The Complete Guide on How to Start a Successful Restaurant Business
The love for food has always been around us, but over a period of time, it has transformed itself to remarkable margins. The rising love for food has convinced and attracted many people to get into the food industry or the restaurant industry.
Making profits out of the restaurant business has become way easier than it was a few years back. However, giving a head start to a restaurant in one of the most developed countries like the US can be a difficult one, and not everyone knows how to start a restaurant business.
Be it coping with the capital requirements, legal measures, or arranging a favorable locality, every single task demands a lot of hard work and dedication. Even after the struggle, there is no surety that the restaurant will grow noticeably in the competitive market.
There can be endless challenges that you are likely to face while starting a restaurant business in the US. In order to make sure that no obstacle comes in front of your restaurant’s success, you need to start preparing yourself from the day the thought of opening a restaurant highlights in your mind.
Even if we manage to take care of major challenges in opening a restaurant business, coping with the competition can be a tough one to tackle. To make everything work perfectly, we will have to start from the basics.
This article covers every single point that proves to be useful in giving the right start to a restaurant business and making sure of its success. Going briefly through the information gathered below can for sure make things work in your interest.
Elements you need to take care of while starting a restaurant business
1. Arranging for an expert chef
The food you serve to your customers is the very main element that can make you grow in the competitive market or even carry you toward failure. No matter how much you have to search, you will have to get your restaurant the best chef you can arrange according to your budgetary allowance.
With a great chef working on your side, there would be a high chance for your customers to get attracted to the food items you serve and visit you again as satisfied customers.
If you succeed in arranging an expert chef for your restaurant, you can maintain a good reputation in the industry and keep it going and growing with no stoppage.
2. Arranging the funds
The higher chances of profits in the rising food industry, without any doubt, attract many people, but not every individual is ready with the demanded funds or money. Without an adequate amount of money, coping with the day-to-day and even the long-term needs of a restaurant business can be challenging.
There can possibly be hundreds of ways through which you can get yourselves the investment needed for a restaurant startup, but still, many find it challenging. So it would be best if you get yourself into the restaurant industry if you can arrange the required amounts for the present along with keeping in mind the future needs of the business.
3. Selecting the perfect logo
A logo is an element that will help your restaurant to be renowned and hold a unique place in the competitive market. It is crucial to get yourself a unique restaurant logo as it will be working as your brand identity for every customer along with your competitors.
You will have to hire an expert for this purpose that has the required set of skills for designing and creativity. You are suggested to select a logo that is engaging enough in order to give it a memorable place for your customers. If you carry out this step in an accurate way, you will be able to attract hundreds of customers just through your restaurant’s logo.
Once you are done with the choosing part of a logo, you can even go with patents to make sure that no other restaurant or band gets working under your logo without your knowledge.
4. Fixing a favorable location
The location of every restaurant business plays a leading role in its success and failure. Looking for a place where there is enough crowd to bring along with them enough demand for food is of utmost importance.
If you get yourself a place away from the hustle and bustle of the city or a place where only a few people like to visit, there would be few chances for your restaurant to succeed and grow.
On the other hand, if you finalize a location for your restaurant in the very center of a city or a region, you will experience a good flow of people visiting your restaurant and helping it grow. Everything you will have to do to get a precise location for your restaurant will have a direct connection with its success.
5. Getting together a reliable team of staff
Once you are done with arranging a chef and fixing a location, the next important step would be looking for a team of staff who will assist with the movement of food items from one place to another. Getting food to the tables or customers on time is an important element as even a slight delay in this part can anger your customers, thus turning them away from your restaurant.
Even with taking orders, everything needs to be done as fast as possible in order to maintain customer satisfaction and earn their loyalty. Without getting an expert team of staff on your side, it would be challenging to manage every single order in your restaurant and can slow its growth to a discarded level.
You will have to have employees at multiple levels and assign varied duties to each one of them to ensure a smooth flow. You are suggested to reward them for their good work to maintain their loyalty towards the restaurant.
6. Getting a website built
All of you must be aware of the challenging times of the pandemic and how difficult it was for restaurants to operate in those situations. The only thing that helped them work and keep growing was online orders and websites.
Without the availability of properly built websites, it would have been really difficult for every restaurant to operate and make profits. So, you are suggested to keep yourself ready for any future obstacles and get a perfectly working website built for your restaurant business.
This will not only help you with the obstacles but also help it grow and keep a stronghold in the industry. You can connect as many people as you wish using a website and increase the flow of customers to your restaurant.
7. Keep a check on the inventory.
Keeping the inventory unchecked or not giving the required attention to the inventory is one of the biggest reasons for restaurants suffering from losses. Not keeping track of the movement of food items, daily item requirements, and over-stored goods can make things slip from your hands and have a direct connection with the loss.
You are suggested to fix a schedule for this purpose for, e.g., every week, two times a week, or any other according to your comfort. All you need to keep in mind is not to give a big gap between the scheduled periods to make sure that every detail goes through your hands.
8. A well-designed menu
The only way you can showcase your specialties and other food items to your customers is through a well-designed menu. However, being new in the restaurant industry, you must not be aware of the requirements of a menu, so you are suggested to give a try to a sample menu.
In this, you need to give your best shot to the designing, styling, colors, and almost every single element that is to be included in your menu. You can even ask for honest feedback from your customers to make the changes necessary for improvement.
All you are suggested to do is to section the food items in an appropriate menu and give a separate and unique place to your specialties. You can even go with self ordering restaurant kiosks or your restaurant that will help your customers to access the menu simply by accessing their smartphones.
9. Keep your goals and intentions clear.
No matter how much time or money you will have to invest in the startup of your business, you will have to keep your goals and intentions clear and focused. Even if you don’t get the taste of success in the very starting, you are suggested not to lose hope and keep the fire inside you burning.
Giving your very best to arrange the requirements and sacrificing a little is the best thing you can do for the success of your restaurant business. Managing your business with honesty and with no intentions to disappoint someone is the best way to make your restaurant business grow.
10. Give priority to customer satisfaction.
No matter how hard you work for your restaurant’s growth and how many challenges you go through, you cannot get your business to run on the path of success without valuing your customers.
If you find yourself lacking in delivering your customers with the required satisfactory levels, you may get assistance from someone who is an expert in this field or improve yourself in every possible way. If you do this in an appropriate way, you will earn the loyalty of your customers and make them your permanent customers.
In order to find expertise on the topic of ‘how to start a business of restaurant,’ you will have to take care of each and every element mentioned above.
Problems you might face while opening a restaurant
1. Regular wastage of food
At the end of the day, every restaurant always has a portion of their prepared food left, and the reasons behind this can be many. If the leftover or wasted food is in a minor quantity, things might get carried on smoothly, but if food is wasted on a large scale and that too on a daily basis, high amounts of losses will have to be incurred.
Keeping track of the leftover food and managing it is an important aspect of a restaurant business. This, in turn, will help you lower your losses due to wastage and get back a higher return of revenue.
If you find yourself incapable of managing the leftover food, your restaurant might suffer from frequent losses and may even get permanently closed with no solution.
2. Supplier management
Every restaurant has a direct link with multiple suppliers for. e.g., vegetable suppliers, meat suppliers (if you serve non-vegetarian items), cooking equipment suppliers, and many more. However, the main point is that the price paid to these suppliers should not exceed the profits earned by your restaurant.
Even if the paid and earned prices are the same, your restaurant will stand no place for success, and you will have to shut it down after some time. So, you will have to establish a perfect supplier relationship to make sure that you make plenty of profits out of your restaurant business.
3. Pricing the food items
Pricing the food items is an important aspect, along with being a challenging one for restaurant owners. The profits and losses are directly and majorly dependent on the price of food items you serve to your customers.
You will have to study and go through each and every single penny that you invest in your restaurant and then give a fixed price to your food items. You need to be very accurate with the pricing as giving them a low price tag will deliver you losses, and you won’t be able to even cover up your investment.
Similarly, going with a higher price tag will also deliver you losses as you might fail to attract new customers or even gain the loyalty of your present customer base.
If you are new in the restaurant industry, the best thing would be to go on trials with the prices of food items and then give them changes if necessary.
4. Managing the team of workers
Employees working in restaurants can be really hard to manage and result in the inefficient working of your restaurant. Some may be late for work; some may not work in an appropriate way or may not have the required skills making it difficult to assign duties to them.
The best way to make your employees and staff work in an organized way is by rewarding them whenever they show perfection in their duties. You might even have to punish them whenever they ignore their duties in order to seek discipline and get an assurance that they will be loyal to your restaurant and work at their maximum potential.
5. Arranging the licenses
A license can be really hard to get in hand when it comes to opening a restaurant in the US. Without proper licensing and certifications, you cannot stand a legal place for your restaurant and might even get fined if caught.
So, if you wish to get yourself a successful restaurant business, make sure to enter the industry once after gaining the required licensing. There are multiple licenses that you will have to arrange for your restaurant, and you can get to know about them by going through the article carefully.
6. Wage management
Management of a restaurant cannot be done with a single staff member and would require a team of employees to ensure the smooth working of a restaurant.
For the time and hard work done by your employees, you will have to reward them in the form of wages. You will have to arrange these wages out of the profits you earn from your restaurant, and if these wages exceed your revenues, you might suffer from losses.
To make sure that you reach your home with a good amount of profits every day, you will need to customize these wages. If it’s convenient, consider to cut-off leaves and secure a fair amount of profits for yourself.
7. Maintaining customer loyalty
The rising competition in the restaurant industry and the number of options it has provided people to go and try endless times makes it all the more difficult. Coping with the rising competition and making sure that your first-time customers visit you repeatedly might feel challenging.
You might have to raise the quality of your services and introduce newer and tastier food items in your restaurant. This will help you keep your customer’s interest in your restaurant and engage with them, thus convincing them to revisit your restaurant.
You may even introduce special day offers and loyalty programs to attract more and more customers to your restaurant.
With every single day passing, restaurants face multiple challenges that have a direct connection with the losses incurred. Having the required knowledge and solutions can help you overcome the above-mentioned challenges and make sure that you keep yourself off of the radar of losses and make remarkable profits.
Some of you must be aware of how to start a business of restaurant on your own, but not everyone will be aware of the part where the license takes the lead. Now comes the part of briefing you with the licensing and certification part….
Essential Licenses for restaurants
1. A business license
No matter what business you are getting yourself into, if you are in the United States, you will have to get yourself a valid business license. Every newbie in the business industry has to get himself a legal business license to work with no interruptions from the government.
The fee or payment for a business license varies from place to place and on the basis of your preferences.
2. Food service license
The food service license basically works as an approval from the US government that each and every single food item that is served under the name of your restaurant is safe to consume. You will have to submit the exact details of your restaurant along with your identity proof to get your hands on a valid food service license.
For any mistakes in the quality of your restaurant’s food items, you will be held guilty. Apart from this, you will even have to get your food service license renewed once it reaches the time.
3. A license for music
To maintain an attractive ambiance in your restaurant, you might have to keep the music up for as long as your customers are present on your premises. However, you cannot do so till you do not hold a music license. The fees of a music license may vary according to your needs and preferences.
4. Liquor license
This is one of the essential licenses for a restaurant that serves in the following category. Restaurants caught serving liquor without a liquor license may get highly penalized, thus resulting in losses. So if you wish to serve liquor to your customers, make sure to attain a valid liquor license. This license cannot be attained easily compared to the other license necessary for a running restaurant.
5. Employee health permit
The employees working in your restaurants have all the right to stay safe and healthy during their working hours. The government has arranged health permits for employees at work to make sure that they bare no pain at all. This is another essential license that you will have to attain to make sure that you stand a legal place in the eyes of the government.
Final Thoughts
The boom in the restaurant industry has got everyone attracted to it. More and more people are getting interested in entering the restaurant industry but are not aware of a single thing. For all the newbies, we have rounded up a huge stack of information regarding the opening of a successful restaurant business.
In the initial stages of starting a restaurant business, you will have to face thousands of challenges, and we have mentioned the most common ones above. We have even explained the licensing details for opening a restaurant that you can go through to make sure of getting a legal place in the industry.
Reading the above information thoroughly will help you know how to open a restaurant business on your own.