Start a Restaurant

For many years restaurants have gotten a bad rap when it comes to perceived risk.  Business experts and people in general are prone to citing “The High Failure Rate” of restaurants as a reason not to invest in or start restaurants.  Most of us are so use to hearing such talk we simply accept it as truth.  If we were to ask those who claim that restaurants have a higher failure rate than other small businesses to provide a references for their claim, they couldn’t.  There aren’t any credible research studies to support this myth.

I recently published an article outlining how anyone can dramatically improve their odds of success at starting a restaurant business.   The same day that the article was published a reader left a great comment, which not surprisingly mentioned the high failure rate of restaurants.    For the benefit of aspiring restaurateurs, restaurant investors, and the restaurant industry, it’s time to set the record straight.

There is no meaningful difference in the failure rate of restaurant start-ups and small business start-ups in general.  According to the Small Business Administration about 44 percent of small businesses are still operating after four years.  Similarly, according to a 2007 study conducted at Ohio State University, 41 percent of restaurants were still operating three years after launch.

As someone who has owned and operated a restaurant in a major city, the enjoyment and social aspects of being a restaurant owner fall just below rock star, local celebrity, and city mayor.  A popular restaurant allows the owner to be at the center of community events.  More importantly, if restaurant owners avoids the trap of trying to “Do-it-All” themselves, they can also enjoy a well balanced lifestyle.

The classic nightmare restaurant ownership scenario of long frantic days is the same for any entrepreneur,  who does not graduates from working in his business to working on his business.  Moreover, if restaurants were failing at the staggering 90% rate that some quote, it is unlikely that the restaurant industry would have been growing at double digit rates prior to the current recession.  

Author: Shed Wallace
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Credit card currency-exchange fees

If you have potential investors flying in from another part of the country, you are likely to have them for dinner. Meals can be a pitfall in any relationship, either business or personal. Many people judge your ability to select a restaurant, pick wine, and sit through a meal as a proxy for how you conduct your life. If you are unable to do these things with appropriate acumen, you will likely be judged unfit to receive funding, especially if the investor is on the fence about your company.

Manners are about making other people feel comfortable and behavior that is seen as disrespectful, discourteous or abrasive is usually unintentional.

Here are some basics to get through a dinner with an investor.

• Pick a mid-level restaurant with good food. Select a restaurant that has a variety of choices on the menu including a vegetarian selection.
• Make a reservation. If the restaurant you pick doesn’t take reservations, pick another restaurant.
• Dress to match the dress of your guests. If they are wearing suits, wear a suit. If they are wearing jackets, wear a jacket. Err on the conservative side. Regardless of the dress, be neat, clean shaven, and wear unwrinkled clothing.
• If the guests are coming in their own car, make sure they have good directions. Arrive a little early – always make sure you arrive before your guest.
• Allow your guests to select their own seats, but encourage your team to sit between the guests to facilitate better conversation. If you have two people who are better conversationalists, have them sit on opposite sides of the table to keep conversation flowing. Arrange this before you arrive at the restaurant.
• If you are expected to pick the wine, be prepared. If you are not a wine connoisseur, call the restaurant ahead of time and ask to speak to the sommelier. He or she should be able to give you some good mid-range wines in both white and red.
• When you site down, remember that your bread plate is on the left and your drinks are on your right. During the meal, use your flatware from the outside in. Put your napkin in your lap. If you would like bread, salt and pepper, butter, etc., as for it to be passed, don’t reach over someone for it.
• When selecting your meal, pick one that is easy to eat and does not have a tendency to leave distracting bits of food in your teeth. Take a bite of food and put your flatware down before chewing and swallowing. Don’t talk with any food in your mouth.
• Don’t drink too much.
• Some business talk at the table is okay, but don’t let it overwhelm the conversation. Stay off of topics that may be sensitive, sex, politics and religion are good ones to avoid. A good way to avoid saying something stupid is just to ask a lot of questions and let your guests do all the talking.
• If none of your guests order coffee or dessert, then you should not either. If they do, then at least one or more of your team should do the same. This can be tricky because they may not want to order first. In this case, you should judge how you think they feel and follow that instinct.
• Pay. They are your guests, you are expected to pay.

In general, good business etiquette is about making people feel comfortable and valued. If you provide a nice meal with good conversation, then you have succeeded even if you accidentally use the wrong fork.

Author: C. Worrall
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Import duty tariff

If you’ve been looking into starting a restaurant business, this could be the information you need to become successful. Anyone who has never worked in a restaurant before can really understand how difficult it can be to make something like this successful. It doesn’t matter if it’s the food, the bar area, the employees or even the distributors, every facet of the business has to be complete or your new venture won’t run smoothly.

This is why learning How to Start a Restaurant Business can make or break you within the first two years. However, we came across this profitable system that delivers a success rate over around 80% according to their sales page. This is enough to have us take a deeper look and find what exactly you can learn and accomplish from using this program. The results are quite interesting.

The Last Thirty Years Have Been Crazy

Let’s face it. Restaurant sales have gone up tremendously over the last thirty years. When you look on their sales page, you’ll find a snapshot of the progression that has taken place over the last three decades. What started out as 42.8 billion dollars has now risen to 558.3 billion dollars. We aren’t great mathematicians or anything, but that type of increase is definitely monumental. (more…)

Anyone with a lot of money and an idea can be a restaurant owner. But it takes much more to become a smart restaurant owner.

A smart restaurant owner thinks before he acts. A smart restaurant owner learns from her mistakes. A smart restaurant owner knows that the customer always comes first. And most importantly, a smart restaurant owner is aware of all of the many types of business funding options and chooses the one or combination of sources that works best for him.

One type of business funding option that many restaurant owners may not be aware of is the credit card cash advance.

Do you want to expand your restaurant by adding seats or opening another location? Do you want some extra cash for a little bit of a cushion when your restaurant opens? (more…)

In today’s fast passed lifestyle people have tight schedules and do not get time to spend with their family, so how can they even think of cooking? Keeping this in mind, count the many fast food restaurant chains you can think of. They provide quick service so that you don’t have to wait long to get your order. Wendy’s restaurants are a good example of this. They are extremely popular in the world now and are known for healthy food and high standards.

It is good to start your own business but it is also extremely difficult to compete now and that is why many businesses fail within their first year. What if you purchase a Wendy’s franchise? There is a great advantage of purchasing a franchise. You won’t have to start from the beginning advertising your company, rather you will already have their reputation in the marketplace and people will, without thinking, enter your restaurant. The majority of people do not spend time trying something new at lunch but go for the same old things with which they are familiar. So if you start your own business, you might not be able to attract customers for a long time with an unheard of brand name. If you are a Wendy’s franchise, people would know you as there outlet and will step inside your restaurant on the first day of its opening. This way you would make profit from day one. (more…)

Have you ever considered franchising your restaurant? Do you ever wonder if your diner could be the next Pizza Hut or KFC, or your burger joint the next McDonald’s? In the United States, franchising businesses generate employment for an estimated whopping eighteen million Americans. Restaurant franchising represents a big player in this sector, so should you be thinking of joining their ranks?

One of the reasons given by business owners for deciding to enter into restaurant franchising is a lack of ready capital. When it comes to expansion, the main obstacle is always a shortage of investment funds and restaurant franchising provides an obvious advantage in this respect. As the franchisee provides the initial investment, growth occurs at a greatly reduced cost. For franchisors, investment in growth tends to be restricted to the development of franchising documentation and recruitment costs. Thus a considerable reduction in start-up costs is afforded in comparison with the typical sums involved in opening a non-franchised restaurant. Moreover, it is the franchisees who sign the leases and commit to the various service contracts. Therefore, restaurant franchising enables growth at a greatly reduced risk, with practically no contingent liability. (more…)

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) was created in 1953 as an independent agency of the federal government to aid, counsel, and assist small business. The SBA helps Americans start, build and grow businesses. Through an extensive network of field offices and partnerships with public and private organizations, SBA delivers its services to people throughout the United States.

A wonderful volunteer organization that works as a resource partner with the SBA is SCORE. SCORE considers itself as the “counselors to America’s small business”, offering confidential advice to help owners make a potential successful small business idea into a reality.

WHAT IS SCORE?

It was founded in 1964 and since then as helped more than 7.5 million small businesses. They offer face to face small business counseling at 389 chapter offices nationwide. They ensure that their volunteers (who are usually successful business owners who have retired) have a broad range of skills to help solve all types of business problems they offer small business online solutions at www.score.org.

HOW CAN SCORE HELP YOU?

The following are a couple of examples of businesses that SCORE considers as “small business success” stories.

Little Scoops – Recently listed in Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the “Hot New Franchises for 2005″ Little Scoops started only 5 years ago. One of the founders Michelle claims that “without the help of the volunteer counselors at SCORE, her success never would have happened.

Prior to opening her first store, the counselors insisted she and her partner think long term, and helped them develop a plan to set up finances and how to evaluate potential locations. Just recently, the SCORE counselors have helped them begin the process of franchising their 9 locations into a national concept. (more…)

Menu printing is an essential part of your restaurant marketing strategy, but it does not end there. No advertising campaign is effective unless it reaches the consumer via a reliable delivery method. This is where menu direct mailing comes in. Follow these quick and easy tips for direct mailing restaurant menus and flyers to ensure your menu direct mail strategy runs smoothly and effectively.

1. Make sure you know exactly which customers are in your delivery zone. Deliver menus directly to all customers in your delivery zone and don’t give any out to people who are not. Before you set out to direct mail any menus make sure you know exactly which houses you are mailing the menu to. This will make sure you get all potential customers as well as not wasting flyers and time delivering to people outside the delivery area. (more…)

A restaurant business plan has a simple outline which any restaurant can take advantage of. Being in the restaurant line, you’ll know that you can write and read a bunch of things, but what works best for you is the service you offer to the customer. The basic business model could be anything, it could be a spa or a coffee shop, but the core motto remains the same, which is that of excellent service, nothing more and nothing less. Do engrave that in the first slide of your business presentation plan.

What do people expect in a restaurant? Good food and drinks, excellent service, comfortable ambiance, friendly staff and a place where they can unwind and have a good time. (more…)

Inflation or recession, either way the state of the U.S. economy today leaves few Americans untouched when it comes to the need to tighten our belts and re-think our business processes. Nowhere is this fact more evident that in the restaurant industry. As Restaurant Owners, we’re poised and ready to please our Customers, and when they’re experiencing financial stresses, the runoff will inevitably trickle down hill to us. Let’s examine some of the economic changes we’ve experienced in the United States recently that directly affect our revenue:

* Energy costs have steeply risen.
* Inflation rate is at a 17 year high.
* The high price of crude oil has increased transportation costs, directly effecting the cost of food.
* Though the price of oil is coming down, commodities costs continue to rise.
* Grains being used to produce bio-fuels is adding to the sharp rise of food prices.
* The largest foreclosure rate in the history of our Country is affecting the emotional moods of our Customers.
* Consumers are hanging on to their money, so they aren’t going out to eat as often as they once did.
* Consumers are looking for consistent, or reduced, prices when they do make purchases (or dine out).
* Development costs for new restaurants have increased significantly due to everything in the development process process being affected by high fuel costs and inflation.
* With immigration tightening at U.S. borders, we’re concerned about a reduction in the availability of labor in our workforce as well as a rise in labor costs.

A great example of the restaurant climate today can be found in New Jersey. With over 23,000 restaurants for patrons to choose from, and approximately 80 percent of new restaurants failing in the first 3 years, restaurant owners, including restaurant franchise owners, are streamlining everything from labor costs to portion sizes in efforts to stay “afloat”.

Food co-ops and Farmers Markets are enjoying a rise in popularity. Although established mainly for non-commercial use (restaurants normally have all food-stuffs delivered), there’s a new interest in the health and cost benefits of supporting locally grown and produced food resources. (more…)