Opening a restaurant is a dream for a lot of people. The distance between the idea and a business that is still open three years later is made almost entirely of decisions taken before the doors open.
Most of what kills a new restaurant is decided long before service starts, and almost none of it is about the cooking. These are the ten things we make clients settle before anything gets signed.
1. A concept you can say in one sentence
If it takes you a paragraph to explain what your restaurant is, your customer will not repeat it to a friend, and word of mouth is the only marketing that has ever been free. Who is it for, what do they come for, and why you rather than the place next door.
2. The numbers before the dream
Build the model before you fall in love with a site: covers, average ticket, food cost, staff cost, rent as a percentage of turnover. If the business only works at full capacity every night, it does not work. Restaurants do not fail on their best days.
3. The site, and what it actually costs
Location is not about footfall alone: it is about the right footfall at the hours you can serve. And the rent is never the whole cost — check the state of the extraction, the power supply, the drainage and the licence history before you negotiate anything. Those four things have ended more projects than bad food ever has.
4. Licences, and the calendar they impose
Permits take the time they take, and that time is rent you are paying with the shutters down. Find out what your local process really involves before signing, not after.
5. A menu designed as a business document
Your menu is your production plan, your purchasing plan and your margin, disguised as a list of dishes. Design it around what the kitchen can actually execute at full service with the team you can afford — not around what you would like to cook.
6. Suppliers, and a plan B for each one
Consistency is what makes people come back, and consistency is a supply chain question before it is a cooking question. Have an alternative for every critical product, agreed before you need it.
7. The team, and who runs the floor when you are not there
The owner cannot be the operating system. Decide early who leads service, who orders, who closes the till, and write it down. A restaurant that only works when the founder is in the room is not a business, it is a job with debt attached.
8. Brand before opening, not after
Name, identity, tone, photographs and the story you tell should exist before the first service, because the first three months are when people decide what kind of place you are. Fixing a reputation is far more expensive than building one.
9. The technology you will actually use
A point of sale that gives you real data, a reservation system that fits how you work, and nothing else. Buying six tools you never open is a common and quiet way to lose margin.
10. Enough cash to be bad for a while
The first months are for learning: the menu will change, the staffing will change, the hours will change. Budget for that period instead of assuming it will not happen. Undercapitalised restaurants do not close because the food was wrong; they close because they ran out of time to fix it.
Almost everything that closes a restaurant was decided before it opened. That is bad news for optimists and very good news for anyone willing to do the work first.
Where to start
Start with the sentence. If you cannot describe the restaurant in one line that a stranger would repeat, every decision after it — site, menu, brand, price — will be a guess.
