http://www.nypl.org/research/sibl/smallbiz/business/
I’m pretty sure that wherever you are has a similar site.
That’s why you start with a little bar or winebar, costs are low. No expensive kitchen with $10k stove, no chef, no white tablecloths, very low food costs, very high booze markups, just a bar that serves great sandwiches out the back.
Ya, I’ve been running my own business for about 7 years now, and I’ve done the entrepreneurial courses well in the past… It’s just the restaurant/bar specific stuff I lack.
I’ll definitely have to check out the wine bar thing, but that’s very location dependent.
Well then, the only practical advice I have is what has already been indirectly given. I understand that too many new restaurant owners go nuts with the line of credit, and way over purchase in terms of fixtures, equipment (stoves, etc.). Pick up what you can second hand in good condition (if you can recognize good order, used working equipment), and recognize that the customers can not see the equipment in the kitchen. Shiny and new that costs $10,000 is not really worth the extra price over used and works like new for $5,000.
Okay, here is the best advice from a professional, at least its right here in germany…
Start a bar, it should run fairly well from the beginning or it never will (statistically, there are of course exceptions(rare)). After two years you search a dumbass who buy the bar (thats your big profit)… Repeat
Oh and btw dont make it a wine bar other than you are deep in wine…
The margin is perhaps bigger per glass but howmany glasses will a customer buy to get drunk? and how many glasses of beer? ;)
You should have wine of course but good running winebars (profitwise) are seldom…
Please note that my advise comes from experience here in germany, it might be otherwise in the states…
First:
Wine/bar is heavily Dependant on your marketing strategy and theme quality in your location. You should research your area with its location, hotspots, local mass transit/cabby routes, and genre specific bars in the area (I.e. Gaybar, Redneck, Bikerbar, Technobar, etc.)
As for the management of a restaurants. Your first step if your serious about starting a restaurant is to research the competition before you decide on style. For example, Sushi/Ameri/Tepanaki restaurants are in a huge boom in less metropolitan areas due to their reasonably high profile quasi-exotic cuisine and huge markup on lowgrade tunas, crab and rice.
The average consumer can’t taste the difference between $160.00/lb tuna and $8.00/lb freshflown stuff.
After you have decided on a marketable menu you have to do the commercial foodstuff dance. Finding a reasonable, timely and affordable delivery of your foodstuffs and accounts. If you are starting your first restaurant and it’s not franchised you had best do your homework. I myself have found higher quality and better client support/delivery/accounting in state localized providers instead of national ones. But this depends on where you plan on opening your restaurant, your cuisine, your target market, your markup goal and to an extent your chef attitude and waste habits.
As for investment capital and budget. You should be looking at all initial material cost, business license, 1-year liquor license (if you have one), lease for a year, payroll for 6 months, your personal living expenses for a year and all foodstuff budget for 6 months in hand before you give it a go. May sound like alot, but your own personal mentality is what is going to drive the business and the money hemmorage is going to be quite intense especially in the first 6 months and when you get your first years taxes.
If you haven’t already, invest in a good tax laywer and as devious and smart accountant as you can find/afford.
If I had more time and if you have specific questions I might be able to answer them.
On this one point I disagree. In a startup, you cook what you know. After you make a name, then you branch out.
Depends totally on location, reputation and cook talent. You ever wonder why there are so many restaurants have only 1-3 high quality entrees per mealtime that taste really good (which varies per restaurant) and a ton of middling food that you could arguably do better yourself?
Franchises like Olive Garden, etc thrive on cookie cutter menus because of this.
If you happen to be or have a terrific and versatile chef/cook that can fill tables with the quality of your entrees this can be a good approach. Were you going to be doing the cooking yourself and hiring only prepcooks or can you choose your chef/menu?
But you’ll find most commercial districts are lined with the stereotypical food genres. If you don’t know the quality and ‘good’ food in your area and you’re limited by one style choice then you can only move your location to one that has a poorer location/quality/marketing/service/repeat customer base in order to capture a part of the lunchrush/dinnerrush of that particular area.
Also from what you’ve said Backov, it looks like you are going to have to maximize your mealtime exposure.
I do have to say that most of the successful startups that I have seen have been built from catering services. The advice I give the young prep-cooks and waitstaff that often come to me asking about how to get their own restaurant is to start their own catering service. Build up their clientel, get out their name and style then when they have enough homegrown marketing and word of mouth that they have more jobs than they can handle while still working somewhere to pay the bills, they can probably make the leap to owner once they get the capital.
Depends totally on location, reputation and cook talent. You ever wonder why there are so many restaurants have only 1-3 high quality entrees per mealtime that taste really good (which varies per restaurant) and a ton of middling food that you could arguably do better yourself?
Franchises like Olive Garden, etc thrive on cookie cutter menus because of this.
If you happen to be or have a terrific and versatile chef/cook that can fill tables with the quality of your entrees this can be a good approach. Were you going to be doing the cooking yourself and hiring only prepcooks or can you choose your chef/menu?
But you’ll find most commercial districts are lined with the stereotypical food genres. If you don’t know the quality and ‘good’ food in your area and you’re limited by one style choice then you can only move your location to one that has a poorer location/quality/marketing/service/repeat customer base in order to capture a part of the lunchrush/dinnerrush of that particular area.
Also from what you’ve said Backov, it looks like you are going to have to maximize your mealtime exposure.
I do have to say that most of the successful startups that I have seen have been built from catering services. The advice I give the young prep-cooks and waitstaff that often come to me asking about how to get their own restaurant is to start their own catering service. Build up their clientel, get out their name and style then when they have enough homegrown marketing and word of mouth that they have more jobs than they can handle while still working somewhere to pay the bills, they can probably make the leap to owner once they get the capital.
True, but the assuption is that when you open a place, you have a solid menu that is more than 3 entrees, no? You should have 3 entrees (at least and one a fish course), a couple or four appetizers, good sides and one or two desserts. When you start, you won’t have a liquor license so a BYOB policy isn’t a bad idea.
You should have at least two mains and/or apps that are things that you do really good and that people will come back for.
You probably buy your desserts and breads from a good outside source or sources. You don’t skimp on portions or ignore the quality of sides.
There are other mains that good line cooks can make blindfolded, but you don’t let them pass it thru if it seems like they were made that way.
Quality is the thing and you probably follow it up by being there the whole time.
Heh, I just figured out why I don’t do it. It has to be a love and not just a money thing.
Check out the requirements for obtaining a liquor license. In some jurisdictions they can very expensive. However there are some workarounds. Some places allow you to obtain a license for a lesser amount of money if you plan on serving some kind of food (light meals for example).
Most of the bar/pubs in Las Vegas make a significant portion of their money from video poker machines.
Remember almost all of the restaurants on Kitchen Nightmares are in the U.K., land of incredibly expensive, incredibly awful food.
Sheesh, can we bury this myth now?
I’ve no idea what the rate of closure is on restaurants in the US or what people particularly look for in restaurant there, but the key lessons from that series probably apply anywhere in the world.
And with the United States-based Gourmet Magazine recently declaring London “The best place to eat on the planet,” maybe its days of bangers and baked beans are over.
I won’t bother with the European based industry mag that put more restaurants just in London in it’s world top 50 restaurants than the whole of the US because you’ll probably whine about biased europeans.
Nellie beat me to it, but seriously, Vancouver?!?
London has been the best European city for food for quite some time now (only a few French would dare to disagree) and has been beating New York for a while too. So even though I’m not English I get annoyed everytime I read this crap.
But I’m sure Nellie has really bad teeth…
But I’m sure Nellie has really bad teeth…
:( or should it be :E
I’m surprised Triggercut hasn’t jumped in yet to this thread, since he runs a restraunt.
You and Nellie are fuckin’ nuts. I was just there, and, while London has OK Chinese food, the food sucks compared to a Bumfuck, Iowa Applebees. Having better food than in Paris is like being smarter than a fuckin’ retard. Fuckin’ Germany owns you all and you know it. That’s the real reason behind Lebensraum, my fine, feathered friends. The Germans are consummate tourists, and they kept finding, as they went across Europe, there was fuckin’ nothin’ to eat because you goony bastards can’t cook for shit. Paris? Land of the nine dollar soda and pate? Eat my shit Paris, brassierie my ass. That’s why those countries had to be taken over, so that Germans could run the restaurants and make sure there was something to eat besides some goofy bucktoothed smelly sonofabitch’s take on how to make beef more flavorless and gag inducing. When I went to see the Eiffel Tower, I got hungry, and I swear to god my experience could have been an episode of the twilight zone. Fifty million of the same fuckin’ brasserie, burgundy awned bullshit, same goddamn menu.
If you noticed, Hitler also attacked Russia, another place where the food fuckin’ sucks. What places did Hitler leave alone? Italy and Spain. Why? Because they had fascist dicators? No. Because Italian food is fantastic, and Spain could rest on the concept of tapas alone. The Netherlands got invaded, and they took it and cooperated with the Nazis, and what do we have now in Amsterdam? A delightful variety of world cuisine! The Dutch themselves still fuck it up, but they have the benefit of multiculturalism to show them how not to make guacamole. God bless the Dutch, they think pesto is a cream sauce. But at least they are fucking trying. I’ve got some mixed vegetables that I can glaze for you, France and England. Give me a million pounds sterling, please.
I fucking remember the food in England and France, and I am goddamn fucking queasy again. Thanks. Shit.
London has great high-end restaurants, but anything moderate or low priced is still usually awful.
One thing that surprises me about the French is how awesome they do traditional french cuisine, but how badly they do anything else, especially fusion. Awful, awful stuff.
Good thing then that french cuisine is awesome.
The french are the french and mainly like french things. Expecting a frenchman to be good at anything non-french is moronic.
And your inabliity to find mid- or lowpriced good food in London, just means that you suck at finding stuff. Or perhaps mid- and lowprice to you is measured as an American? You can’t get good food for what would be considered a low US price in any big EU city, not because we don’t do good food, but because our stuff is expensive (we also pay the staff so they don’t have to beg for tips…)
I ate at a terrific midpriced Italian restaurant in london last time I was there - it certainly beat what I paid through the nose for in Vegas (but I had worldclass steaks there).
Coincidently (Flowers) some of the best Italian restaurants in the world are also in London.
Yes, if you want to drop a few hundred bucks a head on dinner, London has some very fine restaurants. No, that isn’t what people are referring to when they complain about the restaurants in the U.K., and Kitchen Nightmares does not profile Michelin-starred places.[li] I have never been served such incomparably horrid food at wince-inducing prices as I have in London, and that perception is very common. That “myth,” isn’t. (“Beating New York” – what’s the correct phrase? Oh, yes: LOLERSKATES.)[/li]
[li] Yes, I recall there was an episode with a one-starred restaurant. Which had lost the chef who had earned his star, and looked, as Ramsay might (probably did) say, fucking awful given what they were charging.[/li]
The point was that what you’re calling “mid-priced” restaurants in London serving crap food don’t exist outside of the U.K. If one must “find” restaurants in London that charge those prices and are also good, that means there’s lots of shitty and expensive restaurants in London. No, this is not the situation all over Europe, much less all over N.A. and Europe.
Food in the U.K. is expensive even after one adjusts for different tipping conventions. Service in the U.K. might be better if servers had more of an incentive to provide good service because of, you know, tips. The economics of the situtation imply that servers in a culture without tipping will be paid less and provide lower quality service, other things equal, than in one with tipping.
And now for something completely different than mocking foreign cultures. Since this is a foodie thread: I am going to San Francisco next weekend, for a little vacation rather than work, and want to check out a couple of the best restaurants. Where should we go for mind-blowing cost-not-much-of-an-object food? Alice Waters’ place? Gary Danko?