Cooking up Diner - Planning for a Restaurant

Restaurants, fast food chains, and diners all share a similar makeup that can ease new owners and start-ups into the process of opening for business. From the kitchen staff to the pos system registers, there are priorities that have been proven effective by years of experience. At the same time, these businesses also face the threat of being too standard in an age that has focused much of its interest on change.

While a common myth states that nearly 90% of all restaurants fail in the first year, a study by Michigan State and Cornell Universities placed the number at closer to 27%, which despite being a high percentage, pales in comparison to its fabricated and highly discouraging counterpart.

Any investment can yield dividends after careful planning, dedication, and hard work. This is extremely true of restaurants, where it takes time to build a brand loyalty, generate word of mouth, and compete with established local favorites.

Do your homework
Think about how often the restaurant needs to be cleaned (daily), and how easy it will be to access the room. Some may even say that the process of restaurant entrepreneurship is more akin to parenting than a business decision, as you will be in charge of the well being of every person who decides to pay your kitchen a visit.

Standardized business structures also mean standardized rules and regulations that are strictly guarded by groups like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) or even the public health facilities in individual cities. These groups decide everything from the industry standards of cleanliness in your restaurant to the food facility ratings that are posted on the front of your doors.

Before you start planning for details like wall color or table cloths, think about how much work keeping a kitchen and a dining area clean involves – this should factor into your overall décor choices before color schemes or prices come into play.

Take the time to plan ahead
Scheduling accordingly will help you out a great deal, especially in developing the business plans that you will use to find potential investors and partners. Even though you will need to focus on everything from point of sale systems to menus to neon signs, don’t jump ahead.

Things like location, name, and the type of decor are important, but not nearly as influential as how well everything is run when your doors are open. Someone will need to take orders; someone will need to put the finishing touches on the entrees; and someone will need to take out the garbage between rushes.

In extreme cases, you may be the one who does all three, so take care in planning out how many employees you should average a week, and also how much it will cost to keep them there. In service businesses, training an employee can be almost as costly as your turnover ratio, so think about ideal candidates before you consider how much you should pay them.

While the exaggerated 90% rate-of-failure for first year restaurants should be ignored, Michigan State and Cornell’s other discovery that almost 60% fail after five years shouldn’t.

Pay your dues and your dues will pay you
Chances are that you’ll lose plenty of sleep thinking up menu items, specials, and ways to manage your relationships with your local suppliers. Indeed, your restaurant will be your baby – and babies take nurturing before they can walk.

The truth is that starting a business of any sort can come with plenty of headaches, even if there are industry standards to follow. The businesses that follow traditional routes may be slightly easier than open-ended companies, such as design studios or web programmers, but there are still plenty of things to pay attention to.

If you see yourself staying late to scrub your floors then you just might be the right kind of person to run a start-up eatery. If, however, you plan on maintaining a regular lifestyle with the perks of weekends off, then you may just be the kind of person to fall into the fail rate statistical bracket.