Starting and Running a Restaurant For Dummies, UK Edition

Carol Godsmark, Michael Garvey, Heather Dismore, Andrew G. Dismore, Heather Heath

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780470516218
• eBook ISBN: 9781119997047
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Starting & Running a Restaurant For Dummies will offer aspiring restaurateurs advice and guidance on this highly competitive industry – from attracting investors to your cause, to developing a food and beverages menu, to interior design and pricing issues – to help you keep your business venture afloat and enjoyable at the same time. If you already own a restaurant, inside you'll find unbeatable tips and advice to keep bringing in those customers. Read this book, and help make your dream a reality!

Starting & Running a Restaurant For Dummies covers:

• Basics of the restaurant business
• Researching the marketplace and deciding what kind of restaurant to run
• Writing a business plan and finding financing
• Choosing a location
• Legalities
• Composing a menu
• Setting up and hiring staff
• Buying and managing supplies
• Marketing your restaurant
• Health and safety

Part I

Getting Started

In this part . . .

Y ou’re standing on square one. In the chapters that follow we introduce you to the business and help you determine if you have what it takes to make a go of it in the restaurant world. We give you the big picture, including a detailed timeline that takes you from today through to the day you open the doors of your place for the first time. We also help you nail down your concept, come up with a name, and start researching everything from your potential customers to the competition.

Chapter 1

Grasping the Basics of the Restaurant Business

In This Chapter

Understanding the basics of the business

Deciding whether you have the necessary skills

Restaurants are fun. Whether you stop by to celebrate a special occasion, grab a quick bite for lunch, meet friends for a drink, or pick up dinner for the family on the way home from work, the experience is usually enjoyable. (At the very least, it’s more enjoyable than not eating or being forced to cook!.) Just about everyone associates restaurants with having a good time. If people didn’t enjoy their experience, they wouldn’t come back. So it’s natural for people to think, ‘I enjoy going to restaurants, so I may as well get paid to do what I enjoy – hang out in bars and eat at great restaurants’.

Living the restaurant life is fun. We’ve been doing it for many a year, and we love it. But the problem comes when people see only the fun and never the struggle. Viewed from the dining room or bar stool (or from the kitchen, the stockroom, or anywhere else other than the seat marked ‘Proprietor’), it’s difficult to see the 95 per cent of the picture that’s pretty tough work. It’s like wishing every day was Christmas and actually getting your wish. In the restaurant business, you have so much fun that you can hardly stand it. You get tired of wrapping the presents, preparing the mulled wine and checking that the elves are on time for their shifts, and if you have to look at any more roasted chestnuts, you’ll die. The restaurant business quickly becomes more work than fun, so don’t be fooled.

In this chapter, we take you on a quick tour of the business. We introduce you to all the work that you must do on paper before you can even think about picking up a pan or laying down a place setting. We move on to the physical preparations that will consume your every waking minute on the way to opening your doors. Then we remind you that the work has only begun after you first open your doors. Finally, we help you examine your motivations and expectations for pursuing your dream to determine if both are rooted in reality.

Getting a Feel for the Restaurant World

The restaurant world is more than glitz and glamour. It’s truly a business, and if you don’t look at it that way, you won’t succeed. Ultimately, being a restaurateur is being a manufacturer. You’re producing a product (food) from raw materials (your ingredients) and selling it to a customer (your diner). You’re competing with lots of other ‘manufacturers’ for that same diner. So you better do it better than the bloke across the road, or you’ll be out of business.

Laying the foundation

Sometimes the business of the business is hard for people to relate to. It’s a hard concept for many people to get because your product isn’t packaged in a box that sits on a shelf. Your product is packaged in many layers – including your exterior, your lobby, your staff’s attire, the music playing, the aromas coming from the kitchen, the friendliness and knowledge of your staff, your silverware, your china, and your glassware. All these things make up your packaging, affect the costs of doing business, and affect your diner’s decision to come in and, ultimately, to come back.

As with any business, the planning stage is crucial, and you have to survive it before you can enjoy any of the fun. Right off the bat, you have to create a timeline for getting your business up and running (see Chapter 2), develop your restaurant’s theme and concept (see Chapter 3), research the market (see Chapter 4), develop a detailed business plan and use it to find and secure financing (see Chapters 5 and 6), and find the best location for your new restaurant and get the right licences and permits (see Chapters 7 and 8).

Buy your products at the right price and sell them at the right price. This simple tenet can make or break your business. Check out Chapter 14 for tips on getting the ...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I : Getting Started
• Part II : Putting Your Plan in Motion
• Part III : Preparing to Open the Doors
• Part IV : Keeping Your Restaurant Running Smoothly
• Part V : The Part of Tens
• : Further Reading