Hi guys, hope you are well! 🙃

I'm Chris from Germany and recently made my life long dream come true and bought this awesome property in Dobra Voda (Bar, Montenegro). It is a 200 year old stone ruin from the Ottoman empire which I will turn it into a Restaurant & Bar hopefully by July 2022! There is 2400sm of land, so I will also be able to be creative and built wooden huts, a pool, sauna, jacuzzi and I will even have my very own wine cellar (which I am super excited about personally!)

My idea is to have a fresh menu with items from all over the world after visiting 107 countries myself and not only offer local or German food. if you have any recommendations from your country in terms of a dish that should not be missing on my menu, feel free to let me know!!

Even though its not open yet, I have already created some social media pages to document the construction progress from January and share some photos with more explanations on my ideas and plans. Should you be interested to visit some day, feel free to follow those! Very curious to hear what you think

https://www.facebook.com/MontenegroTower
https://www.instagram.com/MontenegroTower

Hope to be able to welcome you guys there soon in person.





Cheers,
Chris

I was travelling through that area a couple of years ago and came from up north (Croatian coast) and headed down to first Kotor and then Bar, after which I continued to Shkoder in Albania - I would think that quite tourists and potential clients might be on some same route. However I was budget backpacking so don't know if that is the group you want to be targetting . Further what I seem to remember was that Bar was full of Serbian (and Russian?) tourists, so you could think of targeting that.

Sounds really cool have fun and good luck!

Thanks! Hehe any budget will be welcome, ill have some cheap accommodation as well but also some who would like to spend more and have some extras.

Just added a video which explains my plans in a bit more detail if you would like to check it out:

Maybe "wooden huts" doesn't have a negative connotation when translated to German, but you may want to rethink what you call your 'rustic villas' in your English promotional material.

Hehe good point, is the term actually connected to some sort of negative thing in English? Any final promotional material will be much more professional than my drawings/first ideas anyway

Friggin awesome project, don't have anything to contribute yet, but will be following your progress.

awesome man looks great

for some unsolicited advice, in asia it's really common for restaurants to try to offer things from all over the world

one page of the menu has traditional german food, the next page a selection of mexican dishes etc etc

what usually happens is that nothing really tastes quite right - the tacos can't compete with the tacqueria down the street, the bratwurst doesn't have the good kraut that the actual german restaurant a few blocks away offers, etc etc

point is i've seen a lot of restaurants ambitiously try to offer a wide variety and the end result is nobody is happy - something to consider in your journey

glgl

The term hut will attract poor people.

fyp

Agree with rickroll above. The best restaurants focus on simplicity and freshness with small, seasonal menus. Anytime I go to a restaurant and the menu is huge I just know I'll barely enjoy my meal bc they're trying too hard to please everyone and end up offering a diluted experience.

I'm not familiar at all with that region, but it would be good to focus on a small and fresh menu that changes with whatever is in season

+1. I associate big menus to mediocre food like Cheesecake Factory.

Hi guys! You ve got a great point with the menu, in the start I might actually just start off with a Bar that offers some basic local dish plus classics like (really good) pizza and burger. And from there see if I want to expand it into a full Restaraunt or if I am happy with the Bar plus barfood. Might also be good to have the full restaurant in a later stage a bit away from the tower on another property next by so people can eat there without having to listen to Bar noises / live music from there.

Hey Chris! Awesome project you have undertaken there in Montenegro!

I tend to agree with the other posters about smaller menus being more customer friendly, they also have the added benefit of needing less space for storage of perishables, more streamlined preparation times, etc.

Will you be hiring a contracting company to do the build out? I am excited to see the progress and one day come join you to have a beer!

Hi there,

I will be working with a team of around 30 workers from all fields required, lots of them people that moved out from Germany to Montenegro.

Menu will def be small in the beginning and then I just see how it goes! =)

Montenegro is one of my favorite countries; I've spent more than a year of my life there over the years.

I'll make a few general comments you might find helpful:

1. Montenegrins are lazy people (they're even proud of this themselves); I've known a number of people who had building and renovation work done where it take 2-3x longer than estimated/planned. It's a terrible country to get things done so expect enormous delays and problems as standard

2. A large menu is stupid as others have said. Pick one thing and do it very well, with a few other options to keep people happy who don't fit the theme. Big Ben for example in Tivat is quite successful doing London theming with a not-too-large menu, including getting a lot of local traffic as well which helps during the very long and dead off season. Taraca in Kotor is an example of well-themed menu; they have a lot international dishes but the menu is still moderately small and the theme is fresh/inventive/fun/healthy/vegan friendly/modern fusion.

3. Montenegrin restaurants are just mediocre at best and all very similar; not a lot of diversity, creativity or theming. You can really stand out having those

4. Getting a dedicated expat following can be very valuable, particularly in the off season. Do your research on who is where and in what numbers when deciding your menu.

Instead of buying an established business you are investing in a startup. What are you providing that is not currently available and is in demand? Food, location, convenience, ambiance, quality?

If you have money to do construction why not open a franchise like McDonald's or Starbucks or whatever is popular there or whatever the expats miss from back home, or try to roughly copy their menus?

There will always be a space for global franchises but they will ultimately constrain your success in a setting like this I reckon.

Because:

1. The product/service offerings of franchises are middle of the road at best
2. Franchises detract from desirability of off the beaten path travel locations (can hurt long-term viability of destination)
3. You're at the beck and call of the business strategy of a global behemoth (can't be as nimble as if you have complete autonomy of your own place)
4. You're less likely to ingratiate yourself with the locals by opening a franchise (depends on the locals).

As others have mentioned, opening with a super large menu is difficult to do well.

Some of the best places I've been to have a super small menu, and can often just do one thing, but really well.

E.g. Savoy pizza in Tokyo only does Margarita and Marinara pizzas with a couple of salad options
Also regional place in NSW, Australia that does amazing fish and chips (battered only) and that's it
(great batter recipe, home-made chips, local fish, top notch lemons)

Seinfeld covers this in the Dream Cafe episode... though the move to Pakistani food ultimately fails as well (ha).

Not saying OP should necessarily restrict to only a couple of items, but keeping things small and manageable, especially when starting out, seems best.

And coming from an Australian, if you're going to have an espresso machine, really invest time in learning how to make amazing coffee (Kiwi and Aussie coffee snobs are your friends in this domain).

Cool project regardless. Will follow and good luck!

Yeah there's so much room for a great original restaurant in Montenegro with high income/profits that a franchise makes no sense here.

Hey guys, totally agree - my place will be unique and just the word franchise is something I dont want to get even close to my project.

I have arrived back in Montenegro last night and tomorrow we start with the work.

One more thing I will focus on is shared workspace for expads and digital nomads. They can work in the ruins during the day, enjoy the pool and some good drinks and then at 5pm I will close the working time and open the bar from 6pm. Hopefully some of them will stay around if they get a free first drink on the house

I think there are some great synergy options for sure and Montenegro as a country has plans to invest into digital nomads as will and works on putting up more initiatives to get more of them into the country starting next year. So pretty much when I should be done with my construction and ready to welcome them!

Exciting times for sure =)

Oh yes and the menu will be small =) I will focus more on quality than quantity here

There's a lot of steady money including off season money in remote working facilities and associated accommodation. Glad you've gone this direction and could privately offer some examples of this working successfully in Montenegro if you want. FYI closing the working time at 5pm isn't a good idea however, lots of nomads work US hours or Asian hours or want to work out of hours and you don't want to be kicking people out in the middle of work. A dedicated room is better if you can fit that; the good thing it doesn't have to be expensive to build, it can be a simple standalone pavilion with views to the vegetation (which has other hire uses too such as meetings). Not sure how much land you have but if you build it, they will come.

Yeah digital nomads are the way to go for sure, to the point of rethinking your plans and constructions to accommodate them a lot more. They're good customers (clean, responsible, moneyed people), long stayers, off season stayers, word of mouth promoters, and form a social and spending base for your resort.

Thanks! awesome point with different time zones. I will have a separate stone ruin which i wanted to use as a meeting room for like 4-6 people away from the bar and could easily build a few more structures based on wood as well. So they could move to these if needed

I also think that catering digital nomads plus a bar is a better approach than Restaruant with a bar. I can still get into a full restaurant business once my profit looks good from this stage and then buy land next to me to open a nice restaurant =) Until then, just a few items on the menu from a rather small kitchen so my guests wont starve

btw, if you are not familiar with the area and want to know more, check this video with some amazing sunsets from the two beaches near my place. They are both around 20-25 mins and I am pretty much in the middle of them =)

https://youtu.be/qF94WMdgMW0

The absolute worst Flat White I had in Australia was exponentially better than the best Flat White I've had in USA...I'm not certain why that is or what the difference exactly the difference is between a Flat White and a latte, but the Flat Whites I've had in the United States just don't have the same creamy "mouth feel" as the ones I had in Oz.

Hi, chrisontour84.

You did an incredible job! Hope this is a great start to a great journey.
I'm keen on cooking and I have a plenty of recipes (most of them borrowed from Jamie Oliver).
I can recommend you watching different TV shows such as: Master Chef, Hell's Kitchen, The Final Table, etc.

These programs inspired me to open my small restaurant on the Pacific coast. At first, it was really difficult to handle this business cause I didn´´'t have any experience in this field.
But eventually I managed to succeed. My wife and Orty app played an important role in this progress. You can also try to implement this software in order to solve a whole range of business needs, such as: inventory management, digital ordering system, table management system, etc.

Hope this information will help you out.