bumped from $800 per day to $1000. I am doing one right now in an unrelated industry and did two other projects earlier this year and just yesterday I was contacted about another to start in the Fall. Typically, these projects end up around $2,000 - $3,000 but I have taken projects that billed up to $20,000 (National brand in outdoor business).
All education is expensive.
