After many years in the Restaurant Biz. I have many thoughts on what not to do!

The first most important thing to know is that it is a very unique and (not neccesarily profitable business). You buy and store raw product on site, manufacture it ( prepare it ), serve it, and receive imediate feedback!

The biggest mistake that you can make is getting in with fixed costs that are to high ( primarily rent or mortgage). I refer to the old 80/20 rule. 80% of your business will come from the first 20% of effort. Simply by opening your doors and trying to do things right! However, for example if you have 100,000 people living within a 20 mile radius. Your potential “pool” of customers is limited. Drawing in more customers from further away to pay your bills is difficult.

The next way to kill your business is employee relations. In some businesses employees are considered ” Intellectual assets”. You need to be caring and flexiable…everyone has their own needs, problems and desires. To many owners think that employees need to be simpathetic and responsive to their problems and needs, but completely disregard the employees? People will say ” screw you!” to such an attitude. All of us would rather work for someone who respects us, do you really respect someone who doesn’t respect you?

Rule number 3 is tied to the first two. This businesses is hard and takes a lot of hard work and long hours. After a while owners want to step back and live a little more. So if you have paid attention to the first two you are in a position to have quality employees who can run you operation. If not, then you have a slowly dying business.

Lastly delievering a poor product or service…which is the most desasterous of them all, because it shows you do not care anymore! Most owners who care know that the customer is ” King ” and care most about that! Lose that and you lose everything!