Advice on starting a new Restaurant

Bendycovey

Have done quite a bit of research to date, but just want to throw this out to the floor to get the opinions of you seasoned food/hospitality people...... My wife and I are going to lease an existing premises and are hoping to be set up by June....

1) Which legal entity; Sole Trader V Limited Company?
2) Is therea need to engage with both a Solicitor and an Accountant or just the Accountant?
3) What are the key issues you have experienced during set up?
4) Pearls of wisdom which should be taken on board?

Many thanks in advance for your comments!!!

BennyBlanko

This is not a pearl of wisdom but it is a Fact; 80% of restaurants are running at a loss.

Re look at what you are going to do. I would'nt enter this business now personally.

thirtythirty

I think you should maybe ask those questions here. Might get better advice!

BlackEdelweiss

I have worked as a chef for a few years and have had to sit back and watch so many bad chefs/managers/owners run places into the ground, thinking that just because they are a chef/manager/owner that what they say is the only right way of doing it.

My main bit of advice is to be nice to your staff, appreciate the fact that they come and work for you for a fairly basic wage so you can get rich, instead of thinking they should be grateful to you for giving them a crap job and paying them badly.
Staff who feel appreciated will work just as hard if not harder than staff who are constantly made feel like they havent a clue what they are doing.
Hire a manager who is nice, outgoing, friendly and approachable by other staff, not someone who rules with an iron fist.

Make sure that if you do get to actually open the doors that you ave your **** together from day one and that you bend over backwards to make your customers visit a pleasant one so hopefully they will tell a few people that your restaurant might be worth a visit or at least not tell them to avoid the place like the plague. A new place opened in our town last month and I have already heard reports of rudeness by the owners and staff to customers. That was a table of 10, they will all tell at least 5 people who in turn will probably tell another 5 people each. Bad reports spread like wildfire, good reports may eventually filter out into the general population.

Another vital point is price, keep your prices down, undercut the other restaurants in town, offer better service and keep your food consistently good, never send out a bad dish, one bad fish dish could put off 10 potential fish lovers from eating in your restaurant. People dont like being ripped off, restaurants in Ireland are full of pretentious crap, high prices for average food written on fancy menus.
I could go on but I dont have time, if you want any more advice let me know.

Bendycovey

Many thanks BlackEdelweiss, couldn't agree more with your comments.

Given that this will be a small informal operation we certainly intend to treat our staff well as nobody, including management, want a crappy atmosphere filtering into the restaurant or in the kitchen. The ruiling with an iron fist lark is certainly not the way to go if you are looking to get the best out of people they need to be treated well. You give what you get!

Simple, fresh, flavoursome and unpretentious dishes will be order of the day with very competitive prices.

BennyBlanko

Bendycovey wrote: »

Simple, fresh, flavoursome and unpretentious dishes will be order of the day with very competitive prices.

but people are eating in, more and more these recessionary times?
You're going to enter a cluttered, but narrowing market.

Bendycovey

I take your point Benny. The market is narrowing for the higher priced, bad quality and service restaurants. If you look around, those who are making the effort with a refreshing approach with good value and quality fare are not doing too badly ( look at Green 19 on Camden St. in Dublin for instance). A small and well run operation certainly has a chance with the right location, right planning and foresight. Many restuarants are carrying legacy debts and paing massive rents. There are some merits to getting into the market at present on a smaller scale!!!

BennyBlanko

True - I see your points.

BlackEdelweiss

I think it is definitely a good time to get into the market if you have the right idea and the right approach. Rents are bound to be lower these days and you might even be able to rent a fully equipped kitchen if you find somewhere that a previous restaurant has just closed down, this will save you many thousands of euros as setting up a new kitchen in a very costly affair.
Since I posted the last time I have heard 2 more bad reports about the new restaurant I mentioned, can you imagine how fast those stories are spreading around town. They are a mix of bad reports about the food, the bad selection of wine(red or white was the choice) and most of all the service, and mainly about the owners attitude when a small complaint was made.
I would also recomend keeping your menu small and simple, beautiful food does not have to look or sound pretentious. Keep a good base menu and have weekly specials to keep a bit of variety, the base menu will gain you some regulars and the specials will stop them getting bored. Although Gordon Ramsey is a bit of a tit I think his advice on Kitchen Nightmares about menu planning is spot on, you should watch as many of that series as you can and take notes. One thing he says that I think is a great idea is to have a signature dish and push it as the best in town, "We have the best meatballs/carbonarra/steak pie/BLT/cheesburger in town!!!"
If you are about to open and you think you have your **** together open the restaurant for a night for your friends and family and run it as if they were all paying customers. You might think you are ready but as soon as you open the doors to real customers the **** will hit the fan and your reputation could go out the window. Yoy need to be sure everything from the meeting and greeting of the customers right through to them paying the bill runs smoothly. One restaurant I worked in on opening night was a shambles, after we sent out the first steak ordered the waitress came running in looking for steak knives, they were still in a box out the back, when the first customer who wanted to pay using a credit card asked to pay, a waitress came running in looking for the credit card machine, nobody could find it. The customer had to be asked to come back the next day to pay their bill. Another customer asked for a cup of tea after their dinner, the waitress brought her up a mug of tea with the teabag still in it, nobody had told her how the tea was to be served and this is how she did it at home.
This brings me to my next point, make sure your staff are experienced and know what they are doing, there is nothing worse than being served by someone who hasent a clue what they are doing, a good command of english is also essential. We have had to send Irish waitresses back out to tables just to see what the customer actually wanted after being waited on by foreign nationals who did not have very good english.

Bendycovey

Thanks again Black Edelweiss, sound advice....;)