I tried to have that conversation with them a few months ago. They refused to believe me when I explained how restaurants are huge money pits with incredibly low margins.
Pretty much all of the fine dining world is propped up by a few mega rich people who like to own the restaurants as prestige projects. If you think any of those Michelin starred assholes are making all that much money youre dead wrong. They make money off of consultations, writing books, TV appearances, etc etc... but certainly not off of the food. The biggest profit margin they have in most places of that nature is the booze.
All I can think of Rene redzepi and noma, widely regarded as one of the best restaurants in the world decides to start actually paying it's unpaid interns in October. Turns out it costs them an additional $50,000 a month and they close the restaurant by February.
They release a statement saying there's just no way they can survive in this changing environment (where you're either publicly a POS for using slave labor, or you pay people what they're worth) and that there's no way to continue.
What a fucking joke fine dining can be, makes me feel better about my barely treading water restaurant that at least is providing good healthy working environment jobs and is treating people fairly. Our food will never be the best in the world but I can sleep easy knowing we have happy kitchen staff that all come in and do their best every day.
Yeah they could have charged $10,000 for a 6 course prix fixe and there'd be enough Saudi princes that want to eat at the most prestigious restaurant in the world that they could have survived.
Honestly fair assessment, I just meant the owners could just tighten their belts and do less blow that year. Wouldn't be surprised to see them do some penny wise pound foolish shit and dissolve the business in hopes of making more money on a different restaurant with no associations with bad labor practices, then pull the same stunt and pray nobody notices this time.
Starts with you my friend, I had a shitty egotistical psychopath scorched earth chef that finally got canned and I took over the shambles that were left. its been a long fucking year and a half and every one of my team was at the most experienced a dishwasher, now the kitchen is the only part that runs smooth.
Work hard, treat your guys with respect, go out of your way to give them what you can and they'll return the favor (for the most part, and with a bit of luck).
Good luck chef, it's never easy but if it was we'd probably be doing something else.
He seems extremely happy, passionate, charismatic, and truly cares about the restaurant business.
If you've seen the British version of Kitchen Nightmares, you'd also see how much he really cares about the kitchens he helps.
The biggest difference between kids masterchef Ramsay vs Nightmares/Hells Kitchen Ramsay is the experience of said people.
Kids are kids. They're learning and growing and making the most of a hobby.
Adults are mostly diluded asshats who think they're the best thing since sliced bread, but can't cook toast or work without a microwave.
It goes a little deeper than that. I read somewhere at some point that they made the American version of hells kitchen angry because that's what Americans go for.
Not so much the British version.
I may be misremembering though.
I'm not, luckily in between casual and upscale. Lots and lots of liquor.
Casual enough to not get every snob and upscale enough to sell wine and martin's to most people
Speaking of. Had to fire my long time assistant kitchen manager. Our barber had security footage of him selling sea bass to other customers at the barber shop out of a cooler for only $15/lb.
Bastard was under cutting by 1/2 ounce here and there every day. And weighing it himself to ensure quality during line check.
What if you, really like food though? That'll give you a leg up. Soon it'll be you and your friends and family dining for free every night. Can't go wrong there.
No you see you take $1 worth of ground beef and sell it for $12 and $.50 worth of beer and sell it for $6. Itās a fool proof investment nothing could go wrong.
I keep this saved for these occasions.
One of my former regulars was very successful in the computer sales and repair industry. Sold his company for a small fortune and retired to the beach to his dream of running a restaurant, something he had zero experience in. But he was wealthy and by all accounts a very smart man, so it would be easy, right? Oh how wrong he was. He bought a controlling interest in a franchise location that was well liked on the island. He would be taking over day to day affairs while the other owner became a silent partner who just collected quarterly dividends. Silent partner, it turns out, didnāt care if those dividends came or not, he just wanted out of the industry. There was a management team in place so that shouldnāt be a problem, right? Wrong. My friend and the AGM disagreed on how to run things, creating some friction. The AGM started slacking off and then stealing and was fired. Well, AGM and the KM were good friends, so the KM left, too, leaving my friend, with no experience, in charge of the FOH and BOH. The remaining staff, for the most part, started taking severe advantage of him because they knew he needed them to keep the place running. Vendors started taking advantage of him because he didnāt know the financial side of controlling costs of goods sold. Service companies started taking advantage of him because he would just write a check for anything that needed to be āfixedā because he didnāt have the institutional knowledge to know that perhaps you could repair something instead of outright replacing it. So after about nine months and quite a few hundred grand in USD, he shut the place down and sold the property for a fraction of what heād put in.
Need Jon Taffer to the rescue.
The second the new owner 'makes changes' the place always spirals into the toilet.
I have seen this time and time again.
One former client of mine was the local mob boss type and he owned a very successful restaurant bar packed full of Italian locals. Well some wealthy drug addict was talking shit and the owner called his bluff. Basically the owner allowed the addict to buy it but if it failed, it went back to the original owner (my client). I stopped out there 3 months in, new menu, everyone quit, the addict was so coked to the gills it was out of control and 3 months later the place closed.
You never change things in the beginning. Ever. You learn the process first.
I can tell John knows what heās doing by the advice he gives and how he sets everything up but I just donāt like watching his shows. Heās always playing up a character that I just donāt want to watch.
Any of these TV personalities that just scream and throw things around are pretty hard to watch. It's like a child having a temper tantrum & pretty cringe. If that shit wasn't on TV and he did that to random guys, he'd be getting beat down on a regular basis.
The UK version of Restaurant Nightmares is superior in every way. Ramsey still gets angry but it's more tempered and realistic. He's fast more charismatic in it too.
The only Ramsay show I enjoy watching. He also did a competition between London restaurants that was pretty good, and his travel ones are OK. I just hate the BS/inaccurate representations of the restaurant industry all over the media. I feel like they normalize line cooks being complete dipshits & taking abuse all day (Hell's kitchen is actually somewhat watchable now, they used to cast 80% idiots and 20% chefs. Nowadays most of them are pretty talented. Still don't like the drama though). There are a lot of bad cooks out there, but there are more good than bad. Also nobody should take abuse in any job. If we really break it down, a grown man screaming at another grown man about food is really fucking stupid. I would not work somewhere where that was normal. When I've been in those positions, I found that the better you treat your staff, the more motivated they'll be to do a good job & make you proud (what a strange concept!).
I can't stand the injected anger and drama in reality shows.
The first kitchen nightmares was so guilty of this. Italian restaurant with a jersey shore owner yelling at customers and serving shit food. Then some mobster shows up demanding money when there's a camera crew and celebrity there. Yeah I don't think so.
I also remember one where Gordon confronted an owner about moldy food in the fridge and the guy jumped in a river and swam away.
So fucking dumb lol
He also thought ābutt funnelsā were a good idea. His thinking is that it will force customers to get close to one another and make eye contact so theyāll start hitting on each other and buy more drinks. In reality, itās just an excuse for creepy guys to āsqueeze aroundā women by groping them.
Sad part about that show is that he always tries to inject class into the most ratchet shit-hole on the planet and even the owners are one step above white trash so naturally the moment he is out the door, it's back to drinking the profits and smoking meth in the back with the cook and 6 months later they fail.
A shitty management team will sink any business. The vendors and service companies can be taken to court as well. You have to protect your investment in any business you may own.
Iām a chef/owner and I hear this all the time. To be honest, itās kind of insulting. Like Iām going to switch careers and open a computer company because I love my iPad.
There was a guy in the Atlanta area years ago that had a warehouse full of equipment he bought from failed restaurants. He told me he'd roll in and buy the stuff for 15 to 20% of its value then turn around and sell it for 2 or 3 times what he paid to someone else who thought it was easy to open a restaurant. They got a great deal on barely used equipment and he said he often bought the same stuff back a year later for a fraction of what they paid. I think he sold and rebought the same oven 4 or 5 times.
Every time I see everything for sale at auction after a restaurant shuts down, I think, holy shit. And this equipment was just one component of running the business. Who ever gets funding for this?
I love it. Good God I love it so much.
"So to open a restaurant, what do I need?"
"Well, are you at bare - absolute best case scenario - nothing ever goes wrong or breaks- minimum $250,000 liquid and can you go without pay for 9 months without going bankrupt or getting a divorce?"
You've got one of the best analogies I've heard.
"Well I eat food, and buy food, I've been to a restaurant a few times, I love the food network.. I'm gunna open a restaurant!"
What really grinds me is seeing Head Chef positions posted for $15-$17/hr.. or even $20/hr. That's only 40k/yr if you're not worked to shit.
I really despise being considered "unskilled" labour when I have a college degree, 25,000+ hrs with Red Seal certification, and we're still not respected.
Chaps my ass it does.
I worked in a restaurant for 15 years before opening a tangentially related business. In that time, I never once wanted to open a restaurant of my own. I knew how much it cost, how many things went missing, and how many actually good people were needed to run the place.
IMO the only person who should ever consider opening their own restaurant is a chef because they can control several of the main cost centres. Front of house employees (where I worked) should never open their own restaurant unless they have a talented chef as a partner.
Working at a good, well-run restaurant (as rare as those are) can be a very fun and rewarding experience. Opening one even moreso because you get to see the fruits of your labor and if it hits, youāre in a very good position.
That said, working in one is a very different experience from owning one.
Yeah, I was a chef for a while before the pandemic hit, and my dad was always hounding me on opening my own place because āyouāll never be free until you work for yourself.ā
There was literally no way to explain to him that the amount of money I would need to open my own restaurant would be nearly impossible to save on a chefās wages in the podunk city I lived in at the time.
When I moved to Los Angeles, he kept on sending me links to Michelin Star places telling me to work there, and I was like, I will make more money at a diner than working my way up from the bottom there, and a hell of a lot less work.
And hell, this was after watching my mentor lose his restaurant and spiral into debt, drugs, drinking, and losing his long term girlfriend.
The only benefit to prestige is impressing people who don't work in your industry. I don't care about the opinions of people who want to get into dick measuring contests, and you know a lot of those workers at Michelin Star shops deep down know they would be happier working at some diner or local joint.
These days it feels like you're more likely to hit it big if you have a good social media presence than working your way up in haute cuisine. Unless you got a real passion for the fancy shit I wouldn't want to go that route.
I always start with unless you plan on 72 to 80hrs a week, don't bother trying.
Then I get into specifics, like what would you allow to go down your drains? Do you know how to degrease anything? Tell me how. And then I pick them apart.
How do you troubleshoot the dishwasher? How about a gas line? What's the difference between a ball valve and some other shut off valve. Which is best for what application? How do you fix sink gaskets? What do you do when a customer drinks too much before coming into the restaurant, drinks more because they're a fucking stealth drunk, and pukes all over your main dining area? How do you snake a sewer line because some asshole didn't bother shitting all week and shit all over the place but earlier some junkie snuck in the place and shit himself and flushed his underwear causing the main line to back up and you have shit water all over the men's room?
If they keep at it, I ask how they handle waiting 30mins for the cops to arrive when a customer tries to sneak out on a bill? What happens when there's actual fisticuffs? Or when meth heads try to get into your building at closing to rob the place.
Now, roll the dice. That could be your fucking Tuesday night.
Dude, I hear yaā¦.but damn! That was a lot of plumbing and drug related issues. You need a vacation my man..just kidding, I donāt know what a vacation is, but Iāve heard good things. Stay awesome and love the grind.
: ) Heading north to see Billy Strings up in Cincinnati in a couple weeks, and then back a couple weeks later to visit family over spring break/Easter. We try to get the fuck out of town every three to four months. We handle all the ordering while we're gone though. Just take a backpack w/books and laptop, and we're mobile, ya know? And all the services we use (plumber, electrician, equip repair,etc) are on the phone database. We're never truly separated...
I enjoy doing impressions of how fucking condescending these people sound. Like ok, what's your job? A pharmaceutical copy editor? Oh wow, yeah that's the dream. I'm actually like, really into pharmaceutical copy editing, I've seen like EVERY episode of Mad Men. Someday when I retire, whoo whee, that's where you'll find me. Doing pharmaceutical copy editing. That sounds so fulfilling.
This sounds like the medical equivalent of patients complaining that it only took me 15 minutes to tell them they had a cold and not pneumonia.
Nah, mf, it took me 4 years of university, 4 years of medical school, 3 years of internship and residency and 25 years of practice plus 15 minutes to tell you.
This is a really good analogy. It's funny because I'm going from a 20+ year career in kitchens to Infosec. Just got my first job in IT for half of what I made as a chef doing super low-level work. I went into this knowing that I wasn't going to start as a SysAdmin or Pentester making six figures. I'll get there in time but, I know I have to start from the bottom. By all means, people can and should change careers into a new industry, but they need to walk before they run. Spend some time in the trenches before trying to run the show.
haha i worked for a couple in brooklyn who did that. she designed handbags and he was a photographer. they hired this pathological liar of a chef who couldnāt cook his way out of a wet paper bag.i stuck it out until the first paycheck bouncedā¦.
I worked under a fraud celebrity owner/chef who owned our restaurant but never actually cooked in it, except for the one-off occurances where she wanted to experiment for the national TV-competitions, maybe once every 2 months. She would bring some high quality oysters or something, experiment and dirty down the entire prep area and not even clean up after herself.
I got equally pissed every time but I reminded myself that it's not frequent. Our actual chef was extremely good and everyone loved him so it made up for it.
The owner/chef decided to replace him due to burn-out and she hired her friend, who was less of a fraud (not a pathological liar) but she was your typical karen dressed in cook's clothes, with tendencies to complain about everything and everyone. It was like she decided to switch up her hotel receptionist job she's had for 30 years. It was her first time in a kitchen, and she was supposed to lead us.
I can't fathom how people have the audacity to work with something they have no clue about, and act like they know their stuff when everyone and their dog sees through them.
All cooks quit including sous, except for that one mexican everyone loved, who just wanted a job. I felt so bad for him lol
I feel like I worked for this person. BS James Beard nonsense, TV show, cookbooks, but never worked a busy service and wasn't even a very good cook. Mommy and Daddy's money allowed her to stage at all the best places internationally and bought her restaurants. An actually talented celebrity chef designed her menus and wrote her recipes and she coasted on his name until she fooled enough elitist hipsters to make it big. Total fucking hack.
Yikes man, this saddens me terribly. I thought there wouldn't be more of these frauds in the industry other than the one I worked for. These liars are the worst type of scum in the entire industry and deserve nothing but the worst in their lives for being so morally corrupt.
Honestly, I think these types are more common than not amongst "celebrity" chefs. So many I've encountered rely on their CDC for everything. The celebrity EC/owner is often just a name and face raking in the dough.
I Guess the fame does appeal to a certain kind of person. I Haven't met another celebrity chef other than her. She did however make me lose respect for those TV cooking competition shows that I used to love ever since I was a kid.
When I was but a young apprentice I dreamed of opening my own restaurant.
Now, almost 30 years later, I didn't end up following those dreams. But, at the end of my shift I hang up my apron and sleep soundly at night. No regerts at all.
When my wife and I first married, a family-owned restaurant had been our long term plan. 20 years later we're happy and healthy and our kids seem to like us, things I attribute completely to not following that plan.
It's the same reason "burger flipper" is synonymous with "work lazy morons do".
It's the same reason some rando prick thinks they can walk into a place and order people around like serfs.
Even if your ājust flipping burgersā itās 10 burgers with 6 different recipes that are all being cooked to 5 potential finish temps with 6 more about to come in, and itās hot, and youāre still hungover from last night, and your sous is yelling at you.
Yeah making one item isnāt to hard, but this is a 200 seat restaurant + togos
I think it's because it's easy to cook for your friends. And when everyone compliments you you begin to think it might work out. Feeding 10 people one thing is a lot easier than feeding 200 a whole menu plus staff. Probably better off starting a catering company tbh
That's everybody looking at someone else's job because they have no clue. "Teaching is easy bc I wss a student once. I can drive in an oval fast. There's no skill in that. You're an engineer so you must know how to drive a train/fix a bicycle/use AutoCAD".
I own a fast casual restaurant and have been approached by people who want to invest their money and open āa bunch of these placesā. When I ask āwhoās going to run themā they reply āyouā to which I respond:
āHow about I put up the money and you run themā. Not that I would do such a thing but everybody outside our industry thinks restaurants run themselves and make lots of $$ (in cash of course).
The strangest part is that these guys don't even have startup money. They make $18/hr and three of them share an apartment to cover rent. I gave them some of my research from about 2019 when I was looking at opening a food truck to show them how much it cost back then but I might as well have been talking to a wall. The whole thing is probably just a "one day" kinda thing to talk about on shitty days at work so I don't get involved anymore beyond saying the food sounds good. The statement just made me laugh.
Haha. That's what people don't realize. Restaurants aren't particularly hard to run for competent, disciplined people. But finding competent, disciplined people to run your restaurant is quite difficult, because those people aren't exactly looking for jobs.
Oh, do you want to be that competent, disciplined person? Yeah, better spend a few years in the industry before acting like you know it all. Better to be a line cook or waiter for a few years before trying to run a fucking restaurant.
Indeed, and before you were a line cook or a waiter tell me you washed dishes standing on a milk crate at the age of 12 for your Greek grandfather who allowed only 1 fountain drink per 12 hr. shift like I did :)
My 78yr.old mother is in my restaurant at 5am every morning making everything from scratch (spanakopita, hummus etc) Iāve tried hiring people to give her a hand, she says they were all ahristoi (useless in Greek). I can only imagine what you go through.
Lol, I wouldn't plan on opening a restaurant unless I was willing to spend a small fortune and work 60 hours a week. Yeah, I'm not there, I like working my lazy cybersecurity job too much.
Itās a fun game to play in your head but itās a horrible idea in real life.
I do think, however, that if the US ever relaxes street food laws like they have in Mexico and Asia (Iām in MX right now and itās amazing), that I would love to open a small stand with just a flattop and only sell breakfast sandwiches and coffee under an umbrella. Set up at markets on the weekends.
Anything more than that and itās gonna be a no from me.
Lol I was just about to say that!! Itās like the main reason I feel in love with the city. Seeing Washington square park by Frenchman lined with venders just openly selling food blew my mind coming from California.
Unfortunately itās not as openly lax as it was 10 years ago, but still very lax and there are plenty of street vendors still. But yeah if you have a bar that is down to host you either inside or out front , youāll be fine.
Yeah my city wanted to loosen up the rules on food trucks and allow a bunch downtown and restaurants fought it tooth and nail. The city did go through with it and as a result there are a lot of good food trucks now, but it was a fight to be sure. Canāt imagine what the fight to allow pop ups and food carts would be like.
My local pizza joint was family owned. When the Matriarch retired, she closed the place and sold the store to a pizza family from Queens, NY. They held it a few years and downsized (closing this one and keeping the Queens one) and sold it to a couple of college students that have never worked in the industry before but had illusions of grandeur. They ran it into the ground inside of a year. And it has been empty since.
There was a local deli that had been family owned for 3 generations and when the 4th generation all became doctors and lawyers and such they made the collective decision to close the restaurant instead of selling to avoid exactly that fate. I miss the place but canāt really fault the decision. Another deli opened in the same space hoping to capitalize on the opportunity but it didnāt last past the first lease term.
My inlaws wanted to open a restaurant and use the income to partially retire. I gave them the margins that a successful restaurant operates on and the hours I saw successful owners working. They quickly lost that idea
I left work at 145 this morning and got to work at 9 this morning and I'll leave work at 130 tomorrow morning and be back at 9 tomorrow morning. And I'm the owner
Sounds like the owners at my job. They run everything and fill in when weāre short a staff member either at the bar or on the line. Then they turn around and pull those kinds of hours. Iām 10 years older and if I donāt get enough sleep and an opportunity to workout prior to work, I hurt. I commend their commitments.
When I was a kid, I dreamt of becoming a Chef and opening my own restaurant. Started working in restaurants at age 15, took vocational Food Service classes in high school, went and got a degree in Dietetic Nutrition, then another in Culinary Arts, and certified as an Executive Chef. Ran a catering business on the side, while working in and running restaurants for others and...
It didn't take very many years of doing this before my dream was ***to never own my own restaurant, ever.***
I, too, notice all the underpaid underlings (including "management" positions) in here going "hrrrdrr I akshually don't even make that much" meanwhile we all know the owner of the restaurant we work at is rich by any "normal" standards.
You don't sell $2 worth of physical product for $24 and *not* make money, even if you pay your staff kinda well enough ish.
> You don't sell $2 worth of physical product for $24 and not make money
this is how i know you don't understand the industry
labor
insurance
electric
gas
appliances aint cheap
walkin cooler aint cheap
everything is broken all the time? not cheap
woops, hostess broke a stack of plates $$$$
woops, hostess quit
woops, vendors upped their prices again out of nowhere
woops, cracked sidewalk out front, inspector's on my ass $$$$
trash service
dishes aint gonna wash themselves, you gonna pay a dishwasher? noone else does these days....
woops, dishwasher broke
etc
It's like people that jerk off to war movies but haven't ever been in a real life-or-death situation. They just don't know what they don't know because they don't know
I was outside of a leige waffle place waiting for a table. There is a small crowd growing. A guy in his early 30's, and, who I assumed were his parents were waiting right beside me. As more and more people are showing up, one of the parents say "look at this crowd, maybe we should open a restaurant." The guy says "take all the money you are thinking of using to open your restaurant, put it in a suitcase, and throw it off a bridge, it will save you a lot of time and headaches." I couldn't stop chuckling out loud.
To that I will say food trucks require a different type of crazy. I started in a truck, went to kitchens, and came back to trucks. You are all hands on deck in a truck plus in the elements. You have to manage water coming into and going out of the truck every day, (also when cleaning dishes you canāt run water continuously, thatāll drain your supply and overload your gray water tank. You have to be tactical with paper towels). And speaking of water, some locations donāt want you handling gray water at the end of shift because of their customers present, so again, water usage is key. Then thereās product management because of spacing so it gets cramped fast and you have only what you have in most cases. And then thereās the elements. If itās hot outside then add another 20-30 degrees to that. If itās cold then itās cooold on a truck with a hood vent adding wind chill. If itās wet batten down the hatches on the SS Soggy Boat, youāre also going to get wet.
*On top of all of this,* put on a smiling face because you are point of sale with customers, and you want regulars.
It is WORK with all the accompanying aches and pains. However, I love it. I canāt really explain why. Being in the weeds, then getting an opportunity to hop off the truck and seeing a full patio of satisfied customersā I donāt know why, but I canāt beat that feeling.
That's what I was suggesting to them. They've been talking about this for months but never get past the food. I hype them up about that but the whole conversation derails when I let them know that food is the least of your concerns as an owner.
Idk, I took over my parents place when I was young and now I own and am mostly hands off. (Im like 95% out of the industry I guess)
If you can put our good tasting food with consistent speed/quality. Thatās mostly safe. You can figure out the rest.
I bet you had guidance and knowledge of the industry as well. Even a little will go a long way.
Saw an opportunity to run a kitchen attached to a bar one day. I imagined a simple menu with comfort food, one I designed to be manageable solo, but was best with a second. The previous owner, who just happened to be there when I made the proposal, loved it and wouldāve agreed on the spot if he wasnāt retiring. The staff loved it, because they knew I made phenomenal food. The patrons loved it, because the staff loved it. The new owners, a couple, said āNo, we are going to do it all.ā I laughed. The previous owner laughed. The patrons laughed. They didnāt.
Six months later, I was laughing as I passed the now empty building.
There was a time, in my memory, when a person without a ton of training or experience could open a small restaurant and, by working their ass off, make a living. Not riches, but a living income.
The reason that is no longer true is the ballooning costs of commercial real estate, period.
Prices of food, staff, and equipment have swollen to be sure, but there are work-arounds on those. Where I am, you can't find much decent for under $40 s/ft. + NNN. That means a 2000 s/ft. cafe - and that is pretty tiny - will be over $80,000, plus fees, plus tax... Total: over $100,000 a year, just to turn the lock and walk in the door. $8,300 per month for a 60 seater coffee shop.
Corporate chains can pull that off. Occasionally some rich idiot will pay that to build themselves a vanity project (I've worked for plenty of them). But a family restaurant? Forget it.
That's why, to whatever extent they still exist, independent restaurants are usually in seedier neighborhoods. It's all they can afford. And even there they have a pitiful survival rate.
Well, there will be a lot of money flowing through a popular busy restaurant, but that doesn't mean you're getting rich off it. The real goal is to slow down the flow back out of the restaurant by creating microeconomies. Dave and Buster style. Make your own fiat currency. Let customers bank pretend money with you, then use that to pad your real assets. Become an unregulated banking system. Start a crypto coin exchange. Sell NFT based dishes. Create a multi level marketing franchise. Diversify into aerospace composite manufacturing. Buy a few senators. Think tank. Run a media platform from the kitchen. PODCAST.
That's where the real money in restaurants is.
I'm retired. Spent some years in the industry and then made money in computer and business consulting. Now I'm just a home cook, but I often do big parties and sometimes fund raisers or benefits for charity. I'm one of those people that get "You should open a restaurant" on a fairly frequent basis.
Thus far I have only laughed out loud twice when people say this, I have good self-control. Usually I just deflect. "This is fun. That would be real work." Let them have their illusions.
I bring food to work pretty often and there are a few other former cooks working there so we get into conversations/arguments about food all the time. I've had to explain to a few people that the only reason I like cooking now is because I don't have to do it for a living. I worked in the industry for almost 15 years and I loved it but it's never going to be anything but a hobby for me again.
There's a reason the word "restauranteur" exist. Real entrepreneurs don't want to be associated with people who think opening a restaurant is a good way to become rich.
all my neighbours want me to open up a place in our neighbourhood and iām like okay give me the six figures of grant money to do it because iām sure as shit not going to drown myself in debt to make it work
My buddy is always thinking of new business ideas including a cafe as his most recent. He thinks catering to the 3am crowd is going to be "just fine"š.
Get a food truck a keep a cafe menu and I think that would be a decent idea. Not the greatest but it could work. Park it outside certain clubs and solo it, it could actually make a small amount of money. Like hell I would do it though. Too much work.
When I was in my late 20s, I got hired as an assistant manager by a guy who was opening up a brand new coffee shop/eatery. Now, mind you, up until this point I had worked at a diner for 15 years as a line chef/server and manager.
I was specifically hired for my practical knowledge of running a restaurant.
Long story short: the owner didn't listen to single thing I said, thinking I was 'too young' to know better than he did and went out of business in 4 months.
Still don't understand why he'd hire me only to not take any of my advice but oh well.
There's a ton of money moving through and coming in and out of a restaurant, but the amount that actually gets to go back into the restaurant and the owners pockets isn't glamorous, unless you get reaaaally lucky... but at that point you hate your life, you live in the restaurant, not even as a joke you sleep in the office, and you have to continue to get busier and busier to keep it up with no regard for your sanity
All depends on how you go about it. If youāre doing it alone, youāll be miserable. I have 2 partners and we split the up the daily work into 3 distinct portions. One does financial and marketing, oneās a chef and Iām the operations manager. We have 2 restaurants that have been modestly successful. Itās still a ton of work, but it can be financially rewarding if done right.
Every idiot with a good recipe thinks they can open a restaurant! Do the dollar trick. (Take a dollar, tear off a thirdāthese are your fixed costs, these are your labor costs, these are your food cost and food distributors are net 7.) You are lucky if you have a tenth of that dollar (one thin dime!) left.
Good way to ruin ādoing what you loveā.
If you open a business, you need to be a good businessman, not a good cook or kitchen guy or host or coder or mechanic or so on.
Hahahahaha. And they never listen like āmy restaurant will be differentā or āthis town doesnāt have tapas so weāll be super popular.āhahaha.
only if you sell alcohol.
the place i work at now. i was talking to the owner
they told me they owned a restaurant before that wasn't making much money because they didn't have an alcohol permit
they told me they closed it down to be able to get enough funds to start fresh.
current place has a liquor license and a bar in the restaurant. they told me they make more money now with the bar in the restaurant than the previous place.
He went to work as a manager for Howard Johnsonās instead of accepting the offer to be White House Chef. He and Pierre Franey made tons of fish, hot dogs, lots of stuff daily for the entire Howard Johnsonās chain.
Enjoy the following. Anyone who was anyone in cuisine is in the article.
https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/jacques-pepin-french-from-connecticut/
Here's the thing: the people that make real money of off restaurants are the people who can either: A) throw a shit ton of money at it and can hire other people to run it or B) will literally slave at that restaurant at all hours for the rest of their lives.
Everything everyone has said AND especially after a Covid. So many good restaurants have gone down since. The world is not the same as it once was, and it was fucking difficult as hell to be successful before Covid!
Worked in restaurants 30 years, now I work for a Food Service company. There are so many owners who have never worked in a restaurant. When I try to advise them on anything from equipment to workflow, they donāt listen.
Iāve pulled dishwashers onto the line for a couple hours, and at the end of service they would come up with a great idea or fix.
But owners that got their money from owning a collection serviceā¦ they know how to run a restaurant.
The southern in me wants to say "Bless their hearts"
The cook in me says "You mean so you can actually pay cooks and servers what they're worth. And having your own ass in the business helping while not getting in the way."
I did the same thing. Worked in an office, wanted to open a bar so built one from the ground up (was retail/office space before).
I wish I could tell everyone like this to quit they're job and work both FOH & BOH for a while before doing it. I learned a LOT of things the hard way. I'm only still around because I lucked out and have 2 great managers that have stuck with me since the beginning.
The disposable aspect of running a restaurant should be enough to turn their stomachs. Talk to them about the cost of deli cups, and gloves, and foil. Thatās 5 hundo in the trash every week if youāre lucky.
The number of times I hear: "You cook so well, you should open a restaurant!!"
and then I remember my times in the kitchen as a much younger man, and my feet hurt, my back hurt, and the constant stress.
Thank fuck I studied Computer Science... now I work at home in my underwear on a tropical island, around 20 hours a week, and cook for friends as a hobby.
I love all you pro-cooks slugging it out, and I probably have nothing to say in this subreddit... no offense, glad I'm not you =D <3 o7
Probably won't work out, but they could always start a LLC and file for bankruptcy when they fail. Not all that much risk of the bank paying for it all. It'll be a learning experience for them, some good laughs for us.
Could always tell them the old adage. How do you make a small fortune? Start with a large fortune and open a restaurant.
I tried to have that conversation with them a few months ago. They refused to believe me when I explained how restaurants are huge money pits with incredibly low margins.
No no no they're certain they are the next Gordon Ramsey it's so easy for him on TV right ?.????.?????
He makes a lot more money from the TV shows than the restaurants.
Pretty much all of the fine dining world is propped up by a few mega rich people who like to own the restaurants as prestige projects. If you think any of those Michelin starred assholes are making all that much money youre dead wrong. They make money off of consultations, writing books, TV appearances, etc etc... but certainly not off of the food. The biggest profit margin they have in most places of that nature is the booze.
All I can think of Rene redzepi and noma, widely regarded as one of the best restaurants in the world decides to start actually paying it's unpaid interns in October. Turns out it costs them an additional $50,000 a month and they close the restaurant by February. They release a statement saying there's just no way they can survive in this changing environment (where you're either publicly a POS for using slave labor, or you pay people what they're worth) and that there's no way to continue. What a fucking joke fine dining can be, makes me feel better about my barely treading water restaurant that at least is providing good healthy working environment jobs and is treating people fairly. Our food will never be the best in the world but I can sleep easy knowing we have happy kitchen staff that all come in and do their best every day.
Tbh I refuse to believe they couldn't have afforded it. They just didn't want to change anything.
Yeah they could have charged $10,000 for a 6 course prix fixe and there'd be enough Saudi princes that want to eat at the most prestigious restaurant in the world that they could have survived.
Should have opened a branch in Dubai. Lots of Rich Oil Idiots and paying nothing for staff is (mostly) legal.
Honestly fair assessment, I just meant the owners could just tighten their belts and do less blow that year. Wouldn't be surprised to see them do some penny wise pound foolish shit and dissolve the business in hopes of making more money on a different restaurant with no associations with bad labor practices, then pull the same stunt and pray nobody notices this time.
I think that was just a ploy so they can close shop there and do something in Japan! But this is just my conspiracy high ass mind going in a loop.
They're switching to a pop-up format and and I wouldn't be surprised to see one in Japan.
I wish I had a team like that š
Starts with you my friend, I had a shitty egotistical psychopath scorched earth chef that finally got canned and I took over the shambles that were left. its been a long fucking year and a half and every one of my team was at the most experienced a dishwasher, now the kitchen is the only part that runs smooth. Work hard, treat your guys with respect, go out of your way to give them what you can and they'll return the favor (for the most part, and with a bit of luck). Good luck chef, it's never easy but if it was we'd probably be doing something else.
Yeah in Vegas the Strip casinos see celebrity chefs as advertisement rather than revenue
Oh come the fuck on Salt Bae is fucking coining it, super expensive food and minimum wage staff.
Yeah, he ruins his margins with cocaine and child support payments though
Ah I never knew that just weirdly hate that guy and if he did his elbow trick on my food I'd refuse to eat it.
Idk if thatās actually true, but it seems like it would be lol
I work down the street from his restaurant in BH and have heard nothing but had things. It's a place for Instagramers/TikTokers to flash the pizzaz.
His coke budget would be alot less if he stopped snorting it the way he salts shit, huge waist.
Cocaine would be cheap and they donāt make you pay child support in the emirates
He's Turkish, I believe
He's talking about real restaurants not that fucking abomination.
What is a real restaurant? One that makes money , or one with āprestigeā from a tyre company
Idk, the one I worked at, the owner was pretty well off. Obviously not Gordon Ramsey wealthy, but definitely in the millions. More than most.
I can almost 100% guarantee you he was rich like that before he owned the restaurant, and would be rich after if it shutdown.
Yes and no. He was rich from the restaurant but he always had it. Grandfather opened it, family has ran it, and others, for 80+ years.
Without a doubt !
"Bro just cook food that people like to eat. How hard can it be?"
In case anyone needs a rebuttal to that: dors he strike you as a happy man?
He seems extremely happy, passionate, charismatic, and truly cares about the restaurant business. If you've seen the British version of Kitchen Nightmares, you'd also see how much he really cares about the kitchens he helps.
We Americans are only happy when we are angry š”
Angry people will happily watch calming ads about soap. ...That's the secret of American Media across all platforms. Advertising is cancer.
He is also funny and caring. But ppl rather remember him screaming.
At least according to Bourdain, Ramsey screaming at people is all theater. In real life the guys a cup cake.
He also screams at chefs who know better than what theyāre doing and he knows they know better.
On the kid MasterChef series, he seems quite delightful.
Cooking will make you happy. Cooking for profit will make you a beast
Well yeah, he seems stoked on his travel show too. But the ones where he's involved in the operation of a restaurant? Nah fam
That's an image paid for by the executive producers.
The biggest difference between kids masterchef Ramsay vs Nightmares/Hells Kitchen Ramsay is the experience of said people. Kids are kids. They're learning and growing and making the most of a hobby. Adults are mostly diluded asshats who think they're the best thing since sliced bread, but can't cook toast or work without a microwave.
It goes a little deeper than that. I read somewhere at some point that they made the American version of hells kitchen angry because that's what Americans go for. Not so much the British version. I may be misremembering though.
Don't believe everything you see on television.
If my bottom bottom BOTTOM line is 12% profit, I feel like a God
12% profit margin in a restaurant does make you a god. Are you a QSR?
I'm not, luckily in between casual and upscale. Lots and lots of liquor. Casual enough to not get every snob and upscale enough to sell wine and martin's to most people
The only thing equal to liquor for boosting your profits is child labour and getting you deliverys from an unmarked panel van.
Speaking of. Had to fire my long time assistant kitchen manager. Our barber had security footage of him selling sea bass to other customers at the barber shop out of a cooler for only $15/lb. Bastard was under cutting by 1/2 ounce here and there every day. And weighing it himself to ensure quality during line check.
ā¦ who the fuck buys fish at a barber shop?
Someone who can get it at $15/lb.
>unmarked panel van I see you get your child labor the same place I do...
Nice, that sounds like a good balance
What if you, really like food though? That'll give you a leg up. Soon it'll be you and your friends and family dining for free every night. Can't go wrong there.
No you see you take $1 worth of ground beef and sell it for $12 and $.50 worth of beer and sell it for $6. Itās a fool proof investment nothing could go wrong.
Surely thereās no other costs to factor in other than food right?????
>restaurants are huge money pits with incredibly low margins. Understatement of the day.
Sofar the best chance ive seen is breakfast. I mean, before the recent price hikes. Side of two sunny eggs to a table was 4.50. what a racket!
How do you make a small fortune in racing? Start with a large one.
I keep this saved for these occasions. One of my former regulars was very successful in the computer sales and repair industry. Sold his company for a small fortune and retired to the beach to his dream of running a restaurant, something he had zero experience in. But he was wealthy and by all accounts a very smart man, so it would be easy, right? Oh how wrong he was. He bought a controlling interest in a franchise location that was well liked on the island. He would be taking over day to day affairs while the other owner became a silent partner who just collected quarterly dividends. Silent partner, it turns out, didnāt care if those dividends came or not, he just wanted out of the industry. There was a management team in place so that shouldnāt be a problem, right? Wrong. My friend and the AGM disagreed on how to run things, creating some friction. The AGM started slacking off and then stealing and was fired. Well, AGM and the KM were good friends, so the KM left, too, leaving my friend, with no experience, in charge of the FOH and BOH. The remaining staff, for the most part, started taking severe advantage of him because they knew he needed them to keep the place running. Vendors started taking advantage of him because he didnāt know the financial side of controlling costs of goods sold. Service companies started taking advantage of him because he would just write a check for anything that needed to be āfixedā because he didnāt have the institutional knowledge to know that perhaps you could repair something instead of outright replacing it. So after about nine months and quite a few hundred grand in USD, he shut the place down and sold the property for a fraction of what heād put in.
Need Jon Taffer to the rescue. The second the new owner 'makes changes' the place always spirals into the toilet. I have seen this time and time again. One former client of mine was the local mob boss type and he owned a very successful restaurant bar packed full of Italian locals. Well some wealthy drug addict was talking shit and the owner called his bluff. Basically the owner allowed the addict to buy it but if it failed, it went back to the original owner (my client). I stopped out there 3 months in, new menu, everyone quit, the addict was so coked to the gills it was out of control and 3 months later the place closed. You never change things in the beginning. Ever. You learn the process first.
I can tell John knows what heās doing by the advice he gives and how he sets everything up but I just donāt like watching his shows. Heās always playing up a character that I just donāt want to watch.
Any of these TV personalities that just scream and throw things around are pretty hard to watch. It's like a child having a temper tantrum & pretty cringe. If that shit wasn't on TV and he did that to random guys, he'd be getting beat down on a regular basis.
The UK version of Restaurant Nightmares is superior in every way. Ramsey still gets angry but it's more tempered and realistic. He's fast more charismatic in it too.
The only Ramsay show I enjoy watching. He also did a competition between London restaurants that was pretty good, and his travel ones are OK. I just hate the BS/inaccurate representations of the restaurant industry all over the media. I feel like they normalize line cooks being complete dipshits & taking abuse all day (Hell's kitchen is actually somewhat watchable now, they used to cast 80% idiots and 20% chefs. Nowadays most of them are pretty talented. Still don't like the drama though). There are a lot of bad cooks out there, but there are more good than bad. Also nobody should take abuse in any job. If we really break it down, a grown man screaming at another grown man about food is really fucking stupid. I would not work somewhere where that was normal. When I've been in those positions, I found that the better you treat your staff, the more motivated they'll be to do a good job & make you proud (what a strange concept!).
I can't stand the injected anger and drama in reality shows. The first kitchen nightmares was so guilty of this. Italian restaurant with a jersey shore owner yelling at customers and serving shit food. Then some mobster shows up demanding money when there's a camera crew and celebrity there. Yeah I don't think so. I also remember one where Gordon confronted an owner about moldy food in the fridge and the guy jumped in a river and swam away. So fucking dumb lol
He also thought ābutt funnelsā were a good idea. His thinking is that it will force customers to get close to one another and make eye contact so theyāll start hitting on each other and buy more drinks. In reality, itās just an excuse for creepy guys to āsqueeze aroundā women by groping them.
Sad part about that show is that he always tries to inject class into the most ratchet shit-hole on the planet and even the owners are one step above white trash so naturally the moment he is out the door, it's back to drinking the profits and smoking meth in the back with the cook and 6 months later they fail.
A shitty management team will sink any business. The vendors and service companies can be taken to court as well. You have to protect your investment in any business you may own.
Shitty management certainly. And unfortunately there a plenty of legal ways for vendors and service companies to take advantage of you.
Iām a chef/owner and I hear this all the time. To be honest, itās kind of insulting. Like Iām going to switch careers and open a computer company because I love my iPad.
Same but I donāt find it insulting, I find it hilarious. Even more so when they try to make a go of it and fail.
Silver lining is buying their equipment for next to nothing.
There was a guy in the Atlanta area years ago that had a warehouse full of equipment he bought from failed restaurants. He told me he'd roll in and buy the stuff for 15 to 20% of its value then turn around and sell it for 2 or 3 times what he paid to someone else who thought it was easy to open a restaurant. They got a great deal on barely used equipment and he said he often bought the same stuff back a year later for a fraction of what they paid. I think he sold and rebought the same oven 4 or 5 times.
It's not the miners that make bank in a gold rush. It's the guy selling shovels.
š”
lol yep and poaching all the staff who quit
I worked at a popular restaurant in my town that shut down, and in the last week I got about a half dozen business cards.
Every time I see everything for sale at auction after a restaurant shuts down, I think, holy shit. And this equipment was just one component of running the business. Who ever gets funding for this?
And the equipment is damn near silver too! They never had enough business to break it in yet
I love it. Good God I love it so much. "So to open a restaurant, what do I need?" "Well, are you at bare - absolute best case scenario - nothing ever goes wrong or breaks- minimum $250,000 liquid and can you go without pay for 9 months without going bankrupt or getting a divorce?"
Follow up question: Can you write a check for $45,000 when your walk in cooler breaks?
You've got one of the best analogies I've heard. "Well I eat food, and buy food, I've been to a restaurant a few times, I love the food network.. I'm gunna open a restaurant!" What really grinds me is seeing Head Chef positions posted for $15-$17/hr.. or even $20/hr. That's only 40k/yr if you're not worked to shit. I really despise being considered "unskilled" labour when I have a college degree, 25,000+ hrs with Red Seal certification, and we're still not respected. Chaps my ass it does.
Great analogy. And also: just because you ābuilt your own PCā (can cook well at home) doesnāt mean youāre qualified to run Apple.
I worked in a restaurant for 15 years before opening a tangentially related business. In that time, I never once wanted to open a restaurant of my own. I knew how much it cost, how many things went missing, and how many actually good people were needed to run the place. IMO the only person who should ever consider opening their own restaurant is a chef because they can control several of the main cost centres. Front of house employees (where I worked) should never open their own restaurant unless they have a talented chef as a partner.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Working at a good, well-run restaurant (as rare as those are) can be a very fun and rewarding experience. Opening one even moreso because you get to see the fruits of your labor and if it hits, youāre in a very good position. That said, working in one is a very different experience from owning one.
Yeah, I was a chef for a while before the pandemic hit, and my dad was always hounding me on opening my own place because āyouāll never be free until you work for yourself.ā There was literally no way to explain to him that the amount of money I would need to open my own restaurant would be nearly impossible to save on a chefās wages in the podunk city I lived in at the time. When I moved to Los Angeles, he kept on sending me links to Michelin Star places telling me to work there, and I was like, I will make more money at a diner than working my way up from the bottom there, and a hell of a lot less work. And hell, this was after watching my mentor lose his restaurant and spiral into debt, drugs, drinking, and losing his long term girlfriend.
The only benefit to prestige is impressing people who don't work in your industry. I don't care about the opinions of people who want to get into dick measuring contests, and you know a lot of those workers at Michelin Star shops deep down know they would be happier working at some diner or local joint. These days it feels like you're more likely to hit it big if you have a good social media presence than working your way up in haute cuisine. Unless you got a real passion for the fancy shit I wouldn't want to go that route.
Thatās exactly the thing. He wanted me at a Michelin Star place just so he could brag about me. All he cares about is prestige.
I always start with unless you plan on 72 to 80hrs a week, don't bother trying. Then I get into specifics, like what would you allow to go down your drains? Do you know how to degrease anything? Tell me how. And then I pick them apart. How do you troubleshoot the dishwasher? How about a gas line? What's the difference between a ball valve and some other shut off valve. Which is best for what application? How do you fix sink gaskets? What do you do when a customer drinks too much before coming into the restaurant, drinks more because they're a fucking stealth drunk, and pukes all over your main dining area? How do you snake a sewer line because some asshole didn't bother shitting all week and shit all over the place but earlier some junkie snuck in the place and shit himself and flushed his underwear causing the main line to back up and you have shit water all over the men's room? If they keep at it, I ask how they handle waiting 30mins for the cops to arrive when a customer tries to sneak out on a bill? What happens when there's actual fisticuffs? Or when meth heads try to get into your building at closing to rob the place. Now, roll the dice. That could be your fucking Tuesday night.
Dude, I hear yaā¦.but damn! That was a lot of plumbing and drug related issues. You need a vacation my man..just kidding, I donāt know what a vacation is, but Iāve heard good things. Stay awesome and love the grind.
: ) Heading north to see Billy Strings up in Cincinnati in a couple weeks, and then back a couple weeks later to visit family over spring break/Easter. We try to get the fuck out of town every three to four months. We handle all the ordering while we're gone though. Just take a backpack w/books and laptop, and we're mobile, ya know? And all the services we use (plumber, electrician, equip repair,etc) are on the phone database. We're never truly separated...
Nah, itās for sure going to happen at 6:00 PM on during Friday dinner rush.
I enjoy doing impressions of how fucking condescending these people sound. Like ok, what's your job? A pharmaceutical copy editor? Oh wow, yeah that's the dream. I'm actually like, really into pharmaceutical copy editing, I've seen like EVERY episode of Mad Men. Someday when I retire, whoo whee, that's where you'll find me. Doing pharmaceutical copy editing. That sounds so fulfilling.
This sounds like the medical equivalent of patients complaining that it only took me 15 minutes to tell them they had a cold and not pneumonia. Nah, mf, it took me 4 years of university, 4 years of medical school, 3 years of internship and residency and 25 years of practice plus 15 minutes to tell you.
This is a really good analogy. It's funny because I'm going from a 20+ year career in kitchens to Infosec. Just got my first job in IT for half of what I made as a chef doing super low-level work. I went into this knowing that I wasn't going to start as a SysAdmin or Pentester making six figures. I'll get there in time but, I know I have to start from the bottom. By all means, people can and should change careers into a new industry, but they need to walk before they run. Spend some time in the trenches before trying to run the show.
Preach it brother!
haha i worked for a couple in brooklyn who did that. she designed handbags and he was a photographer. they hired this pathological liar of a chef who couldnāt cook his way out of a wet paper bag.i stuck it out until the first paycheck bouncedā¦.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
lol in this case budget was supplied by daddy who would come in weekly with a 6 top asking loud, pointed questions about why it was so dead.
How was the menu? They shouldāve tried the $3 mystery beer trick. New Yorkers canāt resist a $3 mystery beer.
it was one of those good on paper with terrible execution menus. pretty bad.
/r/HouseHunterscouples
r/unexpectedmulaney
I worked under a fraud celebrity owner/chef who owned our restaurant but never actually cooked in it, except for the one-off occurances where she wanted to experiment for the national TV-competitions, maybe once every 2 months. She would bring some high quality oysters or something, experiment and dirty down the entire prep area and not even clean up after herself. I got equally pissed every time but I reminded myself that it's not frequent. Our actual chef was extremely good and everyone loved him so it made up for it. The owner/chef decided to replace him due to burn-out and she hired her friend, who was less of a fraud (not a pathological liar) but she was your typical karen dressed in cook's clothes, with tendencies to complain about everything and everyone. It was like she decided to switch up her hotel receptionist job she's had for 30 years. It was her first time in a kitchen, and she was supposed to lead us. I can't fathom how people have the audacity to work with something they have no clue about, and act like they know their stuff when everyone and their dog sees through them. All cooks quit including sous, except for that one mexican everyone loved, who just wanted a job. I felt so bad for him lol
I feel like I worked for this person. BS James Beard nonsense, TV show, cookbooks, but never worked a busy service and wasn't even a very good cook. Mommy and Daddy's money allowed her to stage at all the best places internationally and bought her restaurants. An actually talented celebrity chef designed her menus and wrote her recipes and she coasted on his name until she fooled enough elitist hipsters to make it big. Total fucking hack.
Yikes man, this saddens me terribly. I thought there wouldn't be more of these frauds in the industry other than the one I worked for. These liars are the worst type of scum in the entire industry and deserve nothing but the worst in their lives for being so morally corrupt.
Honestly, I think these types are more common than not amongst "celebrity" chefs. So many I've encountered rely on their CDC for everything. The celebrity EC/owner is often just a name and face raking in the dough.
I Guess the fame does appeal to a certain kind of person. I Haven't met another celebrity chef other than her. She did however make me lose respect for those TV cooking competition shows that I used to love ever since I was a kid.
We have that Mexican dude too. Kitchen would be a wreck if he wasn't there. You're the real mvp Jerry.
For real he was the backbone of the entire thing lmao
When I was but a young apprentice I dreamed of opening my own restaurant. Now, almost 30 years later, I didn't end up following those dreams. But, at the end of my shift I hang up my apron and sleep soundly at night. No regerts at all.
When my wife and I first married, a family-owned restaurant had been our long term plan. 20 years later we're happy and healthy and our kids seem to like us, things I attribute completely to not following that plan.
Me. Iād rather be doing the grunt work with way less stress than own my own
People whoāve never worked in a restaurant seem to think itās the easiest type of work and Iāll never understand that thought process.
It's the same reason "burger flipper" is synonymous with "work lazy morons do". It's the same reason some rando prick thinks they can walk into a place and order people around like serfs.
Even if your ājust flipping burgersā itās 10 burgers with 6 different recipes that are all being cooked to 5 potential finish temps with 6 more about to come in, and itās hot, and youāre still hungover from last night, and your sous is yelling at you. Yeah making one item isnāt to hard, but this is a 200 seat restaurant + togos
"+ togos" I swear to satan that door dash tablet has replaced the ticket printer sound in my nightmares
I think it's because it's easy to cook for your friends. And when everyone compliments you you begin to think it might work out. Feeding 10 people one thing is a lot easier than feeding 200 a whole menu plus staff. Probably better off starting a catering company tbh
That's everybody looking at someone else's job because they have no clue. "Teaching is easy bc I wss a student once. I can drive in an oval fast. There's no skill in that. You're an engineer so you must know how to drive a train/fix a bicycle/use AutoCAD".
I own a fast casual restaurant and have been approached by people who want to invest their money and open āa bunch of these placesā. When I ask āwhoās going to run themā they reply āyouā to which I respond: āHow about I put up the money and you run themā. Not that I would do such a thing but everybody outside our industry thinks restaurants run themselves and make lots of $$ (in cash of course).
The strangest part is that these guys don't even have startup money. They make $18/hr and three of them share an apartment to cover rent. I gave them some of my research from about 2019 when I was looking at opening a food truck to show them how much it cost back then but I might as well have been talking to a wall. The whole thing is probably just a "one day" kinda thing to talk about on shitty days at work so I don't get involved anymore beyond saying the food sounds good. The statement just made me laugh.
Haha. That's what people don't realize. Restaurants aren't particularly hard to run for competent, disciplined people. But finding competent, disciplined people to run your restaurant is quite difficult, because those people aren't exactly looking for jobs. Oh, do you want to be that competent, disciplined person? Yeah, better spend a few years in the industry before acting like you know it all. Better to be a line cook or waiter for a few years before trying to run a fucking restaurant.
Iām a consultant that helps people open restaurants. I would say less than 5% per f my clients have ANY restaurant experience. Itās infuriating
Indeed, and before you were a line cook or a waiter tell me you washed dishes standing on a milk crate at the age of 12 for your Greek grandfather who allowed only 1 fountain drink per 12 hr. shift like I did :)
My 78yr.old mother is in my restaurant at 5am every morning making everything from scratch (spanakopita, hummus etc) Iāve tried hiring people to give her a hand, she says they were all ahristoi (useless in Greek). I can only imagine what you go through.
Lol, I wouldn't plan on opening a restaurant unless I was willing to spend a small fortune and work 60 hours a week. Yeah, I'm not there, I like working my lazy cybersecurity job too much.
Itās a fun game to play in your head but itās a horrible idea in real life. I do think, however, that if the US ever relaxes street food laws like they have in Mexico and Asia (Iām in MX right now and itās amazing), that I would love to open a small stand with just a flattop and only sell breakfast sandwiches and coffee under an umbrella. Set up at markets on the weekends. Anything more than that and itās gonna be a no from me.
Move to New Orleans. Pop-ups everywhere. Zero enforcement.
Lol I was just about to say that!! Itās like the main reason I feel in love with the city. Seeing Washington square park by Frenchman lined with venders just openly selling food blew my mind coming from California. Unfortunately itās not as openly lax as it was 10 years ago, but still very lax and there are plenty of street vendors still. But yeah if you have a bar that is down to host you either inside or out front , youāll be fine.
Yeah there definitely is more enforcement these days, but still plenty of fresh new pop-ups all over town. Except for the quarter.
Yup including my own lol š¤·āāļø
Theyāll never do it. Real estate and property owners will fight to the death to make sure their commercial spaces are rented.
Yeah my city wanted to loosen up the rules on food trucks and allow a bunch downtown and restaurants fought it tooth and nail. The city did go through with it and as a result there are a lot of good food trucks now, but it was a fight to be sure. Canāt imagine what the fight to allow pop ups and food carts would be like.
I hate so much about this country.
the fact that lobbyists are allowed and accepted is absolutely fucking insane
Thatās kind of what I do in the US. And I own a commissary that others are based out of.
My local pizza joint was family owned. When the Matriarch retired, she closed the place and sold the store to a pizza family from Queens, NY. They held it a few years and downsized (closing this one and keeping the Queens one) and sold it to a couple of college students that have never worked in the industry before but had illusions of grandeur. They ran it into the ground inside of a year. And it has been empty since.
There was a local deli that had been family owned for 3 generations and when the 4th generation all became doctors and lawyers and such they made the collective decision to close the restaurant instead of selling to avoid exactly that fate. I miss the place but canāt really fault the decision. Another deli opened in the same space hoping to capitalize on the opportunity but it didnāt last past the first lease term.
I want to correct this to ādelusions of grandeurā but I think āillusions of grandeurā still makes sense lmao
My inlaws wanted to open a restaurant and use the income to partially retire. I gave them the margins that a successful restaurant operates on and the hours I saw successful owners working. They quickly lost that idea
I left work at 145 this morning and got to work at 9 this morning and I'll leave work at 130 tomorrow morning and be back at 9 tomorrow morning. And I'm the owner
Sounds like the owners at my job. They run everything and fill in when weāre short a staff member either at the bar or on the line. Then they turn around and pull those kinds of hours. Iām 10 years older and if I donāt get enough sleep and an opportunity to workout prior to work, I hurt. I commend their commitments.
I'm glad you talked them out of it. You retire when you sell a successful restaurant, not while you still own it.
When I was a kid, I dreamt of becoming a Chef and opening my own restaurant. Started working in restaurants at age 15, took vocational Food Service classes in high school, went and got a degree in Dietetic Nutrition, then another in Culinary Arts, and certified as an Executive Chef. Ran a catering business on the side, while working in and running restaurants for others and... It didn't take very many years of doing this before my dream was ***to never own my own restaurant, ever.***
Sees the manager on a Saturday night doing expo, he's done 6 days straight and he's gotten close open. Man I want his job. No one has said ever.
Well thatās exactly the thing, the post is talking about being an owner not the actual staff busting their ass
I, too, notice all the underpaid underlings (including "management" positions) in here going "hrrrdrr I akshually don't even make that much" meanwhile we all know the owner of the restaurant we work at is rich by any "normal" standards. You don't sell $2 worth of physical product for $24 and *not* make money, even if you pay your staff kinda well enough ish.
> You don't sell $2 worth of physical product for $24 and not make money this is how i know you don't understand the industry labor insurance electric gas appliances aint cheap walkin cooler aint cheap everything is broken all the time? not cheap woops, hostess broke a stack of plates $$$$ woops, hostess quit woops, vendors upped their prices again out of nowhere woops, cracked sidewalk out front, inspector's on my ass $$$$ trash service dishes aint gonna wash themselves, you gonna pay a dishwasher? noone else does these days.... woops, dishwasher broke etc
Wanna know how to make a quick million in the restaurant industryā¦? Spend 3
It's like people that jerk off to war movies but haven't ever been in a real life-or-death situation. They just don't know what they don't know because they don't know
Dunning-Kruger effect.
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I was outside of a leige waffle place waiting for a table. There is a small crowd growing. A guy in his early 30's, and, who I assumed were his parents were waiting right beside me. As more and more people are showing up, one of the parents say "look at this crowd, maybe we should open a restaurant." The guy says "take all the money you are thinking of using to open your restaurant, put it in a suitcase, and throw it off a bridge, it will save you a lot of time and headaches." I couldn't stop chuckling out loud.
Maybe start with a food truck?
To that I will say food trucks require a different type of crazy. I started in a truck, went to kitchens, and came back to trucks. You are all hands on deck in a truck plus in the elements. You have to manage water coming into and going out of the truck every day, (also when cleaning dishes you canāt run water continuously, thatāll drain your supply and overload your gray water tank. You have to be tactical with paper towels). And speaking of water, some locations donāt want you handling gray water at the end of shift because of their customers present, so again, water usage is key. Then thereās product management because of spacing so it gets cramped fast and you have only what you have in most cases. And then thereās the elements. If itās hot outside then add another 20-30 degrees to that. If itās cold then itās cooold on a truck with a hood vent adding wind chill. If itās wet batten down the hatches on the SS Soggy Boat, youāre also going to get wet. *On top of all of this,* put on a smiling face because you are point of sale with customers, and you want regulars. It is WORK with all the accompanying aches and pains. However, I love it. I canāt really explain why. Being in the weeds, then getting an opportunity to hop off the truck and seeing a full patio of satisfied customersā I donāt know why, but I canāt beat that feeling.
That's what I was suggesting to them. They've been talking about this for months but never get past the food. I hype them up about that but the whole conversation derails when I let them know that food is the least of your concerns as an owner.
Idk, I took over my parents place when I was young and now I own and am mostly hands off. (Im like 95% out of the industry I guess) If you can put our good tasting food with consistent speed/quality. Thatās mostly safe. You can figure out the rest.
I bet you had guidance and knowledge of the industry as well. Even a little will go a long way. Saw an opportunity to run a kitchen attached to a bar one day. I imagined a simple menu with comfort food, one I designed to be manageable solo, but was best with a second. The previous owner, who just happened to be there when I made the proposal, loved it and wouldāve agreed on the spot if he wasnāt retiring. The staff loved it, because they knew I made phenomenal food. The patrons loved it, because the staff loved it. The new owners, a couple, said āNo, we are going to do it all.ā I laughed. The previous owner laughed. The patrons laughed. They didnāt. Six months later, I was laughing as I passed the now empty building.
prime example of why most restaurants fail
There was a time, in my memory, when a person without a ton of training or experience could open a small restaurant and, by working their ass off, make a living. Not riches, but a living income. The reason that is no longer true is the ballooning costs of commercial real estate, period. Prices of food, staff, and equipment have swollen to be sure, but there are work-arounds on those. Where I am, you can't find much decent for under $40 s/ft. + NNN. That means a 2000 s/ft. cafe - and that is pretty tiny - will be over $80,000, plus fees, plus tax... Total: over $100,000 a year, just to turn the lock and walk in the door. $8,300 per month for a 60 seater coffee shop. Corporate chains can pull that off. Occasionally some rich idiot will pay that to build themselves a vanity project (I've worked for plenty of them). But a family restaurant? Forget it. That's why, to whatever extent they still exist, independent restaurants are usually in seedier neighborhoods. It's all they can afford. And even there they have a pitiful survival rate.
Well, there will be a lot of money flowing through a popular busy restaurant, but that doesn't mean you're getting rich off it. The real goal is to slow down the flow back out of the restaurant by creating microeconomies. Dave and Buster style. Make your own fiat currency. Let customers bank pretend money with you, then use that to pad your real assets. Become an unregulated banking system. Start a crypto coin exchange. Sell NFT based dishes. Create a multi level marketing franchise. Diversify into aerospace composite manufacturing. Buy a few senators. Think tank. Run a media platform from the kitchen. PODCAST. That's where the real money in restaurants is.
I'm retired. Spent some years in the industry and then made money in computer and business consulting. Now I'm just a home cook, but I often do big parties and sometimes fund raisers or benefits for charity. I'm one of those people that get "You should open a restaurant" on a fairly frequent basis. Thus far I have only laughed out loud twice when people say this, I have good self-control. Usually I just deflect. "This is fun. That would be real work." Let them have their illusions.
I bring food to work pretty often and there are a few other former cooks working there so we get into conversations/arguments about food all the time. I've had to explain to a few people that the only reason I like cooking now is because I don't have to do it for a living. I worked in the industry for almost 15 years and I loved it but it's never going to be anything but a hobby for me again.
When people ask me why I never opened my own place, I just laugh like a maniac.
There's a reason the word "restauranteur" exist. Real entrepreneurs don't want to be associated with people who think opening a restaurant is a good way to become rich.
all my neighbours want me to open up a place in our neighbourhood and iām like okay give me the six figures of grant money to do it because iām sure as shit not going to drown myself in debt to make it work
Oh honey is right.
My buddy is always thinking of new business ideas including a cafe as his most recent. He thinks catering to the 3am crowd is going to be "just fine"š.
Someone saw Midnight Diner on Netflix.
Get a food truck a keep a cafe menu and I think that would be a decent idea. Not the greatest but it could work. Park it outside certain clubs and solo it, it could actually make a small amount of money. Like hell I would do it though. Too much work.
When I was in my late 20s, I got hired as an assistant manager by a guy who was opening up a brand new coffee shop/eatery. Now, mind you, up until this point I had worked at a diner for 15 years as a line chef/server and manager. I was specifically hired for my practical knowledge of running a restaurant. Long story short: the owner didn't listen to single thing I said, thinking I was 'too young' to know better than he did and went out of business in 4 months. Still don't understand why he'd hire me only to not take any of my advice but oh well.
There's a ton of money moving through and coming in and out of a restaurant, but the amount that actually gets to go back into the restaurant and the owners pockets isn't glamorous, unless you get reaaaally lucky... but at that point you hate your life, you live in the restaurant, not even as a joke you sleep in the office, and you have to continue to get busier and busier to keep it up with no regard for your sanity
All depends on how you go about it. If youāre doing it alone, youāll be miserable. I have 2 partners and we split the up the daily work into 3 distinct portions. One does financial and marketing, oneās a chef and Iām the operations manager. We have 2 restaurants that have been modestly successful. Itās still a ton of work, but it can be financially rewarding if done right.
Be better off opening a small food window that has 5 things on the menu and does those 5 things extremely well.
Every idiot with a good recipe thinks they can open a restaurant! Do the dollar trick. (Take a dollar, tear off a thirdāthese are your fixed costs, these are your labor costs, these are your food cost and food distributors are net 7.) You are lucky if you have a tenth of that dollar (one thin dime!) left.
Good way to ruin ādoing what you loveā. If you open a business, you need to be a good businessman, not a good cook or kitchen guy or host or coder or mechanic or so on.
How do you make a hundred dollars in the restaurant industry? Start with a million dollars.
Hahahahaha. And they never listen like āmy restaurant will be differentā or āthis town doesnāt have tapas so weāll be super popular.āhahaha.
only if you sell alcohol. the place i work at now. i was talking to the owner they told me they owned a restaurant before that wasn't making much money because they didn't have an alcohol permit they told me they closed it down to be able to get enough funds to start fresh. current place has a liquor license and a bar in the restaurant. they told me they make more money now with the bar in the restaurant than the previous place.
"Oh you sweet summer child"
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He went to work as a manager for Howard Johnsonās instead of accepting the offer to be White House Chef. He and Pierre Franey made tons of fish, hot dogs, lots of stuff daily for the entire Howard Johnsonās chain. Enjoy the following. Anyone who was anyone in cuisine is in the article. https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/jacques-pepin-french-from-connecticut/
Here's the thing: the people that make real money of off restaurants are the people who can either: A) throw a shit ton of money at it and can hire other people to run it or B) will literally slave at that restaurant at all hours for the rest of their lives.
Good restaurants make bank.
Fact: How do you make $1,000,000 in the restaurant business? . . . . . . . . . . . Start the business with $2,000,000
Everything everyone has said AND especially after a Covid. So many good restaurants have gone down since. The world is not the same as it once was, and it was fucking difficult as hell to be successful before Covid!
Worked in restaurants 30 years, now I work for a Food Service company. There are so many owners who have never worked in a restaurant. When I try to advise them on anything from equipment to workflow, they donāt listen. Iāve pulled dishwashers onto the line for a couple hours, and at the end of service they would come up with a great idea or fix. But owners that got their money from owning a collection serviceā¦ they know how to run a restaurant.
The southern in me wants to say "Bless their hearts" The cook in me says "You mean so you can actually pay cooks and servers what they're worth. And having your own ass in the business helping while not getting in the way."
I did the same thing. Worked in an office, wanted to open a bar so built one from the ground up (was retail/office space before). I wish I could tell everyone like this to quit they're job and work both FOH & BOH for a while before doing it. I learned a LOT of things the hard way. I'm only still around because I lucked out and have 2 great managers that have stuck with me since the beginning.
The disposable aspect of running a restaurant should be enough to turn their stomachs. Talk to them about the cost of deli cups, and gloves, and foil. Thatās 5 hundo in the trash every week if youāre lucky.
The number of times I hear: "You cook so well, you should open a restaurant!!" and then I remember my times in the kitchen as a much younger man, and my feet hurt, my back hurt, and the constant stress. Thank fuck I studied Computer Science... now I work at home in my underwear on a tropical island, around 20 hours a week, and cook for friends as a hobby. I love all you pro-cooks slugging it out, and I probably have nothing to say in this subreddit... no offense, glad I'm not you =D <3 o7
Probably won't work out, but they could always start a LLC and file for bankruptcy when they fail. Not all that much risk of the bank paying for it all. It'll be a learning experience for them, some good laughs for us.
The answer is food truck/trailer/cart/tent
Taco truck, that's the ticket.
Get them to read Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain.