Opening a restaurant

To have and own a restaurant is what some people dream of. It is strange to me how many people I come across who would love to own a restaurant and work in a place like that. But have never really work in the industry apart from one summer as a student.

The idea of being in charge of your own place greeting customer who would be your friends and getting them to eat what you have loving cooked and they will appreciate your fantastic taste in food, wine and surroundings. You will be the host of host as the rich and famous beat a track to your door. Be discovered, do a television show and write many cook books.

Or the idea that there is loads of money in food. I can buy a steak for £2 from the butcher and sell it for £15, bottle of wine for £3 and sell that for £10, you spend £5 and make £20. That is the way to do it you must make loads of money in food.

The truth is that if you think you are going to do ether of the above you are sadly mistaken. It is a tough business to work in and you have to be prepared to work hard to get what you want , and it will take time effort and you might never get to what you want in the end. But to start with you must think about what it is you are going in to.

The first thing you will be told is that 1 in 3 new restaurants or bars close in the first year of opening. But it might not be as bad as all that. Like most thing the evidence is not to clear as to what happen over all.   15.5% of all business frailer in the UK are Hospitality and catering. According to another statistic you have a 85% chance of frailer in your first year, 70% in your second, 62% third , then 55%, 50% and so on till you get ten years under your belt and the study stopped at 35%. Having said that it is still a growing industry and one that has a lot of success as well as a high risk. So what can you do to stop your self from being one of the failures.

Know what you are going to be doing. Style,know what you want to do and then see if there is a market for it. You must under stand that you might want to be a fine dining, or fast food, country pub or mid range restaurant. Do not open a café and do fine dinning food or open a fine dinning restaurant and do all day breakfasts. Research what it is that you think you want to do. Go to places and see what they are doing. Do not just eat there but ask the owner or the manager what it is like. Then when you know what you would like to be doing move to the next stage.

The Site,you have seen the perfect place that you know and it will be grate for a restaurant, a pub in the middle of nowhere, fantastic vues around the valley, it is perfect. But is that what you want, you need customers and they need to come to you. Frontage and passing trade, easy to get to and attractive looking. Also you need to be in the right area. You need people with disposable income that will spend money on the things that you do. If you want to have more of a success then you need to have a residential population round you, tourist, shoppers and office workers. What you need is the style of establishment that is appropriate for the style of business with a good frontage and passing trade.

Refurbishment, the best thing I can say about any thing in the line of refurbish met is figure out how much it will cost. The find out how long it will take. Then take the two figures and double them. For me this is one of the reasons why business fail. The cost of building and refurbishment over run and wile that happen no money is coming in and it take too much to recover from that position. Every project I have been involved with have had this problem and apart from one case I do not know of any that have been finished on time and under budget .
 
Once you are open you have to stay open . here I would say two things if you have had the strength of conviction done your home work and set out your stall , do not change it straight away just because you think you have to .  The customer that you have started to acquire will not appreciate coming to you rustic bistro one week , the tapas menu a week latter and Bens big burger bar the week after that.  I am not saying that you must never change any thing, which would be mad.  Just stick with the plan. 

Beware of promoting your self too much.  To give things away is all right if you can afford to do so.  But at the end of the day if it cost you money and you do not get in any more trade then do not do it.  I remember when I was working in one hotel the management changed and stopped the regular dinner dances.  If we had no wedding we would have a dinner dance. And it was common practice that if you did not get any bookings tell regulars that they could have it at half price.  It had been going on for so long that the regulars just waited to get the knock down price.  Yes the room did sit empty on a few Saturday nights but we discover one other thing by doing this . We picked up more weddings, because they knew that we had stopped the dinner dances.  People did not come in to book wedding because they assumed that a dinner dance would be going on.  

And be aware of what other establishments are doing around you.  You probably  do not want to be the most expensive place in town keeping people away, but you do not want to be packed as you are the cheapest. Always try and hit the right market for the area you are in . 

So if you follow this advice will you be successful, I do not know. the thing is that there is no real hard and fast rule that you can follow. You might see a restaurant and say you want to do that. You find a venue and open a mirror image of the same place and it will not work. You might open a fine dinning café on an industrial estate surrounded by the worst social and economic problems in the country and have a runaway success. All I do know is that it will not be easy, it will take time and you will have to do some long hours, so be like a boy scout and be prepared.