First before you open your restaurant run do not walk to the nearest Psychiatrist
and give him all of you money. then go sit under the bridge and relax and have positive thought about how lucky you are NOT to have opened a restaurant am a highly experienced Chef and once had the crazy to own my own restaurant. so I shelled out big bucks and bought one. little did I know that I had just forfeited all of my time to the
"" JOINT""never knowing if I would have enough money to pay the help,light and gas, Workman's comp, ssi payments, cost of food, and a million other things no body ever tells you about. Go out and talk to some restaurant owners and git there feed back.
being the owner and Chef of your own ""Joint "" is a real downer if the people do not come through your door more than once. Read Tony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential
He tells it exactlyu how it is. 4 out of every 5 restaurants fail with in five years.
LOL.
Well, If I were a sane man, I wouldn't have been in this crazy business for 24 years.
I've made other folks a lot of money, and have decided I'd rather make it for myself.
I'm sorry your restaurant failed. You didn't know about "light and gas, workmans comp, FICA, cost of food..." before you opened the JOINT? That should have been in your P+L and projections.
I don't buy that whole "almost all restaurants fail" crap.(thats not direct at you personally, I've heard it 1000 times). Restaurants fail for very simple and avoidable reasons:
* People open Restaurants that don't know how to run them. see doctors, lawyers, etc.
*People try to do too much. The last owner of the restaurant I'm now looking at, had a 4 page menu. He sold everything from grits and eggs to pizza, calazones, burgers, and wings. He tried to be all things to all people. You gotta do a few things well, and aim at your demographic.
*People borrow in too deep. They drop $300+ to open a restaurant, and are hanging by a thread from day one. They do that, or under borrow, have 3 bad months and die.
* People that have never ran an entire restaurant (kitchen, bar, FOH, admin, negoiating purchasing contracts,training, etc.) think they can just figure it out. Its honestly taken me 20 years to be ready, but I can't tell ya how many FOH managers go off and open a restaurants only to be screwed by a KM and a Food Service Company.
Ive worked for 2 private owners. The first was my mentor. he started with 1 restaurant that cost him $25K to open. 5 years later he had 8 stores. He's a rich man today and he's only 45.
The other guy ran his restaurant like his personal playground. He "traded out" for everything, boats, car repairs etc. His restaurant his closed today.
I plan to open this restaurant with $20K (I have a partner, so it will be 40K total). I am going to be managing partner. I am gonna hire me a young guy thats hungry to learn the business. I'm gonna pay him fair, and train him.I then plan to give him the GM position and go open another one.