Here is a perfect example of what people that don’t work in the restaurant industry think about food cost. Specifically posts 7, 11, 28 and 29 where people seem to think a glass of iced tea costs nothing or ‘pennies.’ I know it’s a trivial thing, but I hear it a lot.
There’s this cute little bagel shop on the corner of 13th and E street called Hudson Deli, next to the National Theater. I go there every morning for my coffee and bagel ($4.71). It’s run by an adorable Korean husband and wife team. She does the register and fills drinks and he does the cooking. I’ve often wondered how they can make a living on this place, and I’ve never seen a hired hand - just the two of them. Yet they seem to be doing just fine ever since I’ve been working here (2004-ish).
They also do grilled sandwiches on what looks like a double-wide panini press and they have a couple of soup crocks, serving what is probably Campbells or frozen soup. All in all it’s not bad. Most of their profit probably comes from bottled sodas and pre-packaged stuff which is mostly Kirkland brand. The whole place can’t be more than 50 square meters, including a little office in the back.
Maybe this is the kind of deli the OP had in mind, not a full scale restaurant?
Reminds me. My parents who owned a grocery store for twenty five years said that new business owners often think that now they can set their own hours, have nights and weekends off, etc. So they hire a couple employees they can’t really afford and before long are under water.
My dad opened that store at 8:00 AM and closed it at 9:00 PM 363 days a year for twenty five years. Most of his waking hours were spent there.
Think about things like that before you commit.
Clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean and clean.
Or the Health Inspector will do you in!
Oh thanks so much. This is actually our second option.
Seriously. My roommate went in on her dad’s restaurant venture (he put in the capital, she’s general manager and actually running the place). They’re only open for lunch and dinner 6 days a week, and she *still *works 90-hour weeks. She gets a day off a month if she’s lucky. No health benefits. I see her leave the house hacking and coughing all the time. She gets paid, but not enough. I doubt it’s even minimum wage once you factor in all her hours.
The worst part about the whole thing is, she got offered a full time job with benefits at a real estate company she used to temp for. It pays more than what she’s doing now, with a 40 hour workweek in a cushy air-conditioned office. And she had to turn it down because of this venture. :smack:
I especially enjoyed her story about a busboy, a server, and the bartender all quitting in the middle of a Saturday night shift. She didn’t come home that night until 5am.
You need to decide right off if you’re a deli with coffee or a coffee shop with sandwiches.
Ok, I would not have charged the customer and I would want it pointed out to me so I could correct the bill, but I know it all costs money. So I agree with you there.
My husband took a look at the place today. It is almost fully equipped with every thing we would need. Even a professional meat slicer! A Huge refrigerated display case. Tables and chairs.
We’ll need a cash register and an oven. This place is a bit grungy, so it needs a good scrubbing, but it’s really cute. Has a nice courtyard. I’m seeing it on Saturday. Can you suggest any questions we should ask? They are talking about a year lease. With no hike in rent for that year. Asking $1.30 a square foot Gross. Not sure what Gross means. But he also indicated they have some room to move. The place does need a lot of maintenance. Open 120 volt wires with nothing attached in the kitchen area. Oh, the counters do need to be replaced. I doubt they can be saved.
I was not aware that my husband has watched every single episode of Kitchen Nightmares (UK). He knows a restaurant is out of the question. We have no desire to do that to ourselves at our age.
We are getting insurance quotes tomorrow so we can firm up our actual monthly expenses.
In the 15 minutes or so that my husband was looking the place over, 2 couples and 2 individuals walked up to the front door looking to see if it was open. This was after one p.m. I think it’s a “Funny Farm” release the deer kind of thing, but my husband disagrees. (I hope you get that reference, you are a lot younger than me)
Anyway, thanks for all your help. My husband logged on today for the first time and read the dope. He’s suitably impressed.
That sounds like way too much work. That’s why we want to stick to lunch only.
Good point. Deli is the primary function. I doubt we’ll do fancy coffee. That is available at other locations fairly close by.
I meant to ask, anyone have any input on us offering delivery. How does that work? What kind of limits on the miles or time do we use. Do we charge for delivery. Have a minimum purchase for delivery?
Gross should mean that you’ll be paying $1.30/sqft total for the property (I assume that’s per month) including property tax which is probably another 2 to 8k per year. Also, I assume there’s sales tax in there somewhere, it’s included in the $1.30/sqft.
Obviously, this’ll all be written into the lease.
Oooh, that’s another thing. Have a lawyer look take a look at the lease before you sign anything. It doesn’t matter if they tell you it’s $1.30 gross if the paperwork doesn’t reflect that. Or if he says ‘sure, do whatever you want to the place’ but the lease agreement mentions that you can’t have remote compressors.
I’m taking this very much to heart. Although we have worked together in the past, it wasn’t as owners. We have just realized tonight that we are having a little bit of a problem communicating. He thinks I’m ignoring him, when in fact I’m just trying to make a mental note of something that his comments made me think about. So I need to get a notepad or something and jot down my thoughts so I can then give him my full attention. The last thing we need to do is be at odds with each other.
Have fun with that!
My dad and I have full on screaming at each other blow outs from time to time. But sometimes you just have to get it out in the open. It sounds stupid, but sometimes, you’ll tear each other new assholes over something stupid like whether or not you should sell iced coffee or chocolate covered craisins and it ends up becoming a great money maker. But what are you going to do, it’s going to be the two of you all locked up in there all day, if you don’t have pissing matches from time to time the stress and power struggles will get the best of you, there’s no escaping it.
But for all the negatives, there’s a lot of positives, work your asses off, and it’s very much possible to be taking home $100K+ after a 5 or 10 years with a good set of employees that can run the place so you have time to go out and try 20 different turkeys and go out to look at new registers and stay open more then a few hours or do book work while you’re open so you can be home at a reasonable hour. Do it right, create a self sustaining machine with good managers and it’ll actually become a lot of fun.
More simply, you pay rent to the landlord and they pay the property taxes and insure the building. If you’ve ever rented an apartment or house you almost certainly had a gross lease.
The alternative is a net lease, where you pay for property taxes, insurance and/or maintenance, and deduct that amount from the rent.
Does your town allow truck vending or sidewalk carts?
In downtown Richmond, the carts are amazing. They pop up around 11:30am and get taken down around 3:00pm. You’ll find people selling everything from Thai food, cheesesteaks, and speciality salads. Because the overhead is low, prices are more reasonable than the brick-and-mortar places. Usually you find only one or two people working. Often they will advertise that they do catering as well.
There is red tape and random inspectors to contend with. You also have to deal with the vagaries of the weather and the seasons. But if you’ve got a smooth enough operation, you could have a success. Starting small seems like the way to go. If you can do something on this level first, I would recommend it.
I know a restaurant/bar that opened at 9 and closed at about 6 . It was very successful. When you sat down they gave you a big tray of veggies and then had huge and tasty ham sandwiches. It had the whole family working there and supplied jobs to nieces and nephews too. What eventually got them was the neighborhood changes so badly that they had trouble keeping help. They had about a 40 year successful run.
Notalwaysright is the funniest website I have seen in a long long time.
This is certainly something to think about. There are a couple more things we’ve got going for us if we go with this deli though. Maybe. The owner of the successful deli we want to pattern or mimic has agreed to mentor my husband. This is a huge advantage, I think.
And my co-workers have all assured me that good quality food at that place will be a draw. Admittedly, this is a small pool, but I’m really starting to like our chances.
You guys have all been so great with your advice. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate it. We aren’t completely a go yet since we haven’t been able to get the insurance quotes yet, but I’m allowing myself to get a little tiny bit excited.
As requested in my other thread about closing the deli, I’m bringing this back to life as a learning exercise.
I probably should have paid more attention to the above advice. I don’t think I knew my market well enough at all. For instance:
We always intended to serve all our food on/in paper products, but our customers wanted real plates and real silverware. So we changed our model. But this meant a ton more dishes and higher labor needs. I didn’t anticipate that and maybe we should have just stuck to our guns and stayed a paper deli, but maybe more research would have revealed this issue? I’m not sure.
It seems like such a small thing but it really became a big deal for us.
I think our service was pretty good, but maybe slower than the ideal. I have always had an excellent memory so could remember names even after just one service. A lot of my customers were very surprised and pleased to be greeted by name on only the second visit. I routinely earned the highest tips, but as an owner, I wasn’t allowed to keep any of them if I had another employee in the house. That also became a problem.
This was something I had no idea about. There are ways around it, but I just didn’t even think about it.