An Ultimate Guide To Starting A Restaurant Business

With over 70% of people going out to eat at a restaurant at least once a week, it’s a good industry to start your business in. Before you delve into it, the following ten tips will help increase your chances of success by a significant margin.

1. Form a Business Plan

A business p[an is something that you’ll use to compare the state of your business to. It should contain all the necessary estimates related to your budget, mainly the expenses and profit, as well as the outline of how you’ll operate. Without an accurate business plan, your restaurant is almost guaranteed to fall into a deficit.

2. Develop an Idea

Unique approach and recognizable brand is the main characteristic of every successful restaurant. For example, McDonald’s is known for its trademark “Golden Arches” logo and the extreme discipline that can be noticed among the workers. Your idea has to be something that’s going to help you get noticed in the extremely competitive environment. Do some research on generic strategies of organizations, and try to determine what your source of competitive advantage could be.

3. Attract Investors

No matter what your strategy is, the reality is that you’re going to need a solid budget to help you hold out until your restaurant becomes profitable. Individual sources of money are few and far between, which is where the investors can help you out. However, in order for them to even consider your business, you first have to follow the previous two steps and ensure that you have a solid business plan backed with a realistic, profitable idea.

4. Choose a Location

A location with a lot of traffic can be a double-edged sword, mostly due to the possibility that there are already well-established, reputable restaurants in that spot. On the other hand, a less busy location might not have enough interested guests to keep your restaurant in business. Because of this, you should choose the best of both worlds – a medium traffic location with a few competitors.

5. Obtain a License

The documents that you have to acquire before opening a restaurant vary from country to country, but there’s usually a couple of them that you’ll have to take care of. The two main ones are often a foodservice license and a liquor license. The former one ensures that your restaurant follows all the health standards and food safety regulations, while the latter one is required if you plan on selling alcoholic drinks at your establishment.

6. Acquire Restaurant Equipment

Chairs, tables, silverware, kitchen utilities, etc. – there are a lot of items that you’ll have to buy before you even think about opening your restaurant. This is going to take a massive chunk out of your budget, but it’s only a one-time purchase. Make sure to use a startup credit card to monitor your spending when buying equipment. Because of this, you should try to buy the best equipment that you can afford in order to avoid unnecessary expenses in the long run.

7. Hire Employees

Whether you’ll use online platforms, referrals, recruitment agencies, or any other method is entirely up to you. However, you have to make a list of all the qualifications that you’re looking for in your future employees beforehand. While that might not seem like a huge job, these qualifications are going to be all different depending on whether you’re looking for a chef or a waitress.

8. Advertise Online

From a standalone website to an Instagram account, every tiny bit can make a huge difference in your restaurant’s publicity. Most of the people are likely going to run an online search before they visit the restaurant to check what it has to offer, see some online reviews, etc. It does take a bit of effort to set up, but it’s more than worth it.

9. Modernize Your Approach

Restaurant business novelties such as various payment methods, deliveries, and modern reservation approaches can cause an influx of new visitors. One of the newly popular restaurant reservation software and table management system, EatApp, can completely transform the way your restaurant works. Alongside giving you real-time feedback on the available tables, EatApp also gives potential guests an option to leave online reservations through the website or the mobile app. Even though it’s still fairly new, EatApp has shown promising results in the restaurants that have the system implemented.

Rupali Gupta

Rupali Gupta is a blogger and professional writer who loves to write about technology and entertainment. Techzimo is one of her successful websites filled with great tech news, Know more about her on Youtube Facebook Twitter Linkedin Instagram