You’ve gotten some wise advice. I’ll just add one tidbit: the best possible thing you can do for yourself is to learn and embrace the fact that “no” is a complete sentence.
That restaurant is just around the corner from where I live.
I actually posted this very story a few years ago just because I was amazed at what a stupid dipshit that guy was.
Over the years I’ve been a partner in a few tiny businesses and 2 small-ish ones. My partner in the first small business (~30 employees) was about 25 years older than I. His comment about business partnerships as we were finalizing the deal to get going:
It’s a LOT harder than being married. Every argument is about money and there’s no make-up sex.
Words to live by.
Can you just email him? Just say what you did here and tell him you are not interested and that there isn’t any need for further discussions?
My younger brother would never take no for an answer. My older sister was much better at shutting him down. As she explains, we have social norms which make it hard to say no, but these people are exploiting that so they don’t play by the same rules. Consequently, it’s fine to just flat out say no and move on.
This will be from an article put together by a consultant selling their services, and is consequently tailored to the idea that if you just plan and manage things right, and get the right finance, it will be OK.
This is bullshit. The number one reason most startups fail is because they are not financially viable. Period. It doesn’t matter how good your plan is, or how well you track things, or what bottomless pit of money you have, if your outgoings exceed your incomings you will fail. All these steps will only (a) let you know you are going to fail earlier and (b) allow you to pour more money in before you fail.
And conversely, I have seen a lucky few who didn’t have a clue, let alone a plan, but who hit on the right location or idea, and consequently were able to turn a profit and keep going. The only thing a plan or tracking finances would have done is let them eke out a bit more profit and/or live a slightly less chaotic and stressful working life.
As to the OP, you’ve had good advice, if it were me I would say
(a) “opening a small business is extremely risky at the best of times, I don’t have the sort of lazy cash or spare time to throw at something like this on the off chance it works.”
(b) And Martin may say “it’s a sure fire winner”
(c) and I would respond "well I suppose everyone going into something like this thinks that, but … [see (a) above]
To my way of thinking, viability is a part of a business and marketing plan.
Yes I should have said that the only really good purpose of all the planning is on deciding whether to start the business in the first place. In my view describing “lack of planning” as a reason why a business fails is misleading. More appropriately it is why they are started at all when they shouldn’t have been.
My favorite part is after he’s in debt to damn near everyone he knows including his friends and family, and after he loses the restaurant but still owes some $20,000 fee/tax, and after his 6 figure pension is completely gone and after he admits that he’ll probably be in debt for the rest of his life and will never be able to afford to buy another house…he decides to move his family into a bigger, much nicer apartment that they can barely afford and where they can barely make ends meet.
I also rather enjoyed the part where they’re finally making a profit, everything’s been working out for a whole 2 or 3 months in a row and then he decides to completely shut down the restaurant for an entire week so that everyone can take a vacation at the same time.
Also the part where he pays a lawyer $3,000 to set up a LLC and he finds out later that he could’ve done it himself for a couple hundred bucks online.
What an idiot.
Could be worse, RickJay.
He could have tried to rope you into Amway. 
I told THAT story here once, too. 
I am extremely scam-resistant, but scam-amused.
That story is so jaw-droppingly stupid I’ve always wondered if it was entirely serious. I’ve never forwarded it to anyone who didn’t come back and say “holy shit, is this for real?”
When I got to the point where the guy was practically bragging about starting off with $60,000 in available cash I almost crapped my pants. (For our American readers, that’s about $45-50K USD, and remember Toronto is a huge metropolis with relatively high costs.) Sixty thousand dollars is nothing. Nothing. A good kitchen renovation in your HOUSE will cost you at least half that and could eat it all if you got ambitious. I would be alarmed if the guy had started with twice that. The fact that the guy dug into his pension to fund the restaurant at all is just appalling beyond words. I really don’t understand why his wife didn’t leave him.
If you go into any sort of business it’s best to assume that whatever you think the startup cost will be, it’s gonna be more, and just assume you will make no revenue at all for at least six months.
At one time I tried to start a business with a couple of friends. We had all worked in retail (we were coworkers at one time at Toys R Us; good riddance you shitty slave driver of a store) and not only were friends but knew each others’ work habits. We all had left that store but had the idea of starting our own store. We were going to try to open a store to sell role-playing games (we also gamed together) and accessories. We knew that they were popular in our area and that there just weren’t enough stores around. We found a good location, an old coffee shop being sold cheap as an estate sale in a decent location that was in good shape and was the right size. But we didn’t have enough collateral to get a loan from any bank and it never happened.
Years later I had a business proposition from a good friend. This was a guy who I went to high school with, and after high school he went to technical school and went into computer repair work. He helped get my own IT career started by helping me get a job at the computer store where he was the repair guy. He then went into the Marines for a while, and I continued on in IT.
After he was discharged from the Marines, he had an opportunity to start a business with a loan from the US military. He wanted me to partner with him. I had retail experience and he knew I had even gone through the process of trying to start a business years before. He wanted to do the same thing I had tried once; open a game store. This time though there would be funding.
The thing was that I had left that life long behind. I had a solid IT career. I was married and was planning on starting a family. I wasn’t making a lot of money but it was steady pay and I didn’t want to get into anything risky. Back when I wanted to be an entrepreneur with friends I was young, had little in the way of prospects at the time, and I was single. A risk made sense because I didn’t have much to lose. That was no longer the case; I had a lot to lose and I could destroy my marriage if it didn’t work.
Saying no was awkward. He was a good friend I’d known for many years and as I said if it wasn’t for him I might never have gotten into IT (which today I make a really good living at, 20 years into my career). But he understood and there were no hard feelings.
If you do decide to open a restaurant, make sure you and your business partner take out big life insurance policies on each other because, y’know, something could happen.
It is perhaps not a coincidence that your article is from “southjersey.com”.
My parents ran a business with some friends for decades. TBH I’m surprised this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often.
mrAru and I have joked about running a food truck, and what we would choose to do as the food. Tacos are amazingly popular, but there are thousands of taco trucks in the US alone. Kebab is another suggestion, but there are more and more kebab trucks around [yay! i love a good kebab.] back yard BBQ - hamburgers, hot dogs and trimmings, with cold salads like potato and macaroni are not common, but I have seen a few. He actually knows a guy who owns and runs 3 or 4 food trucks - he has a couple brothers, the wives and kids do food prep and so forth. The overall family is doing OK, but they are not rich and the food inspectors ride them hard [not that they take shortcuts, they aren’t dumb.]
But a food truck would be better than an actual location - the lack of rent and utilities for a space makes it at least more affordable. Just depends on menu and city =)
Someone mentioned roaming taco trucks like roaming ice cream trucks - what would the bells play, La Cucharacha? La Paloma?
I would not be interested in a taco truck playing a song about cockroaches.
I’m sure he was for real because when people are that passionate about something they only see what they want to see. It’s like being in a bad relationship where you can’t see the other person’s flaws because your brain’s being overridden by your gonads and you’re convinced that you can fix everything with no problems. Then when your brain takes back over you find yourself in the middle of a disaster that there’s no easy was out of.
But yeah, in the wife’s shoes I think I’d have walked the second he thought of selling the house to cover his debts.
I’ve watched dozens of episodes of the restaurant makeover shows featuring Gordon Ramsay and Robert Irvine and it’s amazing how many of them show people who have cashed out their retirement accounts or mortgaged or sold their home for their restaurant dream. They must be much less risk-averse than I am, because I can’t see risking my investments on such a long shot.