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Opening a Successful Restaurant….

Here is an interesting article that I came across the other day. I decided to re-post it for ya’ll to read. I hope that U enjoy it….~YG

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By John Lederer
Managing Director of Blanc Brasseries and consultant to BBC series The Restaurant

Opening a successful restaurant is like a marathon race.

It’s not just about the heat in the kitchen

You need to prepare for as long you can. Getting to the starting line is hard enough but finishing is everything.

The restaurant business is a strange creature; the very word business is seen as sacrilegious by many insiders and scoffed at by many outsiders.

As if opening a successful restaurant was not hard enough, one has to contend with colleagues who believe one has to suffer for their “art” and advisors who believe their personal tastes and preference are the norm.

This maelstrom of pressure has a nasty habit of ignoring your proposed business’s greatest asset; the customer.

No guarantees

The customers, punters, guests, clients should be there at the very start of your new venture and ever present as you build it towards a reality.

Celebrity chefs are role models for would-be restaurateurs

They should be ever present as a reality check to the artist and ego in us, ensuring that we are building a business, and not some kind of shrine.

The complexity of the restaurant business is what appeals to me; not only are we in the rare environment where our product is consumed before payment, but we need to master finance, human resources, marketing, law, production, training and human nature.

At all levels of the trade we strive for a consistent product.

This is wishful thinking on our part as our guests bring an ingredient that we have no control over.

If I sent you to the best restaurant in the world, a restaurant that could grant your every wish, with your worst enemy, the resulting product would exceed your wildest dreams but the experience would be awful.

Avoiding the pitfalls

The above not withstanding, and some 60 new opening later, I still relish the battle that is opening a successful restaurant.

There are ways to at least even out the odds:

1. A good business plan

Many believe they’ve got what it takes to run a restaurant

This is imperative but amazingly rare in the industry.

It should include a return on investment, a proposed gross spend per head, numbers of covers anticipated, the possible necessity of filling tables more than once on busy days, a budget, a good cash flow.

A good business plan would have ensured that many restaurants never saw the light of day.

At its most basic level it will confront your idea with reality of the customers wish to hand over his hard earned cash in enough quantity to make a profit.

2. A good team

This is a service industry; your team is the product and the method of delivering it.

Restaurants need a schizophrenic mixture of accountants and showmen, a combustible mixture at the best of times.

Whatever inclination the team have, it is imperative that they understand and truly share your goals and aspirations.

It is best to take them through every step, every decision and every temptation you have been through.

3. Training

Train yourself and your team to deliver your product.

Fancy running your own restaurant?

If you have any doubt that you are not ready, start again.

You simply cannot practice on the guests.

Always remember that the reality of a meal session is filled with tension and the unexpected, so once your team have mastered individual tasks, practice then practice some more.

These things will give you a fighting chance for your idea to bear fruit.

I already sense a mounting tide of anger, as many reading this bemoan the complete omission of any reference to food.

The sad fact, for some, is that food is just one part of a successful restaurant.

So once you have run the marathon and even perhaps won it, remember you can’t be like Pheidippides, the original marathon runner who collapsed and died after his exertion.