When it comes to restaurant business ideas, your options are seemingly endless. You can start from scratch and build a new restaurant, or you can purchase an existing restaurant to grow its business and profits. The trick, however, is knowing how to go about doing that from start to finish so that you end up with the results you want and expect—a successful restaurant business with long-term sustainability and growth potential. To help you make the right decisions at each step along the way, here are 10 steps to starting a successful restaurant business idea of your own.
Step 1: Understand your market
Study your city’s restaurant trends and target your business to a niche market. Are there holes in your city’s food scene that need filling? Or does everyone have a pizza joint, burger bar or Indian restaurant? Know which category your restaurant business idea will fit into. Do you serve effective steps and make your quick service restaurant or gourmet meals? Is it fast food or sit-down dining?
Step 2: Pick the right restaurant type
There are many different types of restaurants that you can start, and each type requires a different type of restaurant business plan. If you want to open a chain restaurant, you’ll need to create an entirely different kind of plan than if you want to run a single, local fast food eatery.
Step 3: Pick the right location
Before starting a restaurant business, you’ll need to think about where it should be located. Different types of restaurants thrive in different kinds of locations, so be sure you know what your ideal location looks like and why it’s going to work for your business.
Step 4: Know your finances
Do you have enough savings to carry you through your first few months of business? Will you need to get a loan, partner with an investor or secure a line of credit? If so, what are your financing options and how much will each option cost.
Step 5: Get local knowledge and support
When you’re starting your business, it can be helpful to talk to someone who already has experience with a similar operation. Getting insight into how they got started and what has worked for them will help guide your decisions as you get off the ground. Having someone around who gets you and is there to help you when things don’t go quite right can be worth its weight in gold—especially early on maintains restaurant POS systems.
Step 6: Find Your Team
Once you’ve decided to start a restaurant, it’s time to hire your team. When hiring staff, look for people who are not only talented but also fit well into your culture and values. Hiring great employees takes time and research, so have a clear idea of what kind of person you need before you begin applying.
Step 7: Set up kitchen and dining room
You may have to hire or borrow kitchen space to test your recipes. Because you will be cooking food for a lot of people, you need to make sure everything works in advance. You should also set up a dining room area with tables and chairs so that customers can come by and try your food.
Step 8: Training before opening day
Training is an often-overlooked, but incredibly important part of starting a restaurant. The best chef in town will struggle if they don’t have a staff that understands their vision. Similarly, they won’t be able to execute properly if they don’t know every detail of your concept. Get everybody on board by creating detailed training manuals and procedures for every task that can be performed in your restaurant.
Step 9 Opening Day Hiccups – What Happens?
Sometimes, even with a successful restaurant business idea and professional training, restaurants can face unexpected issues on opening day. There may be little things you hadn’t thought of in advance that come up on your first day – from how to handle your ice cream machine to how best to present an order to a customer. If you can avoid these hiccups, it’s sure to help maintain happy customers for a long time.
Step 10. Keep it going.
Once you’ve actually opened your restaurant, you must commit to being dedicated and attentive to it. Establishing a business doesn’t mean just opening its doors—it means establishing yourself as a leader in your industry that people respect and want to follow. If you do that well, then people will keep coming back to you for more great ideas and products.