14 Golden Rules to Opening a Restaurant

These are fourteen simple rules to follow that could save your business. If you follow this advice you will greatly increase your chances of succeeding. A lot of people get good advice and think yeah that’s good advice for someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, but I’ve got it under control. If you choose to ignore this advice please take all the money you have to start a restaurant and send it to me. If you’re going to throw it away you might as well throw it to a good cause.

1) The first piece of advise I can offer you is Don’t Do It. If you choose to ignore that little gem we’ll move on.

2) Finding an existing kitchen is a whole lot easier than building your own. Your best bet is looking for a location that’s empty and has a kitchen. Buying an existing restaurant can be dicey. You risk overpaying for the clientele the owner has recently put on the books, and you could inherit some employee nightmares, who may in their hearts feel they outrank you.

3) Do not pay rental or mortgage on a place until you have your equipment. Rent a garage if you don’t have room. If you check out auction sites and local auctions you can pick up great deals, so while you’re planing your restaurant start buying your equipment. It will save you thousands, many thousands of dollars. Trust me on this. If you don’t know what to look for you probably shouldn’t be opening a restaurant, but if you’re determined ask at some of your favorite restaurants if you can see their kitchens. Tell them you’re thinking of opening a restaurant ask them if they have any advice, other than not doing it.

4) If you’ve got to do a lot of plumbing to do, find a place with a basement or a crawl space, because indirect drains run above the floor suck and breaking concrete costs a fortune. Make sure about the grease trap regulations before you rent any space and make sure you can put in what you need and it’s not going to break the bank to do it.

5) Make friends with your health and building inspectors before you lift a paint brush. Health codes vary, you might be some where that requires a certain paint on the wall, at least a certain type.

6) Be prepared to work 80 plus hours a week. Let’s face it the only thing worst than food costs are employee costs. You need to be taking up the slack of whatever employee duty you can. Cooking, hosting, cleaning, whatever. If you leave it all to some high cost manager, you’ve more than tripled your chances that you’re going to fail.

7) Check out the local economy of the area you want to open your restaurant. Can you make your menu for what your competition is making theirs? If not is your menu really good enough to make people used to paying one price for dinner to pay yours?

8) Watch every restaurant show on TV. Get all of Gordon Ramsey’s stuff. If you are opening a restaurant this is must watch TV. The regular cooking shows won’t help you as much, because you’ll find a lot of those recipes won’t translate to a restaurant environment, but if you’ve got time, Knock yourself out. You should not be watching anything other than food, sources, trends, sauces, and things with fins.

9) Avoid hiring friends. If a friend tells you he can do something you’ve never seen or heard of him doing before, he can’t do it. Firing a friend is really hard, because that’s what you end up doing, firing a friend. One well meaning friend can bring your restaurant down and you into bankruptcy. Speaking of which.

10) Form a Limited Liability Corporation and protect your home assets, this applies to both failure and lawsuits. Own everything and lease it to the LLC.

11) Nail your menu. Rent a commercial kitchen, get permission to do a cooking demonstration at a busy location. Let people try your dishes and tell them about portions and sides and the price and see if they think that’s something they would be happy with.

12) Don’t announce to soon. Local papers and media outlets aren’t going to give you but so much press. Don’t use it up before your doors are actually open.

13) Budget your monthly expenses as an open restaurant including food, employees, rent, utilities, insurance, the unexpected, then multiply that by 18 and if you have that much money in the bank the day you open, you have a very good chance of being successful if you have paid attention to all my other advise.              

14) If you’ve never worked in a restaurant kitchen, and I mean in the kitchen not waiting tables, then go get yourself a job in a kitchen, even if it’s washing dishes. Watch what’s going on. That experience will probably let you know if you really want to own a restaurant or not.