Hello everyone…
! ! ! I am just throwing ideas around. Whatever I do it will start happening early February at the earliest.
After 16 years of working for other people I finally decided to move forward with starting my own business. And since 16 of those 16 years have been spent working in different bars, restaurants, hotels, etc etc, I am moving towards opening my own restaurant.
Now I did some research, actually quite a lot of research and I have made a plan. Before I do whatever I need to take a few things into account:
1. Location and infrastructure.
This doesn’t really depend on me. I am gonna rent a place so I will use whatever I can find.
I have 3 requirements:
- The place is not too big, so I don’t have to hire 20 people to service it. The place I have found have roughly 10 tables in the garden with roughly 40 seats and about the same on the inside. 2 waiters can deal with that amount of people no problem.
- The location is city center - it is. I don’t want something on the sides or in a weird location where people don’t go. On the other hand it is in the city center but it’s not on the very center, where the rents are insane. Now the traffic of random people is far from perfect, but that is a problem only in the beginning. Once the customer base knows about us they won’t have a problem coming all the way to the restaurant. If my plan was to have a snack bar or a fast food joint I would rather be in the very city center, where the random people traffic is much higher, but I want to start a casual dinner restaurant. People will come in, they will spend 2-3 hours having a nice dinner, so they won’t mind walking a bit to reach the location I have found.
- A garden. It’s probably the most important requirement. I must have a garden. During the summer people would want to smoke, we have a full on smoking ban at enclosed public locations, so garden please.
The place I have found pretty much fills all those requirements.
I am yet to go and check the location myself.
2. Finances.
Here I hit the first big problem.
2.1. Survivability.
Everyone I have ever talked about it say the same thing: “Have enough money to survive the first 6 months.”
In order for THAT to happen I may need to pretty much double my money and that’s not happening before 2023 in the best case.
If people are interested I can do a full financial breakdown of the money I have, the expenses I am planing to have and the monthly expenses after that. But at the end of the day I don’t have enough money to pay salaries for 6 months. That is planing if nobody ever gets in the restaurant and orders anything. I am planing for zero income.
What I do have financially is roughly 3 months of salary plus the initial costs.
2.2. Initial costs.
I do not plan the initial costs to be huge.
All the paperwork for the building is already done. The place was a pizzeria before, so it should have all the alcohol permits, food service permits etc etc.
What worries me more is the description: “Fully equipped restaurant with partially equipped kitchen”. Partially equipped may mean it needs a deep fryer and a stovetop, or it may mean “I only have a couple tables in the kitchen”.
Now I am yet to see the place myself. I am still ordering the things in my head, but it may easily turn out there is nothing in that kitchen and I may have to completely abandon it and turn my gaze elsewhere…
Anyways, I have prepared a couple thousand euros for initial costs.
The business paperworks aren’t all that expensive, the equipment and other expenses may be tho.
Being a pizzeria before it may easily mean it doesn’t have a stovetop and deep fryer, but it may also mean the pizzeria owner took his ovens away, so I am prepared for the worst case.
Grill, stovetop, 2 deep fryers, 2 large fridges and a freezer are roughly 1500 euros.
At the bar - that;s easy. The Coke guys will give me bar fridges, Lavazza guys will give me coffee equipment, the beer guys will give me beer equipment. All free, cause I will sell their stuff. The bar is not the problem. All of those also can give me a starting stock, so I will pretty much be fully stocked when opening. For free.
I have been given the name of some accountants, that has proven track record of doing a good job, so I will use them to take care of the paperwork. There is about 200 euros initial registration expenses, and then there is something like 50-100 euro a month for continuous paperwork. Hiring an accountant saves headaches.
3. Concept.
When I say concept I mean multiple things:
3.1. Visual design:
Having a garden I am planing on colorful and fresh visuals. My plan is to have a bunch of these:
They are rubber, so they can be washed and reused, they are different colors, so there will be a lot of color in the entire thing.
Also I plan on deck up the entire garden of different color flowers. Believe it or not people enjoy gardens and color.
3.2. Food concept:
Here’s my idea:
I will have a small menu, like 8 salads, 10 starters, 2-3 chicken, 2-3 pork, 2-3 fish main courses, couple deserts and that would be that. And then, there will be a Weekly specialties page.
Every week there would be a few more items, that would be fresh, outside the regular menu and changing. The plan is to have a salad, starter and a main course, maybe a desert as well. Maybe 2 salads, it depends. But that would mean there will always be a fresh item in the menu, and people will return to see what the new weekly item is. Hopefully. I have seen it working in multiple places, so it is proven to work.
4. Staff.
Finding staff in this day and age is difficult. People on mass are moving away from this field of work. My hope is, there is a tourism and food industry highschool in the city, so there are constantly young people looking for work.
I am worried a lot about this, because there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.
If I need money I can go to a bank.
If I need ingredients I can grab some and pay later, it’s a comon practice.
If I need staff and there is nobody - I can be as rich and have kitchen full of produce - I am fucked.
I also can’t afford to hire a lot of people. So I will work only dinner time.
Lunch menu helps spread the word, but it also helps draining money. Income is low for lunch, like 20-30% of the dinner and I pay the same expenses as dinner. This will barely cover the costs of ingredients, so I have to find money for salaries and other expenses.
IF the restaurant start profiting soon I may as well open for lunch. But for a start I really won’t be able to afford it.
5. Growth.
Advertising.
Newspaper - no. There are a couple local newspapers, but they sell like 10 copies a day. Nobody cares. On the other hand, it’s cheap and maybe the people who read the local papers are a decent clientele I may want to attract, but for now - no.
Radio - no. As a start I don’t know anyone who listens to local radios and if we even have a local radio.
Internet. Yes please.
Facebook is my main focus. Add on FB, FB page, it will help. People are constantly on FB.
There are couple food delivery services, that grabs percentage of the sales, but have their own already existing massive client base and, if nothing else, would spread the word of my place existing among the people, who can be potential clients. So yes, I will use at least one of them.
So that is the idea.
I will not make a single step until we get the entire omicron thing started. If there is a lockdown there will be absolutely no reason for me to waste my time. Last time we had lockdowns on and off for about 4 months. At that point all my money will be gone, the summer will be halfway through and I will have wasted everything. So I will hold on and wait to see what the direction we move is, concerning the virus thing.
I have a question to anyone who have owned or is currently owning a business: Am I missing something? Is there something I am not paying attention to?
And general question towards everyone else: What do you think about my plan in general?
Thank you all in advance.
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