Why is making a successful restaurant so difficult?

Why is making a successful restaurant so difficult?

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Because you have a horrible taste in food, and just blend into all the other heart attack facilities.

It's all about location.

It's actually not.

Location
Mitigate unnecessary cost and make everything in house
Prepare to work extremely shitty hours
Keep backstock heavy and always, always, always make large batches of soup base and freeze it.


source:

Have started three restraunts and a coffee shop from scratch and all it requires is high-quality control and hard work.

it's all about ambiance. you are probably a derpy spergfaggot (idk assuming because youre posting on Veeky Forums) who would scare off the customers.
-food isnt actually that important look at east side mario's, the waitresses come out and offer to grate fucking IMITATION parmesan 'cheese product' on your canned pasta
-chain restaurants are probably the safest route sadly
-many of the people who start restaurants probably have no business sense and don't do the market research

Prices really.

Eating out is a luxury. And the moment the price becomes too taxing for an individual then they will just eat at home. Lets take a $20 meal as an example. There are probably $5 of ingredients, $3 of labor, and $5 of operating expenses, to produce that meal. That leaves an income of $7. And that does not even include taxes. So at $7, just assume how many people have to come eat at your new restaurant every day to make any money. They just aren't usually profitable.

Now take dentistry. A single filling might cost $500. It's about $25 of material, and $50 of operating expenses to perform that filling. So in one hour that dentist can make $425.

>KNPD

Any business is hard, micro-managing, loss managing, accounting, taxes, you have to run everything near perfectly and have a great team as well.

End of the day you should be marking your food up 35%/45% of cost of material. Rent is always fixed, so you don't per se need to factor that into food cost, because if you're running a bar worth a shit, it should make your rent in eight to twelve days. If you're running purely a restaurant, you should be making it within your first week.


Actually, if you're running a boosie/flashy place, you could easily get away with running a 50/65% upcharge. End of the day you should be relying on your first two weeks sales to bring in your rent/utility when you're working on your first five years.

>So in one hour that dentist can make $425.
Only because dentists have a monopoly handed to them by the government.

Best case scenario, you're competing with "do we still have burgers in the freezer?". After that, you have to be better in a way that everyone in the room can agree they are in the mood for at that very second, without being too much more expensive than McDonald's. Unless you serve beer, then you can be somewhat more expensive, but your food has to be great and your menu needs a stupid amount of variety.

Good luck with all of that!

Not that hard when you live in a city. There are literally three burger spots on my block with a McDonalds, Wendy's and BK included. They all seem to be doing just fine. They're also a bit more pricey than the 3. What you said has nothing to do with anything.

Restaurants are labors of love; don't get into it if you are looking to make a quick buck. If you want real money from food have enough capital to buy a Chick-fil-a, and then get hired into a grunt position while working your way up into management (the only way they will let you but into it). Once done it is easy money, if an oven or anything breaks they pay for a new one and over night shipping themselves. So, no operational costs from yourself, and just pure, split franchise profits. The place apparently prints money, and so open many.

are you glad you did it, or do you have regrets?

>too many hours open
>too many options on menu

Start restaurant
hours from 5am - 10am
only breakfast (oatmeal, eggs, sausage/bacon, toast, coffee/milk/OJ)
Have couple of large communal tables and other small tables/counter seating

Great success.

imgur.com/a/TZdSz

Masa Pizza in Echo Park

I always wondered where that pizza was and now I know.

DENTISTS DO NOT CHARGE $500 A FILLING YOU DIPSHIT TRY $180

this. keep it simple. if there are minor alterations requested, so be it. dont have thirty salade options, keep soups minimal, dont dress a steak in every sauce you can find.

its one of the reasons in and out is still so profitable, apart from being tasty

because people think that you only have to know how to cook to run a restaurant (and they fail at that too)

In any retail world, the sales should be easier when you have more clients/customers. Mass production, larger orders, larger warehouse space, etc.

With a restaurant, it's the reverse. Batch cooking is a bit more on quality control, everyone demands to have excellent service, etc. Lots more of micro managing.

The cost of kitchen for a 50 person restaurant is about the same for a 200 person person restaurant. So when a line forms out the door, you basically have to ask the line if they're okay with takeout. A reservation system would help as well.

Human taste buds are shitfucked.

Because prices of food are literally too low 99% of the time. I've managed a few different "successful" restaurants in Los Angeles that are world renowned and their profit margin if any is about 5%.

After you factor in all your overhead you will not be making jack shit. And it's hard to raise your prices too high because you want to seem relatively fair so people will actually eat there.

The last place I worked got the majority of it's food from the farmer's market and had really high quality standards across the board, and the prices were somewhat average (about $14-16 for lets say a sandwich). People complain about the cost of that even and for it to be viable that sandwich should be costing upwards of $20.

The majority of successful restaurants are because of their alcohol program. Food you aim for about a 30% of the total cost and beverage should hover closer to 15-20%. Basically you make profit by selling overpriced beer and cocktails.

Also I don't recommend the service industry to anybody unless you're young it's a good experience to learn how shitty everyone is and how to deal with shitty people.

Literally 50-60 hour work weeks as a manager with high intensity and stress levels with pretty shit pay.

low barriers to entry means that there's a ton of competition, also, any idiot thinks he can do it

I own 3 of the same restaurants of one franchise. Location helps a ton. People are going to be mad regardless, it's hard to make people want to come back in when they want to be upset over everything anyway.

I'm not in the stores as much anymore, but getting a management team at each store that buys in makes a huge difference. That means AT LEAST two salaried managers. Three is even better. A fourth manager in training. All tied to profit with a bonus system. You have to be consistent every day. Even if it's mediocre people want to know they get the same experience every time. Don't be a 9 one day and a 3 the next. Be a 5 every day. Once you're consistent like that, then you begin working on improving your method to be better than you were.
I have one store that is a cash cow. Seems like it prints money. Another store that is barely break even. Some months it doesn't. Other months it does. But that stores sales are up 6% this year. So, eventually it'll be a consistent store. My third store is new. It's relatively profitable. The location is the best though, so I'll imagine in 2 or 3 years it'll be the biggest money maker.

Ask me anything you guys are curious about.

how hands on is the restaurant business? I don't want to be there, I just want to invest my money and get a return.

what type of franchise it is? fast food ?

How much did you initially invest when opening the first one

whats a good amount of money I should have before investing in something like a franchise? Have you ever thought about opening a bar? Or some other type of store?

On my phone. I'm If you just want to invest there will be people for you to find. You need to find a managing partner that is willing to be in the store for you.

Fast food, yes. I've invested 30k per store. To open one fully and pay all costs of building it's roughly 400k. Since I'm managing them, while my partner is in a different state, I has sweat equity. So I have 45% of them. In talks of me buying them from him.

You'll want at least 100k liquid assets firstly. That way you aren't getting a loan for the entirety of the investment. It totally depends on what you want to open. Bars are fine, but I don't think the environment of them breeds much integrity. You'll get a lot of profit skimmed off the top. If you are planning on opening one, wait out for a AAA location. Can't stress that enough. If you don't get it, or the terms from a landlord don't be afraid to back out. It isn't worth taking a B location ever.

how much time do you put into it a week, and are you able to have a social life?

I thought all locally own restaurants were just a front to launder money.

Can confirm, I work in highly successful fast food join. Last Saturday literally had hundreds of colleges kids, it really is just location, quality control, and hard work. Also think I lost a bit of my soul.

Because it turns out theres significantly more to it than just knowing how to cook, or even knowing how to cook for lots of people quickly.

High competition, lots of expenses meaning you need lots of business consistently.

Exactly this.

Successful restaurants usually have a nightlife scene where they can sell plenty of alcohol.

OR they are able to buy insanely cheap food that is barely edible, and church it up, make it edible, then sell it at a profit.

If you hadnt noticed, theres a lot competition in the restaurant industry

And your pretty much forced to hire teenagers and immigrants

Most people think that because they can cook well, they can start a restaurant, but they have no idea how to run a business. They pick a bad location, manage their finances wrong and just have a generally disorganised setup.

To succeed in owning a restaurant, you don't even need to know how to cook. Almost every successful restaurant I've come across leaves the food stuff to a head chef. NEVER be the head chef of your own restaurant.