Not starting with a food truck

Absolutely nothing went wrong. His staff performed fine. He was the problem.

His wife is a saint for sticking by him through all that.

>he left an analyst job to do this

But he couldn't figure out 25% profit margins on a dish lol

>I'm a fantastic idiot who drank my way through failing to run a business

>By early 2014, the author, seen here behind the bar, was running a successful restaurant, but he’d had to sell his house to keep the business afloat
>successful

Toronto Life really is cornering the market for woe is me stories written by self entitled morons.

The problem is that a lot of people seem to think of buying/starting a restaurant as "easy money" or something. Like it's not a "real" job. Heck I still remember on shows like Kitchen Nightmares a lot of those owners are older people who bought those restaurants as retirement plans. And yeah once you get a restaurant/bar actually going and successful sure you can kick back and enjoy the fruits of your labor but you have to fucking work at it. Not only that but you can't be complacent, so many places coast on success until they're just irrelevant.

Oh and for fuck's sake if you start a restaurant at least have a business degree or something more than a passing interest in coking.

I'm not going to read all of that. Looks like it basically says "I am a retard"

The funny part is, he claims he had a well-worn copy of Kitchen Confidential. I guess he missed the chapter on all the failure restaurateurs Bourdain had to work for.

It does make me wonder how viable it would be to buy and flip failed restaurants. Fuck the risk of running them, buy some place on the rock, bring everything up to code, maybe some shiny new appliances to wow the suckers that think it'll be easy, and sit back to collect their money?

>Only have $60k for renovation
>Buy a rat infested, pile of shit, water damaged building
>Wonder why you have no money by the time you've fixed it up

Hang on, isn't that basically what his angel investor mate did? Con some rube into doing a place up for you and getting good reviews by plowing his own money and time into it, then offer to buy it back at a cut rate price to save him.

It's easy to make money off business ventures, only problem is you have to have money first.

I read this article when it first came out. What a fucking horror story. I'm thinking about contacting this guy and helping him turn it into an entire book.

It seems like the big issue would be "cursed" locations. Some spots fail so hard, a half-dozen restaurants sink after them before someone shakes the curse. Otherwise, you can buy refurbished, used professional appliances and gear for discount prices, since restaurants fail every year.

Selling the bank on giving you a loan seems easier than if you were running the place yourself. Point out how 80% of first-timers fail, and something like 60% of all restaurants fail even with experience, yet there are people every year that will plow their money into them, thinking they can make it work.

What happens to all the credit this fucknut took out to do this? Does it just disappear?

Nope, he's in debt up to his eyeballs for the next couple of years.

It seems like most of the money came from his pension, house, and friends and family, not the banks.