GET PAST THE CURSE OF RESTAURANT IGNORANCE
RESTAURANT CONSULTANTS OF AMERICA™
Get Past the Curse of Restaurant Ignorance
What you don’t know can hurt you. Every day that you don’t learn means that there is more you don’t know, and a lack of specific industry knowledge and/or a lack of general business knowledge can quickly kill a restaurant. Complacency about the business will allow other, more aggressive owners to take advantage of what they know and exploit your weaknesses.
Learning is a required part of this job. Spend the necessary time gaining the required technical skills and absorbing as much information as you can about the industry. Then you can be comfortable knowing that you have approached your decision to enter this arena armed with a knowledge base and current information. Do the following to increase your restaurant knowledge:
Conduct personal research on the restaurant industry. The National Restaurant Association, Nations Restaurant News (NRN), and your state Restaurant Association (you should become a member) are all wonderful places to conduct research.
Read trade magazines and books. Nations Restaurant News (NRN), QSR Magazine, Restaurants and Institutions, Chain Leader, Restaurant Marketing Magazine, and many others are helpful resources as are restaurant-specific books like this one and others that cover more broad-based concepts, such as accounting and marketing (check out The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Accounting and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Marketing). My company’s Web site offers our listing of books that will provide your restaurant all kinds of educational resources.
Attend industry seminars. There are multiple industry-specific trade shows and seminars every week somewhere across the country. Spend a few bucks and attend some of them. Many are free. Dates, location, and subject matter are listed in many of the industry magazines.
Get information from food and beverage distributors and suppliers. Pick up the phone book and call a few in your area. They have a vested interest in helping you be successful. You are the potential customer.
Take useful industry-specific and general business classes. Register at the local college or university or sign up for some of the traveling classes listed in the newspaper.
Work in a restaurant that is similar to the one you want to open. This will not only give you the opportunity to develop the skills needed to perform every position but it will also give you a clearer understanding about the time, hard work and commitment that the restaurant business requires for you to be successful. It is better to learn that you don’t have the commitment as an employee than when capital is at stake.
Know all you can about your customers and your competitor’s customers. It is a people business, and knowing more about the people you deal with is critical.
Conduct a feasibility study before buying or building a restaurant. Will your idea work?
Seek guidance from reputable lawyers, accountants, and restaurant industry experts. It’s back to the potential customer point. If they want your business, they will help you get started.
Join local associations and network with other business owners and restaurant operators. Every city has many networking opportunities sponsored by the local chamber of commerce or other civic groups.
Compare your performance to industry and segment averages and educate yourself on how others optimize performance.
Once you dig into all of these resources, you will see all kinds of industry information pouring out. Look at it and compare, compare, and compare some more.
Don’t Plan to Fail
People don’t go into business planning to fail. However, plenty of people go into business failing to plan. A well-conceived and thought-out business plan is essential to making your business work and is a key ingredient to determining your restaurant’s success or failure.
A business plan takes time, effort, analytical ability, and commitment. Your business plan will help you think through your ideas and refine areas of concern, as well as areas of strength, quickly and easily without the large cost of making a mistake later on. Your plan is meant to be a working document, which means that it is subject to change as your circumstances change. But it should still be solid enough to be used as a guide to business success and a refocusing tool when you get off your planned path. It will also help you immensely with your restaurant and business educational processes.
Get It Done
Poor execution is a bad meal, an unhappy employee, or a misplaced order. It is lost focus or what I facetiously call “that loving feeling.”
Lost focus allows things to slide. For some reason or another, maybe personal issues, ego issues, forgetfulness, or who knows what, the simple tasks of running a restaurant move down the priority scale. Lost focus also happens when the owner becomes bored, disinterested, or unexcited by the prospect of owning a restaurant once all the work of the job is discovered. The owner forgets that running a restaurant is a career and comes to treat it like a hobby he or she is tired of.
At this point, the competition starts sniffing around. The complacent restaurant owner suddenly finds that the well of black ink has gone red while no one was watching. I have seen it happen many times.
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