Running a Restaurant

Restaurant business is a dicey proposition. Many new restaurants are set up, but many of them close down before the end of the first year. Some few survive and flourish, but very few get past the five-year mark. It is necessary to learn some lessons if your restaurant has ambitions beyond being fast food outlet of pizzas and burgers.

First of all, it is a daunting task to enter a market full of talented competitors. It is a cut-throat competition. Your restaurant must make the guests feel welcome when they walk in and order their food. It is necessary to maintain a good kitchen with various stations. Some restaurants allow guests to visit the kitchen to feel confident about the hygiene and cooking methods. There are restaurants which have a see-through transparent kitchen where the chefs can be seen cooking, at times showing their expertise by tossing the omelets up in the air and getting it down expertly in the fry pan. Kitchens must have good inventory management — the provisions must arrive in time. There should be quality control over the ingredients that go into the making of a dish. The accounting should not be in a mess — the costing of each dish on the menu and the surplus it generates must be clear. Manpower selection must be meticulous. It should be a well-composed team — captains, waiters, relationship managers, chefs, chief chef. There should be good division of labour. There should be control over things, and good control is exercised by proper delegation to the right people.

All the nitty gritty of running a restaurant is okay, but as you are a part of the hospitality industry, you should be recognised by your peers. They should welcome you, though they are your rivals. The managers must be affable, rather than hostile. It is smart diplomancy that is required to run a restaurant. In the neighborhood, a restaurant must earn tonnes of goodwill.

Abroad, a restaurant takes pride in earning Michellin stars and would love to be a good ranked restaurant. It is necessary to maintain the stars once you have earned it — a restaurant with three stars can fall to two. There is stress of maintaining the status quo.

It is nice to be a well-funded restaurant of a group. At the same time, you should also be aware that such a group can take hasty decisions of revamping the kitchen or replacing it , and changing the layout at the drop of a hat. They can change the cuisine to shore up their bottom line.

You can run a small low-key restaurant lifelong. Still, these days it is necessary to be in the good books of regular or social media. It ensures a steady flow of diners to your establishment.

You make people happy by being nice. That itself is hard work. Happy people create a feedback loop.