Recipe For Disaster: 3 Reasons Local Restaurants Burn Out
The idea of owning and running your own business is exciting but the day to day work is hard and there is no guarantee of success. Many restaurants fail within the first year of opening. To minimize the odds of that happening to you, it helps to know exactly what some of the most common problems are.
Weak Customer Service
The simple fact of the matter is people who go out to eat expect to be pampered, at least somewhat. While most people are generally easy to get along with, everyone has different expectations about the level of attention they require when having a meal.
You need to be sure that your restaurant is staffed with servers, hosts and other staff that care about the customer, are on alert for any issues, and react quickly, alerting management to any issues they cannot handle.
Faulty Location
It is an unfortunate fact, people will generally not travel too far out of their way to eat. This means the most successful restaurants often have to compete with other businesses for the best location.
Don’t try to save money by setting up shop in an area in need of revitalization. Restaurants need people passing by, both as foot traffic and in vehicles, to get the sort of customers needed to stay in business.
This goes into branding. Even food trucks without a permanent location can do well if people know where to look for them.
Online presence is almost as important as a physical location. Having clear and recognizable branding is important.
People will come to you if they know you exist and you appear in their timelines. Make sure that your physical and digital real estate is being taken care of properly.
Poor Management
The margins are tight in the restaurant industry. There is little room to make up for losses. Management needs to be alert to the cost of food and beverages, staffing costs, and other expenses that quickly eat into the bottom line.
Expect to invest in quality point of sales systems to help track trends. For example, a local pizzeria would be able to keep track of how much cheese to buy in their next order if they have a system tracking how much they are expected to use that week.
With many of these systems you can also have weather, local sporting events, holidays be added to the high and low demands of your business.
You don’t want to be caught empty handed if there is a rush. You also don’t want to waste product. AI and software will help with many of these problems.
Know what days to expect deliveries and make sure you are available to check invoices and the quality of the supplies.
Never serve anything that doesn’t meet standards. It is much harder to recover from a poor reputation than to maintain a good one.
Attention to the small details is what will lead to long-term success.
As you can see, there is a lot to keep in mind when starting and running your own restaurant. The glamorous television ideal is far from reality.
A restaurant requires hard work from a huge number of people. It is not enough for the manager, chef or owner to care.
Everyone employed must be prepared to hustle, and the people in the position to make decisions should not try to save money by skimping on the equipment and technology needed to run the business.
Category: Business
