Table for One:  Is The Restaurant Business for Me?
• Examining your motivation
• A look at a “typical” day
• The need for management skills
• The cost of getting started
• How others can help you
• A story about a risk, a decision, and a reward
 
Welcome! Today’s special is your dream. Yes, it seems everybody knows somebody who has the dream. If you’re reading this then you have entertained thoughts of opening a restaurant with visions of raking in piles of cash and entertaining friends and neighbors, all while getting compliments for your delicious food and fabulous service. It’s perhaps the most popular entrepreneurial dream of all—to own a restaurant. After all, restaurants are in nearly every village, town, and city in the world. Everyone eats. And besides, doesn’t it look fun and easy?

Restaurant owners have owned sports teams, appeared on cooking shows on television, and led the local chamber of commerce. Restaurant success is relative, but in any town or city, there are examples of those who have built thriving restaurants and wonderful lives. You’ve been in a restaurant. You know you can do it. Right?

Yes, you can.

But it may not be as easy as you think. Okay, the truth is that it won’t be easy at all. You will certainly have to roll up your sleeves, and maybe the most important investment you’ll make will be in a comfortable pair of shoes. But if you’re in the restaurant business for the right reasons, all the hard work you’re in for can be incredibly rewarding. Just remember, this is a different kind of life.

The best piece of advice I can offer you is to examine your passions. If you’re running from something (a bad job, a bad boss, etc.) rather than running to the restaurant business, then you need to reconsider. Restaurant ownership is not for the timid. The rewards certainly can be great, but the path is arduous.

This chapter is about risks and rewards and deciding whether the restaurant business is for you. I offer a gut check of pitfalls (for example, the dishwasher skipped a shift and you’re elbow deep in pans after a 14-hour day) and rewards (Ray Kroc, who eventually owned the San Diego Padres baseball team, started McDonald’s on less than $1,000). Come on in and have a seat, and I’ll try to help you figure it all out. What would you like to drink?

Recipes Revealed
An entrepreneur is a person who starts their own business. Being entrepreneurial is having the desire and ability to take risk, envision the future, and develop new business concepts (restaurant concept development) and ideas or improve upon the business concepts of others.

Wet Floor!
Being a good cook, a great social host, or even a solid manager in a corporate environment does not guarantee your restaurant’s success. Being able to point out the problems at the local restaurant is no guarantee of success either. A restaurant is your own show. Restaurants can have powerful profit-making potential if they’re run extremely well, but they can also be a severe cash drain if they’re run poorly.

More about Starting A Restaurant