Quote:
Originally Posted by CaliBobby
My initial thinking was to do a total hole in the wall type place for walk-in/walk-out with a few tables in front of the counter and a bar running against one of the walls with some stools and if there is room, some tables outside. this is super common for Chinese restaurants. i would not be doing any decorating at all, besides plastering menus and stuff like that about the food on the walls. menu would be beef/chicken gyros, and then already prepared/food court ready to go style Indian curries and rice. this would be cooked in the restaurant although also possible to just cook in my home and bring into the restaurant, it is not like cooking curries is terribly hard work. they would be frozen/fridged and reheated. i could probably get away with just finding a decent pita bread supplier for the gyros. then i would need to just have certain veggies/toppings cut and sauces prepared.
not sure why i would need $2m or 5 years experience for this.
my experience is on the limited side since i never really owned a restaurant. worked in 4 different ones (none hole in the walls, all were medium sized), got in on of them a few months after opening so i saw what people went through early on. i'm also the son of restaurant owners, so i have some perspective on the home life (and i did get some feel for ownership/management).
you may not need 5 years experience but it sure as heck won't hurt, and more likely, it'll really help. even the hole in the wall might have 3-4 people working there. 2 out front, 2 in the kitchen. if you can't do the 2 most specialized jobs in the place you describe (make drinks and cook) it'll be rough when someone doesn't show up to work. your employees will also tend to listen to you more and grumble less when you ask/tell them to do things (they understand that you're expectations of them aren't stupid). it'll also give you contacts for people who can fill in at the restauant in a bind, give the names of good distributors and repairmen. and as others have said it is harder than it looks, having experience helps prepare you for just the stresses of it.
cooking curries, buying pitas, cutting some meat might not be hard (well cutting meat properly can be dangerous, seen quite a few people in emergency rooms) when serving yourself or your family, but now your doing it for a lot more people. been to a lot of places for thanksgiving and i've seen a lot of stressed out hosts, this is worse. customers tend to come in rushes. some aren't very patient and often don't realize that you have other customers to deal with. your staff might not be experienced enough to handle the stress so now they're stressing you out too (or they're sick, or just in a bad mood). and during that rush you're dishwasher breaks, and the health inspector comes, and you run out of change for the register. it's a bit extreme, but i've seen it happen, and there's a lot more things that can go wrong than what i listed. unexpected things occur daily. and if you're the boss, chances are everyone will be looking to you to deal with the problems, all the while customers need serving, checks need to be processed, food needs to keep going out.
as for the money you need, it's more than just startup costs. you're not a celebrity chef, you probably won't get much business right away (even with a huge investment in promotion, a lot of your business will still come from the wait for someone else to try it first people) depending on location of course (but places with heavy traffic also come with much higher rent) so even with a quality product you very likely will lose money for the year or so (and that includes not being paid a salary for the time you, and your family put in) until enough people give you a shot. if you have enough money set aside you can hang in there till business picks up (worst case you'll need to be able to cover rent, insurance, wages, permits, utilities and licenses out of pocket). but sometimes even with a good product you'll have to shut down. 3 of the restaurants i worked in failed. 2 of them were a quality product with experienced people working there. business got better every month. bosses just ran out of money
by the way, i never encountered it since all the cooking and prep was done on site everywhere i worked, so i don't know, but the health department might have issues with you serving food that was made at home since they didn't inspect your home. if you decide to take the plunge, keep that in mind