Anyone here own/run a restaurant?

Full disclosure: I have thought about this off and on for approx 5 years and it just keeps popping back up.

I don’t want a “chain” I want a theme and I already have so many ideas.

Other than REALLY loving food, I know nothing about the business.

I know it’s not the case, but it seems like there’s really good money potential there.

Anyone ever taken the plunge? Should I look for a place to lease? How do I find someone who’s actually run a food establishment? I know there’s sanitary things and obviously multiple other aspects involved.....

Help me out here.

 

Dude, you think owning a track is work? Most restaurants fail in the first year and you're doing awesome if you make it to three.

I will tell you if you do it, you need to be there ALL the time. You can try and hire a manager but if you do I'd tell you to keep your hands on everything and be there ALL the time anyways.

You going to serve liquor/ beer/ wine?

 

Without giving away the details, I’d like to say yes. I think I would want a bar.

 

Liquor is going to be your money maker if you can get a steady clientele. Regulars, baby. Beer is less profitable but still a good source of the bucks.
But now you get into the insurance problems with a bar. I don't know about Florida but years ago in PA they held YOU responsible for the people in your bar from the time they walk out the door until the get home. You have to know when to cut them off and you don't want the hard core drunks.

Really, It would depend on what your menu looks like, what type of client you want and a dozen other things.

Yes, you can do VERY well with a restaurant with a bar but you need to be SMART about it and remember, you will work your ass off.

I knew a lot of people in the NYC restaurant business from chefs to owners and everything else. The joke they used to tell about opening a restaurant in NY was: The first year, you steal as much as you can. The second year you steal enough but not enough to go out of business. The third year you're spending all your time keeping everyone else from stealing.

 

you should work in 1 for about a week. Its alot of work!

Maybe a food truck is less risk and easier to relocate/license. Obviously you cant sell booze from 1.

 

My wife has a Masters in Hospitality Management (Hotel and Restaurant),

Stats are something like: 80% of all start up restaurant/bars don't make it past their first year.
She's a great cook (Chinese food mostly), and I'd talked about opening a restaurant.
She won't do it. Mainly for the reasons already mentioned.

Don't get me wrong, if you want to do it- I think you should, and Good luck- no sarcasm

 

Having family that's been in a variety of positions in many restaurants, I have no clue why anybody would want that life. Owning a restaurant means you have no life except that restaurant. And the margins are paper thin. The key is having staff you can trust...and I mean trust with your livelihood. All it takes is one person skimming funds or stealing goods to kill that margin.

Just my opinion , but I don't get the allure of owning a restaurant.

 

there are chefs, i know one, who are professionally/classically trained, and specifically do anything from... advising/developing an entire menu for you and training your staff how to cook all the shit, to doing that and also being the head chef, to also doing that and managing the daily operations. all depends on what you want to pay for and how deep your pockets are. liquor licenses are expensive as shit, although surprisingly less of a hassle than all the regs and requirements for serving food. so you could...

hire a chef to develop your menu for you, or hire a chef who's going to develop the menu and manage the whole kitchen and hire/fire the right staff, either manage or hire a manager for day to day operations and just throw down the money, have them hire all the front line people and manage them, design yourself or hire a designer to build out the theme of the place, find investors or come up with a shitload of money to throw down... and after ALL that maybe or maybe not, end up as one of those drunken owners on Bar Rescue that's sinking his own biz... 50/50.

also this... watching one of my friends go thru it with 2 restaurants and a burger store that blew up with popularity... i've watched him have a partner that tried to shaft him and steal from the business, kitchen staff that was fucking up and messing with the quality/consistency, and even when things were going pretty well, he would never hardly see his newborn and wife cause he was working 15 hours a day, 7 days a week. i wouldn't bother frankly unless you were gonna be there 24/7, or you just had so much money that you didn't have to care, and you just wanted to bop in from time to time for a free drink and impress people by saying it was yours.

 

Sweaty, see, I would do the opposite. NO partners. Eventually you're going to have to get rid of them.

 

yea well i'm sure he would have too... not everyone has $500k laying around unfortunately.

what i've come to learn from my other chef friend here in DC, is that it is often easier on your mind/wallet/stress to try and develop a fast food, simple, bop in place where you're banking on volume and margins are better and people come in and out quickly. margins are NOT good on fancy dining. making poke bowls or burritos or shit like Cava and having a little standing room or a few seats or food where people circulate quickly for lunch/dinner rushes is easier. of course you have to gain the customer base still and popularity and do the whole marketing thing right... but having people sit for 1+ hours and ordering $45 steaks and $100 wine bottles is a lot more difficult to earn a buck at.

 

I'm not talking about partners, I'm talking about the general staff. My mom was the business manager for a swanky French restaurant in the Ville. She found food discrepancies for a couple of months and discovered that the night shift, which didn't close until the wee hours was stealing loads of fine foods. My wife was the morning chef at a place in the Keys and most everyone on staff was high their entire shift.

I could go on...

 

There’s this guy named Mark....just keep him away from the rum.

 

Here's the first thing to know about the restaurant business. Good help is hard to find.

 

I believe most failed restaurants start with some kind of variant of this sentence. That business is no hobby.

 

Yeap, if I was going to do it it would have to be in a building I owned (greedy owners who raise your rent if they see you doing well) and I do burgers, good bar food, buritos, pasta dishes and stuff you can bring in the families until 9 pm and then your bar gets moving. With the bar, I'd limit the drunks by closing early ~ midnight.
Keep the quality high and if I could get legit fresh seafood, boom, there's a corner stone of my menu.

 

Seconding the fact that margins are extremely thin and will add that staff is the critical portion of the equation. Also, the ability to deal with stress and obnoxious customers calmly. That last one is going to be a serious issue for your venture.
And Dave K is dead on about liability for the alcohol consumers.

 

Unfortunately this was the Keys in the 80's. The white powder ruled.