JAN 14 — I am constantly amazed at how many people want to own their own restaurant. On the surface of it, it is a cool, seemingly easy thing to do. The reality of it is that it’s not easy and filled with many pitfalls.
It’s really hard work as well.
We have all seen it. You drive past a place and you spot a new restaurant. Drive past a few months later and it’s gone. What contributes towards an F&B outlet being a success or failure? There are many factors. Location is a big point.
I once worked at a small family-owned restaurant in the little town of Newport Pagnell in Milton Keynes. The head chef and his wife were the owners. The food was amazing; all cooked fresh to order, using the best ingredients.
Mark, the head chef/owner, even made his own sauces. The prices were competitive, the food great and the service good. The restaurant failed and Mark had to close shop. It was located on the wrong end of the high street and parking was terrible. It was such a shame, that place was everything that a good restaurant should have been.
I will always remember the advice that Gordon Ramsay used to give failing restaurants. Keep it simple. I look around nowadays and restaurant menus are incredibly confusing. There’s too much going on, too many dishes and choices.
The best restaurants keep their menus simple, and change them often. That way the customer always has something new to look forward to. You go in some places and the menus are six or seven pages long. This is a real pain in the butt for the chef because he has to make sure that he has all the ingredients for the dishes.
Though you can, to a certain extent, track your best-selling dishes, you just never know what’s going to sell well from one day to the next. This often leads to an incredible amount of food wastage.
Finding hardworking, decent, honest staff is another big problem. The job doesn’t pay brilliantly and the work often is not seen as a real job. The irony of it is that not everyone can do this job.
The way I conduct job interviews nowadays is very simple. I ask if they are willing to work hard and learn. Of course, everyone says yes. It’s a bit of a gamble, really. Out of the five hired, maybe two will stay on. Many of the restaurant owners whom I have spoken to have said that finding and retaining floor staff is one of their biggest problems.
More often than not, the best place to have a restaurant is in a shopping mall. The downside to that is that the rental for the lot will be sky high, and the outlet is at the mercy of the mall management as to its opening and closing times. The upshot is that there is always foot traffic, so the chances of the outlet doing well are quite high.
Opening an outlet, small or big, is something that has to be done with eyes wide open. There is nothing easy or romantic about it. I have heard, “Oh I love cooking and I think that it would be a great idea to own my own place.” Cooking for five to 10 people in your home is way, way different than trying to feed a constant stream of people. As soon as consistency is lost, so are the customers.
There are many success stories of small places which have grown to large chain of restaurants. Financial backing, timing, placement all factor in. My opinion? Best thing to do is to open a small stall, serve good food. Your overheads are low, you don’t need a professional chef and lots of floor staff. Hell, I might take my own advice and do it.
* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.
