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Restaurant start up plans

7,301 Views | 47 Replies | Last: 5 yr ago by bmc13
SACR
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AG
bonfirewillburn said:

6) if cooking is your hobby are your ready to give that up? You won't want to cook when you get home at 1am, and I rarely eat pizza anymore.

I have a friend who loves my cooking and keeps insisting I should open a food truck. I keep telling him I enjoy cooking too much to want to make it a job. Once it's a job, it loses its enjoyment.
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"Now you're suggesting uncleanliness during a viral outbreak? What other great ideas you got Typhoid Mary[?]"

jamey, 3/13/20

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"They log into each other's accounts and post. They probably are two different people but that doesn't matter much when you log into other peoples accounts."
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Very well put Bonfire. I am another vet of the industry (15 years) but had to finally get out 2 years ago. Just know going in, if you are not a lower level employee, the restaurant runs your life...at least it did mine. I have worked every position in the restaurant from dishwasher to bartender while going through culinary school, kitchen manager, store manager and ended in corporate. It may have been the situation I was in, but I couldn't take the hours and not seeing my family anymore. Like Bonfire said, if you like cooking as a hobby, get ready for that to end.

What is your situation? Will you be a silent investor? Accountant? Store manager? Owner?
If you are owner, will you have someone manage the store for you? Can you trust them? You shouldn't.

-There is so much theft in restaurants: topping off someone's wine, bringing out a side of fries for a buddy, employees walking with product. Little things like not charging for extra sauce or not charging for a soda really start to add up. Will you be checking in on these little things, or are you entrusting someone else for this? If there is someone else, will you be following up to ensure their pars and counts correct?

-Restaurant can be a revolving door of employees, many of which do not have the same vested interest as you. Yes, you can get someone that works their butt off because of work ethic, but unfortunately, these people are few and far between in this industry.

-Again, like Bonfire said, everything costs something. Margins are already so razor thin in restaurants so little things like breaking a plate, not ringing up for soda, line cook hitting overtime add up fast.

-Where is this place going? Take Houston for example...is it going to be a hip place near Montrose or will it be family friendly out in the Katy suburbs? What is your clientele? Lunch spot or dinner? Kid friendly or no?


There is a reason so many restaurants die and people always say "don't do it!" If this is your dream, go for it. Just know there is so much more than just cooking food. If this is a hobby...well...good luck. It took me 15 years for the dream to finally die, and I couldn't be more happy now. There are probably a hundred other little bullet points I could add in on what to look out for, but that would take a while. Just know that not everybody has the same story. Some have succeeded and many have failed, but cannot get out of the business because of their love for the industry.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do, and hopefully you can figure out if it is right for you or not before you get too far in.
bonfirewillburn
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"Restaurants can be a revolving door"

Yes! This! All of this! Completely this! Know this now, learn this now!

This industry give a third and forth and fifth chance to people.

People are you greatest expense and your greatest trophy. Trust me.

You wanna win? Invest in staff, WAY....more important than what's on the plate.


Yea people will steal and do you wrong. But most of the time, both of those are a leadership problem.

It's not easy. It's really impossible. But if you know the game you can play It and be more apt to win.

This is WAY more of a people game than a food game, and yea I know, people suck!
expresswrittenconsent
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Keeper of The Spirits said:

I always wonder how much longer the craft beer phase can last. The market is so saturated and my own anecdotal experience suggest that when people feel like they won't be judged for ordering a domestic light beer they will over a craft.

This has to be a troll. Can you share the anecdotal situations where you have seen and done this? I dont think I've ever been in a bar or restaurant where I was shamed into ordering a stout when I really wanted a miller lite.
Mr_mo8268
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Your life is at the mercy of $10/hour cooks that don't care and have a drinking problem. Huge difference between cooking at home and cooking for customers hundreds of times. Absentee ownership doesn't work. Spreadsheets and graphs are great in theory but 80+ hour work weeks with your hands are more useful. Don't do it. If you have no experience you will get crushed.
SACR
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Mr_mo8268 said:

Your life is at the mercy of $10/hour cooks that don't care and have a drinking problem. Huge difference between cooking at home and cooking for customers hundreds of times. Absentee ownership doesn't work. Spreadsheets and graphs are great in theory but 80+ hour work weeks with your hands are more useful. Don't do it. If you have no experience you will get crushed.
I have never worked in the restaurant business, but a constant I repeated on Reddit is that kitchen staff being drunks or having drug problems is a very common problem.

I think it's like working on an assembly line, some people eventually tire of the repetitive nature of the job and find other ways to entertain themselves.
---------------------------------------------------
"Now you're suggesting uncleanliness during a viral outbreak? What other great ideas you got Typhoid Mary[?]"

jamey, 3/13/20

-------------------------------------------------

"They log into each other's accounts and post. They probably are two different people but that doesn't matter much when you log into other peoples accounts."
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SACR said:

Mr_mo8268 said:

Your life is at the mercy of $10/hour cooks that don't care and have a drinking problem. Huge difference between cooking at home and cooking for customers hundreds of times. Absentee ownership doesn't work. Spreadsheets and graphs are great in theory but 80+ hour work weeks with your hands are more useful. Don't do it. If you have no experience you will get crushed.
I have never worked in the restaurant business, but a constant I repeated on Reddit is that kitchen staff being drunks or having drug problems is a very common problem.

I think it's like working on an assembly line, some people eventually tire of the repetitive nature of the job and find other ways to entertain themselves.


Not to mention, they will leave without notice for an extra $.25/hr elsewhere. Line cooks don't exactly have a 5 year plan their working towards.
SACR
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Oh I Like That said:

SACR said:

Mr_mo8268 said:

Your life is at the mercy of $10/hour cooks that don't care and have a drinking problem. Huge difference between cooking at home and cooking for customers hundreds of times. Absentee ownership doesn't work. Spreadsheets and graphs are great in theory but 80+ hour work weeks with your hands are more useful. Don't do it. If you have no experience you will get crushed.
I have never worked in the restaurant business, but a constant I repeated on Reddit is that kitchen staff being drunks or having drug problems is a very common problem.

I think it's like working on an assembly line, some people eventually tire of the repetitive nature of the job and find other ways to entertain themselves.


Not to mention, they will leave without notice for an extra $.25/hr elsewhere. Line cooks don't exactly have a 5 year plan their working towards.
$2 more a day means $10 more a week and $40 more a month!!! Can't beat that!
---------------------------------------------------
"Now you're suggesting uncleanliness during a viral outbreak? What other great ideas you got Typhoid Mary[?]"

jamey, 3/13/20

-------------------------------------------------

"They log into each other's accounts and post. They probably are two different people but that doesn't matter much when you log into other peoples accounts."
aggieforester05
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Yeah, we had one at our restaurant that would hop from job to job every few months when the child support people caught up with him. He was paying support for four kids, three of which were over 18, but he was still paying back support on them. It was more than half of his meager check. He was a great employee otherwise, so we convinced him to stay and start paying his debt down.

A huge problem with the restaurant industry is that there is almost always a shortage of qualified help. The kitchen staff and waitstaff know that they can quit or get fired and then turn around and have a new equivalent job within a few days. That makes them very hard to control and makes the turnover rate extremely high.

As others have mentioned someone will always be stealing from you in some form of fashion. There are many predatory vendors and consultants as well. Dealing with the government entities and all of the money that goes to them is also a nightmare.
Tanya 93
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SACR said:

Oh I Like That said:

SACR said:

Mr_mo8268 said:

Your life is at the mercy of $10/hour cooks that don't care and have a drinking problem. Huge difference between cooking at home and cooking for customers hundreds of times. Absentee ownership doesn't work. Spreadsheets and graphs are great in theory but 80+ hour work weeks with your hands are more useful. Don't do it. If you have no experience you will get crushed.
I have never worked in the restaurant business, but a constant I repeated on Reddit is that kitchen staff being drunks or having drug problems is a very common problem.

I think it's like working on an assembly line, some people eventually tire of the repetitive nature of the job and find other ways to entertain themselves.


Not to mention, they will leave without notice for an extra $.25/hr elsewhere. Line cooks don't exactly have a 5 year plan their working towards.
$2 more a day means $10 more a week and $40 more a month!!! Can't beat that!


It is a good thing when living paycheck to paycheck
eric76
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TheGreatScott12 said:

Doing research more out of interest on what all is needed/involved in starting a restaurant. Does anyone have any advice, good articles to share, or more importantly a good excel spreadsheet to help model out a business plan for a restaurant. Again this is more for fun/interest at this point, but I would love any help.

Thanks,
I haven't read the rest yet, but there is one thing that people often forget about -- look at the amount of traffic. This applies to just about any business as well as restaurants.

Before deciding on any location, spend a few days out at the hours you expect to be open and count the traffic. If there are any other restaurants in the area, watch to see what percentage of cars pull off the road and into the restaurant.

If in a small town not on a major highway, I've always questioned the wisdom of a franchise. You pay a whole lot of money to use their name. It won't take the locals very long to determine whether or not they want to eat there. The only time a franchise would help is if it depended far more on drive through traffic than it does on local traffic and for that it had better be on a very major highway.
eric76
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There used to be a family (a father and two sons) who were in the restaurant business in one area of Texas. Not the business of operating restaurants, but of selling restaurants.

Each would have a restaurant in a nearby town. They would keep the restaurant spotless and were really good cooks. Whenever the waitresses weren't waiting on customers, they were expected to be wiping down surfaces and generally keeping the place immaculate. Every restaurant they had was always for sale.

In spite of having never been in the restaurant business before and never having worked in one, many people have a secret dream of opening their own restaurant. Most also have no idea how to properly come up with a reliable value of any restaurant.

Often, someone would be passing through town and would stop there to eat. They'd see the "For Sale" sign and would talk to the owner. The sale price included the restaurant, all furnishings in the dining room, the name and recipes (I consider buying the name and recipes to be a ridiculous waste of money), all kitchen equipment, a reasonable amount of training, and the owner would agree not to buy or open a restaurant in the same town and compete with the buyer. Sooner or later, someone with no understanding of the restaurant business would buy the place.

The owner, after the required training, would go to another nearby town and open a restaurant. Sooner or later, another member of the family would sell their restaurant and would then move to the town where they would open a new restaurant. The non-compete agreement covered only the one member of the family, not all members of the family.

By then, the buyer of the previous restaurant had seen his profits evaporate because he had no idea what he was doing. The new restaurant was soon doing great and the other restaurant would be in really sad shape and would soon go out of business. Of course, the family was always happy to step in and buy the furnishings and kitchen equipment for far less than what they had previously sold it.

From what I understand, they basically broke even on running the restaurants -- their real money was made buying and selling them. With three family members, they just needed to keep their operations in four towns close to each other so they didn't have to move back and forth when buying and selling their restaurants.
expresswrittenconsent
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That sounds completely made up. Perhaps it is true and you just forgot to include any verifiable details.
bmc13
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Quote:

I don't see anyone judging other people for enjoying a bowl of Blue Bell, though.


just go over to the general board. you'll see plenty.
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