It begins with a plan, including the type of food, location, and marketplace. Who will eat there and how much will they pay? How will you attract them? What are your long-term goals? How about a short-term goal of creating the restaurant and surviving the first year?

There are so many elements in the process, yet it’s fairly easy to list them, not necessarily in order:

• The basic business plan
• Arranging the financing
• Securing the property
• Seeking out a contractor
• Creating the cuisine
• Looking for employees
• Obtaining insurance, accounting and legal resources
• Planning the marketing approach
• Setting a timetable
• Designing a menu

The last one is not the least, in order of importance. It might even be the first. Without a menu, you have no restaurant. Why? Because it sets the tone for the whole operation.

It lists all the items you have for sale. It shows the public your pricing structure. It gives other information such as payment types, catering, banquet facilities, delivery or takeout, and other details about your business. If it doesn’t, it should. It’s a mini-advertisement or billboard, that eventually ends up in the hands of every single customer, therefore it’s terribly important. So, how much time did you spend on it’s content and design? Probably not nearly enough, but now you have some food for thought (pardoning the pun).

Now, a few words about my background. I worked as a sales consultant for the Yellow Pages for 25 years and encouraged all my restaurant accounts to place their menus in the directory. The problem was the need for a full page to accommodate the menu. That proved to be rather expensive and therefore, not an option, for many family-run restaurants.

Today, there are several online versions of the directory that allow this feature. Luckily , there are some more specialized sites only list restaurant menus, but they also retype them for some reason. I prefer an online copy of the actual menu, which helps display the flavor of the restaurant. I think most people prefer to see the real menu for that reason. One such site even asks for restaurants to post them on their site for free. Menuelephant.com is my choice for placing your free menu. It will gain you maximum exposure with a zero cost investment. You have no excuse not to go there and try it. Where else can you get free advertising and a purple pachyderm as a business partner?

Jeffrey Hauser was a sales consultant for the Bell System Yellow Pages for nearly 25 years. He graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Advertising and has a Master’s Degree in teaching. He had his own advertising agency in Scottsdale, Arizona and ran a consulting and design firm, ABC Advertising. He authored a book about his directory years, “Inside the Yellow Pages” which can be seen at his website, http://www.poweradbook.com and he is currently the Marketing Director for http://www.thenurseschoice.com a Health Information site and http://www.menuelephant.com which posts restaurant menus on the “site you’ll never forget.”

Growing a restaurant isn’t all about marketing. It’s just one of many components. When you start a restaurant, or any small business you become the CEO. This is an important consideration. The CEO of Ford doesn’t paint cars or bolt the transmissions in. He works on growing the business.

So what do I work on? The short answer is everything. The sales and marketing, the operations of the business, the menu, training the staff, new recipes, and your long term strategy for growth. Your goal is to grow the business, not just the restaurant. That means you have to pay attention to details. As the business gets bigger the details get smaller. This is hard to swallow for many CEOs without the experience of working in a large company but it’s true. I’ll give you a great example. When you open up your mom and pop restaurant you might be serving drinks from a can poured in to a glass. That’s fine. You keep your costs low. But it takes time. When you’re running a small business or new business, you’ve got time. But as the business grows you need to increase efficiency. That keeps the growth moving. To do that, you purchase an automated drink machine. Now the waittress simply puts the glass under a dispenser and presses a button. While she’s waiting for the drink to fill she can go check on the status of the order in the kitchen. You’ve now increased efficiency.

So what should my day as a restaurant owner look like? Here’s what I would consider the perfect day. If you can pull this off you know you’re in a growing business. You walk in at opening and find a clean store. All the employees know the procedure for opening the restaurant and getting the food prepared. For the first hour you look over last nights numbers. Did we have enough people on staff? Did we have too many people? How much food was thrown away and why? You go through the orders and find out if anything was really selling well. Then ask yourself why? Was soup selling great? If so what was the temperature yesterday? If it was cold, you’ve got an indicator. On cold days make more soup. You may not sell more soup, but your customers will get it faster. After spending some time on yesterday let’s look at the operation now. This ideally would be an hour before the lunch rush. Is everyone just sitting around waiting for the crowd to come in? Could this time be spent doing something more productive? Use all of your resources wisely.

During the lunch rush observe. On the perfect day you don’t have to worry about getting caught up in managing the restaurant. Watch the entire operation as a third party observer. Then ask yourself, “Would I want to eat here?”.

Pick out one or two customers and follow them through the entire experience of dining in your restaurant. Were they seated quickly? Did a waiter approach them within a minute or two to get a drink order and place the menus? Was the food prepared promptly? Did it look appetizing or was it just thrown on the plate? When they paid the bill were they smiling? Were your employees smiling and did they thank them for their business?

Growing the restaurant long term. After the lunch rush make some notes, and a specific plan with a time attached to implement some changes. On a big yellow post-it note write down something to remind you to stay on top of the plan. Put it on the corner of your desk or somewhere that you’ll see it often. Then start on your long term planning. This doesn’t start out as a detailed road map. It’s just a brain storm of things you can do to grow your business over a period of months, then years. If your restaurant is always crowded, and people are waiting in line consider two things. The first is expanding the size of the restaurant. The second is adding a second location.

This is the most important aspect of your second location. Put it somewhere close to the first one. Not next door, but within the same traffic pattern. This is really critical if you’re customers are wating in line during the dinner and lunch rush. Most people will not wait more than a few minutes for lunch. Determine where their coming from and add the second location in that path. Ideally it would be not only in that path but also along a route that draws in potential customers from another populated area.

This is not as hard as it sounds. Just take a few hours and drive around. Focus on where your customers are coming from first, and then expand your search in small circles of a mile or two until you find another route to your new restaurant. Just make sure it sits at the point that both routes meet.

Running a restaurant can be very rewarding

But don’t get caught up in just being the manager. Over time you’ll get bored and business will suffer. Make sure you work on the business at least as much as you do in it. This will be stressful for the first few months. But as the business grows it keeps your mind focused on growth and new challenges.

Eric Gurr is a contributing editor at SMBresource.com Ideas for starting a business. Information for starting and running a restaurant Copywrite SMBresource.com all rights reserved, must credit and include link when using.

I then came up with the idea that I wanted to run my own restaurant. This restaurant had to be started from scratch as I wanted to build it from nothing to a busy restaurant and have no wise cracks from people saying “they did not used to do it that way” or “so and so used to do it this way”.

I then made a list of things that I believe make a successful restaurant, these were:

• Location
• Business Partners involved
• Skills of employees
• Size of premises

I knew the location had to be in a busy area which would have a good influx of summer trade but still busy during the winters quiet months. I needed a business partner who had good experience in business and could help coach me along the way and also a business partner who was a skilled chef who could provide consistency in the product.The skills involved would be important as I had always been a restaurant manager and was looking for a replacement so I could concentrate on the back end of the business with marketing and coming up with the ideas and putting them in place to grow the business.

Believe it or not working in many pubs and restaurants I learnt from the accounts that running the property (fixed costs) were never that much different so I had to make sure the property was big enough to cash in during the summer months.

I will be writing more about my obstacles and problems in future weeks…

Visit my sites for original ideas and articles Brookleys, Crazydays and Brookleys Electronics

The First Step: Plan

You can’t successfully start a restaurant business if you don’t have a plan in place. Planning is the key to making sure that you have all of the information and resources for your restaurant in place ahead of time. This will allow you to make the best decisions for your business. Here are some things you can ask yourself today:

• What kind of customer do I want to serve?
• Do I have a concept in mind?
• Where will I be setting up my restaurant?
• What will make my business unique?

You need to write out the ideas that you have so that you can begin to assemble them into a professional and clear business plan. Here’s what you need to do for the plan itself.

The Second Step: Make a Physical Business Plan

Many business owners find it beneficial to have a physical piece of paper with their plans to start a restaurant business. With things like restaurant business software, you can build a business plan that’s easy to read and for presenting to a bank or a business partner. This plan should include:

• All of the things that you listed in the previous step
• Plans for financing
• Projected sales
• Proposed staffing

This plan is really supposed to be a professional layout of how your business is supposed to run. Banks and other partners will want to see these details clearly laid out in order to decide whether or not you are actually set up for success.

The Third Step: Think about the Money

If you don’t have the funds already to start a restaurant business, you need to start looking into options. In order to get the money you need to make your initial investments and orders – stock, food, staff payments, bills, etc. Thankfully, there are a number of ways that you can go about making these initial payments before you start making profits:

• Bank loans
• Private loans from private investors

Of course, you can also dip into your own personal savings if you choose to do so, but many small businesses can take advantage of low interest rates, so they might be a good option for the time being.

Step Four: Hire the Right People

You can’t start a restaurant business without the right people to greet your customers and serve them well. Many new restaurant owners hire people that they know or they have job fairs to interview multiple people at the same time. Just make sure you know what you want from your employees and don’t settle for anything less.

Those are the steps to start a restaurant business. Now, get started!

Samuel Oliver has a site about the Restaurant Business; http://www.RestaurantBusinessMagic.com Restaurant Business Magic

So you’ve decided to open your own restaurant? Congratulations, here are some topics you won’t want to miss learning about, they will be the key to your success. Take your time to plan it all out and be ready for some curve balls along the way, but don’t skip anything.

Research & Planning

Before everything else, you’ll want to make sure you have done your research. From scouting your competition to making sure you know who your target market will be before making any decisions as to the design, menu or hiring decisions to researching the latest restaurant trends, don’t skimp on the research needed to properly open and run a restaurant in the 21st century.

Management – Business & Finances

This includes payroll, order taking, order processing, bookkeeping, taxes, tips and basically all the finances. Don’t forget to get yourself a great POS, point of sale system, to streamline everything and integrate it with a good food costing program to effectively price and organize your inventory. There are many good books on restaurant management, you may also want to pick up one or a few of these. Don’t forget about proper time management, scheduling and expenses.

Menu

The menu! This is the heart of it all. If you have already decided to take the plunge and open your own restaurant, it’s likely that you’ve already envisioned your menu. Well, you don’t have to commit to a set menu for your restaurant’s lifespan, but it’s a good idea to know what the theme of your menu will be. Will it be French style, modern and trendy cuisine with local fresh ingredients or American style with big portions and a salad bar? Write it all down so you have the menu in mind when you make your other decisions.

Design & Decor

This covers everything from choosing your location to selecting the total design and decor for your restaurant, all the way down to the color of the carpet and color of your napkins. There are alot of decisions you will need to make. You may consider hiring a consultant or a decorator/designer to help you with these aspects. Don’t forget to create the ambience you want with the right lighting.

Employees

You’ll need to consider who you need to hire, when you need to hire them, how you will train them, what you will pay them and how you will manage them. Don’t forget training and certification in food safety, alcohol service and the overall way your employees will interact with the customers. Will it be old fashioned, home style serving or modern service with a smile?

Marketing & Promotion

Aaah, marketing and promotion, this is the grease that will keep your restaurant business running for years to come, if done right. From yellow pages and newspaper ads to your grand opening to getting reviewers to come to your restaurant to creating excellent word of mouth, marketing and promotion of your restaurant will be an ongoing task for the life of your restaurant.

There are many other aspects and things to consider when opening your own restaurant, consider drawing up a full scale business and marketing plan so you know exactly what you need to do and there is no confusion.

Lydia Quinn writes for R & I Solutions, makers of Cost Genie restaurant costing software. Get a free demo at: http://www.costgenie.com

Starbucks began as a small coffee shop in Seattle, and has grown into an international phenomenon. They boast nearly $8 billion in yearly sales, and have more than 12,000 worldwide retail outlets. They do not serve flavored coffees or have other food service gimmicks. They simply serve coffee. This small restaurant keeps everything simple, the cups are even made of recycled paper.

Starbucks works hard to convey a certain image. They want people to realize that coffee isn’t simply something to wake them up, it can do a bit of good. This small restaurant does it’s part to help out in the community by volunteering their fare for local events.

The success of this small restaurant is also attributed to the proper treatment of their employees. They realize that friendly and people oriented servers are critical to the success of any business. You need to think of your employees as an extended family. Health benefits are available to any Starbucks employee who works at least 20 hours a week and has been with the company for more than the 90 day trial period.

It may not be easy to offer a health care plan, with the way health care cost keep rising. There are other ways to give perks to your employees too. Small restaurants can offer a server the chance to move up to a management position, when one becomes available. Some smaller restaurants may even offer small profit sharing opportunities to their best employees.

If employees are not happy with working conditions and pay, they will find a better job. When you want to keep those friendly, energetic, workers, you need to make sure it is worth their while to stay. Your employees are a big part of your customer base. If a customer encounters an unfriendly and snippy server, nine times out of ten they will not return to your establishment. They will also tell others about the poor service and unfriendly atmosphere. You surely can’t afford to have that happening on a regular basis.

If you would rather not open a coffee shop, there are plenty of other choices both in and out of a franchise situation. You may choose Taco Bell, Burger King, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Arby’s, or any of the franchise opportunities that offer a smaller restaurant or fast food setting. You can also open your own diner, or specialty food restaurant and keep it on a smaller level.

Let’s face facts– everybody eats, and because they do, there will always be a market for even the smallest of restaurants, as long as the food is popular to the region, and high quality. Offer incentives to your valued customers and employees and serve up something delicious. You will see your satisfied customer’s smiling faces, time and time again.

Mario Churchill is a freelance author and has written over 200 articles on various subjects. For more information on how to start a small restaurant checkout his recommended websites.

Family style restaurants are known for their cozy atmosphere and often smaller physical structure. Your vision for your restaurant must be graphically portrayed in your business plan. Is there a specific culture or cuisine that you would like for your restaurant? For example, many Italian eateries and restaurants are owned and operated under a family name. The names of these establishments often use terms like Mama’s and Papa’s which convey a warm and personal tone. To start a family style restaurant means to meet and exceed the customer’s expectations.

At the heart of every great family restaurant is an equally great kids menu. Children are a cherished part of any family, and when it comes to customer service keeping the little ones happy is a priority. Adding healthy menu choices among the traditional picks will not only be good for the kids but will impress Mom and Dad too. And we all know that once a child had decided on his or her favorite place to eat out, that restaurant name will be the first place shouted out when asked.

Of course when you start a family style restaurant, the staff you choose to employ can say a lot about your service. Servers who genuinely enjoy their job and have experience with people of all types can really add a positive vibe to the restaurant. Also, it helps if you can find employees that don’t have a high turnover record. Regular customers love familiar faces. Embracing what you love best about family style restaurants will show through clearly in your own. Sincerity and hard work will pay off and your family style restaurant will be a hit in no time.

Patricia Farnham is well known for her insight on creating a successful restaurant. Learn from this veteran restaurateur with real life examples of restaurant failure and success. She’s uncovered many methods of starting a restaurant for very little money, and keeping it open. Check out her website for how to start a restaurant information, opinions and resources.

It’s a well known fact that restaurant turnover is high. Many establishments change hands and locations several times over the years. You need to plan for the worst case scenario from day one because let’s face it, it’s better to be prepared than to be caught off guard. One of the first things needed to open a restaurant is a really great business plan. This includes determining what type of restaurant you wish to run down to every minute detail. Theme, cuisine and liquor sales are all aspects that need to be clearly thought out and planned for.

Taking a business management course in a post secondary institution would be incredibly beneficial. It’s also a good way to network through student business conferences. Networking is especially important when looking for an investor. The majority of restaurant owners generally don’t have that kind of up front money to cover the property taxes, licenses and overhead start up costs.

A franchise is always an option that guarantees a higher chance of success than the average restaurant. It does have some considerable fees involved and high start up costs but joining a well known restaurant chain will have some added benefits. A concrete plan, legalities and finances are the key components to opening your restaurant. There are many tricks of the trade and industry secrets that can only be learned over time.There is no guarantee on how to open a restaurant.Equipping yourself with as much knowledge as possible will greatly increase your odds of getting that one great opportunity.

Patricia Farnham is passionate about the topic of starting your own restaurant. She has written many articles over the years on her experiences ranging from running other peoples restaurants to creating her own. She is a restaurant industry veteran, owner/operator, author and enthusiast. For more information on why most restaurants fail and other topics, visit her website.

But you continue on. Why? Obviously it is not the documented numbers for success. Some of those numbers say you have a 90% failure rate. But no worries, you’ve got something more to offer. This is your dream, and no analyst, or dumb numbers will take it away from you.

And you know what? You’re right! Any number that is published is still just a number, and numbers do not know passion. And hell, even if those numbers do hold out, you still did something to try to achieve your dream. Most people just think about it, but you’re doing it!

Even so, no matter how much you want your dreams of owning a successful restaurant to come true, they will not unless you work hard for it. Yes, sorry, but it is true. You have to work very hard for it. Really, really hard. I don’t think I can emphasize it enough, you have to work hard (times a googol) to fulfill your dream.

The following are three lessons I believe are the most important to make your new restaurant a success:

1. Don’t Let Them Come to You – Go To Them
   Some new restaurant owners think that if they open a restaurant, people will magically find out about it and will instantly become regulars. Sorry, but it just doesn’t happen like that. You WILL become the most popular restaurant in the area, but only if you work at it. You have to market! Tell everybody you can when you get a chance. Random people in the supermarket, down time during your oil change, standing in line at the bank. Hand out flyers, get on the web. PR helps a lot too! You should spend half of your time or less in the restaurant overseeing the operations. The rest of your time should be spent on getting people into your restaurant.
2. Give it time Every business takes time to create. Even names like Wal-Mart, IBM and Krispy Kreme took time to get going (did you know Krispy Kreme opened in 1937? And you started of hearing of them when?) Be patient, and make sure you have enough equity to keep you going for at least 2-3 years.
3. When the Cat’s Away, the Mice Will Play Even though you will be exhausted working the marketing/business portion of your restaurant, you must still spend a lot of your time inside you restaurant. You are the most passionate person about the restaurant. In truth, you are the only one that really cares if it is a success! Just being around embarks additional excitement in not only your help, but your customers. If you think your restaurant runs the same when you are there compared to when you are not, you are very, very wrong.

If you have learned anything from this article, I hope it’s that you can do it . . .but only if you want to work for it. Congratulations, and best of luck (read: luck = really hard work) on your successes!

The successful restaurant is meeting expectations, whereas the unsuccessful one is not. In short, only one has done their homework! Extensive research and preparation is vital when you start a new restaurant business. It is the only way to lay the foundation for success; and a business management toolkit can be a useful way to avoid the early pitfalls to which many new restaurant businesses succumb.

Of course, as with any new business a suitable location needs to be found, investment and budgets prepared and the nature of provision needs to be determined. Beyond this however, the restaurant industry offers a very specific service. When you start a restaurant business, you need to take a wide range of industry related factors into consideration. This is where a restaurant management toolkit can prove invaluable.

The success of any restaurant business relies on its customers and so to start a new restaurant business you need to research the potential market. This will highlight what your client base will be and what they will expect. Once this is determined, you need to draw up an effective business plan that details your vision whilst incorporating all aspects required for you to start a restaurant business destined for success.

The design of the new restaurant needs to be practical, whilst reflecting the needs of the customers and creating an attractive environment. A restaurant management toolkit can assist with the smallest details, which can really make a difference to the success of a new restaurant. Once the design features are determined, the new restaurant business needs to be marketed efficiently and effectively. This will ensure that the client base are alerted and also drawn to your new restaurant, to begin its success.

Now you have your customers, you need to keep them. An integral part of any successful restaurant business is the restaurant staff. The staff chosen must be motivated, hardworking, meet service standards, and reflect the vision of the restaurant business. They represent the business and optimize sales opportunities. This means that as a restaurant manager, you have a commitment to your customers to be committed to your staff. A restaurant management toolkit can assist with information about staff incentives and training which will help you to secure a regular stream of customers.

Once your customer base is established, you need to make sure that you gain the optimum revenue possible to make your restaurant a permanent success. This means ensuring new restaurant policies and procedures meet industry standards, handling the budget efficiently and securing profit and sales. Any successful restaurant business knows how to make sure their customers continue to spend, and in increasing amounts. A restaurant management toolkit uses the experience and knowledge of experts to bring you tried and tested methods and documents, which can save you valuable time.

Armed with extensive research and expert guidance, with all preparatory requirements in place, you are ready to start a new restaurant business and set along your road to success.

Sometimes starting a restaurant can be difficult. But with the Restaurant Management Toolkit its as easy as ABC.

To grab this special opportunity go to http://www.myspace.com/restaurantmanagement to start your business today