My parents own and work at a convenience store, like most Korean immigrants. The store’s in a mall and their lease is about to expire in two to three years (which is when I go off to university). My parents don’t have high hopes of getting their lease renewed and are really worried because I’m going to university soon. So, in case they don’t get their lease renewed, they’re thinking of opening up a Korean restaurant. So, tell me everything about opening a restaurant so I can pass the information to my parents. If you do, maybe I’ll get you some kimchee for free?
Well, they already own their own business, so they know how hard it can be - but seriously, a restaurant will kill any average mortal. My aunt and uncle ran a franchise pizza place for a while and it just ate. them. alive. You can never find good help you can trust the place with, so you’re there all the time. And it can be very hard to make money, too - my aunt and uncle were one of a very few places to eat in a small town, so they did okay, but they certainly didn’t make millions and if you worked out an hourly wage for what they were making… you’d just be sick about it. Restauranting is hard work and a lot of restaurants close.
As my dear Grandmother once told me, ‘There is nothing in this world you want so badly that you want to work in a restaurant to get it.’ It is backbreaking, time-consuming work.
It is simply not worth doing.
I don’t know if I’d go quite that far, but for certain it is a high-risk, high-effort endeavor which has a large failure rate, a lot of regulations, and more people-handling issues than a kindergarden class on Frosted Flakes. [thread=303565]Here’s[/thread] an old thread on working in a kitchen.
In essence, most restaurants survive either by
[ul]
[li]Providing very cheap food at cheap prices very quickly (fast food),[/li][li]Selling decent food at reasonable (i.e. break-even) prices and making profit on the bar,[/li][li]Selling high end food at bare profit (~15% net profit, after provisioning, labor, kitchen maintainence, wastage, graft, general overhead, et cetera) and make their real profit on the wine cellar and liquor,[/li][li]Acting as a front for money laundering or a tax write-off for a celebrity.[/li][/ul]
“Ethnic” restaurants (i.e. not traditional, gut-busting meat and potatos Americana) often seem to run off of profit margins so slim I can’t even conceive how they continue to operate, espeically (as many do) when they don’t sell or have a big trade in alcohol. I’m guessing that they maintain profitability through using family (nonpaid) labor, performing all building upkeep and equipment maintainence themselves, being extremely circumspect about waste and graft, cutting corners wherever possible, and promoting cheaply prepared meals that appeal to large lunch crowds (buffets). One of my favorite restaurants in Milwaukee, Abu’s Jeruselum of the Gold, sells lunch plates for under five dollars and full dinners (kebobs or shewerma, hummus, tabbuli, baba ganoush, yoghurt-cucumber dip) for eight, including mint tea, and you can pick up a filling falafel sandwich for three and change. I can’t cook this stuff at home for that cost, and can’t figure out how they make more than $20 or $30 a day.
The advantage to ethnic food (sorry, I know it’s not “ethnic” to you, but that’s the food industry classification it falls in) is that good ethnic restaurants tend to create a devoted following, both in the expatriate community and by Americans who want to eat something that isn’t found on the interchangable menus of Applebee’s/Ruby Tuesday’s/TGI Fridays/The Cheesecake Factory. This won’t give a big rotating trade but it does offer a reliable customer base. A lot of “ethnic” food seems to be heavily vegetable based or using cheap cuts of meat, which significantly reduces protein cost, but requires that you manage your provisioning carefully, lest you order too much fresh produce at once and have it go to waste.
On the whole, it’s not the business I’d recommend for anyone who isn’t utterly passionate about being a restauranteur. It certainly isn’t going to have the kind of gross profit margins a convenience store has, and with far more headaches about managing stock; candy bars and sodas don’t go bad, but fresh meat and produce certainly does.
I’d like to recommend a good reference about operating a restaurant, but in fact I have never found one that is worthwhile. (Maybe someone else has a reference to share?) Tony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential is about the closest I’ve seen, but not all restaurants are run like the type of lunatic/druggie enclave/ex-convict haven he describes (and I suspect he’s taking a bit of dramatic license; a trait not unknown among celebrity ::bang!:: cooks).
Just my $0.02–I’ve worked in a number of restaurants over a span of years, but I’ve been out of the industry for over a decade and have no desire to return.
Stranger
I doubt that anyone who hasn’t worked in a restaurant could run one. There are so many things that one has to know about managing a restaurant, including health regulations, hiring, service, suppliers. . . It’s likely that, if your parents open a restaurant, they’ll find themselves in worse financial shape than they are now. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to run a restaurant, but that it’s nearly impossible without knowing a lot about the business before you start. Remember, about half of new restaurants go out of business a year or two after opening.
The figure I’ve heard quoted is 90% failure rate within a year (excluding Kentucky Fried Pizza type chains) :eek:
Most successful resturants manage to reasonably approximate an Americanized fast food atmosphere (cheap and quick), maybe a second menu of authentic and cheap immigrant labor. I’ve seen too many cheapo Chinese places with Mexican laborers prepping and cleaning.
There’s a very successful “ethnic” buffet-style restaurant here in Decatur at the Dekalb Farmer’s Market. The market itself is a huge draw as it has one of the best stocked ethnic food groceries in the area (I’m tempted to say region.) The restuarant can get the pick of fresh meats, seafood and vegetables from the market, it has a premium of varied and well-cooked vegetable dishes, some popular meats, charges by weight and rakes in the cash. My observation is that it has a staff of maybe six to eight cooks and three cashiers who also stock the buffet and clean.
Thanks for all the advice. I don’t know if they should follow through with the idea anymore…Well, thanks again. Like you all said, it sounds like an assload of work and it seems as though they won’t be in a better financial situation than they are now.
It is possible to make a small fortune in the restaurant buisiness - provided you start from a large one
Just a note about suppliers - since so many places fail, they don’t like credit, and will insist on cash payments (at least that is what I have heard)
Even sucessfull places take time to get established - be prepared to lose money the 1st year or 2.
Brian
check out this personal account of starting a restaurant in philadelphia from the eGullet forum