I’ve been watching a bunch of old episodes of Kitchen Nightmares to pass the time (I’m ashamed, don’t worry) and I’m amazed at the number of people who seem to dream of owning a restaurant some day. Even successful restaurants don’t seem to rake in a lot of dough, at best the owners/executive chefs can have a middle class lifestyle. The work seems repetitive and tedious (food prep, quality control, cleaning, making the same 12 dishes over and over again), the environment seems miserably busy and hot, and the hours aren’t good. And yet, based on the wealth of independently owned restaurants in my area, there seems to be no shortage of people willing to take on this lifestyle. What am I missing? Is it fun?
I think people who are into food get a lot of pleasure from seeing others enjoy what they prepare. Like musicians or stand up comics, the lifestyle sucks but the applause makes it worthwhile.
Look around, some people were born to be hosts! They adore entertaining. Make everybody feel at home. Ensure they have a great time. Get them good food.
(And it IS fun…at times. However an unending number of things can kill a perfectly well functioning restaurant, but while it’s working well, it feels awesome!)
There are plenty of people wanting to take on the lifestyle, but the burnout and turnover rate can be crazy high. I was talking to a chef friend at the weekend; he started working in his current place 11 months ago. There were 20 staff there when he started, which is also when it opened. Out of that 20, there are two of them left. The average age in the industry, at least in this country, is probably a bit under 30.
I’ve only done waitressing and a little KP work, but I can agree with what elbows says; when it’s good, it feels great. A shift that goes well with a team that works well together feels amazing, just like a show performance. It’s intense, exhausting, and when it goes badly, it can go really badly, and it’s not what I would want as a career, but having paddled in the shallow end of the industry for a year or so, I can understand the appeal.
And maybe, just maybe, you’ll be one of those who makes it big… Maybe it’ll be your place that gets the rave reviews, the TV show, the book deal…
When watching those shows I’m always amazed at how far they can get without knowing anything about restaurants, food, cooking, or business. I smack my forehead every time the host asks what a given dish costs to plate and they just stare back, blankly. This isn’t stuff you need an advanced degree to figure out, it’s just basic arithmetic and it’s obvious they never even thought to do it!
I once read that three out of four independently owned restaurants end up going out of business within five years.
In NYC it’s not within 5 years. It’s about 6 months.
Some unassuming restaurant owners do quite well. By all appearances, my uncle is one such person. His little restaurant doesn’t look like much but he owns the building and the food store next door. He lives in a nice neighborhood, drives nice cars, owned a couple nice boats, and has a great house on the water. His kids went to good schools and colleges. His apparent success has lasted over 50 years, so I don’t think it’s a fluke or that he’s living on borrowed money. His kids now run the business, which is as busy as ever. They are also seemingly making a pretty good living. My college classmate’s father also did exceedingly well running a few independent doughnut shops.
For some people, running any business means that they have a guaranteed job and can extend working opportunities to family members. I have known immigrants who started restaurants because finding work was tough. It’s not too hard to understand how a restaurant generally works so it’s an accessible business to begin. If they staff leanly, rely on family, and work hard, they can at least guarantee they will be the last person laid off. They may not make a fortune but they make a living.
Another guy I know loved the creative aspects of the business. He studied culinary arts, worked in other people’s kitchens for years, and then bought a diner so he could run his own shop. He realized the hours were killing him and he could only eke out a tiny profit by working 80 hours per week. He was probably only netting roughly what he made as a line chef at a good restaurant so he quit pretty soon after opening. He lost a bunch of his mother’s money.
Finally, I knew two other guys who each loved to entertain at fancy restaurants and wanted to run their own. Both were professionals - one a lawyer, the other a real estate agent. They each opened nice restaurants with similar ambitions and similar plans. They each relied on their expertise to manage that part of the business, relied on business contacts to drum up customers, and they hired good chefs they knew to run the back of the house. Each used the space to entertain clients and throw fun parties. The real estate broker had the benefit of identifying a good location, negotiated fair rent, and decorated it nicely. The lawyer knew how to structure the business contracts. In the end, the real estate broker’s restaurant failed during the housing recession in 2009. Maybe the recession killed both of his businesses at the same time or maybe the restaurant was always losing money but the real estate downturn hurt his ability to subsidize its losses. The attorney’s restaurant did great throughout the recession (with a hipper atmosphere and better-reviews). He opened another very nice restaurant with the same chef and he seems to be doing great.
I would think that restaurant ownership might have particular appeal to immigrants and the children of immigrants, as a relatively straightforward way of leveraging their life experience into a (hopefully) money-making venture.
I think both Fear Itself and elbows got it right. For some, it’s fun and worth it. I knew a guy who bought a restaurant in a divorce settlement (the previous owner lost it in the divorce), and the new owner busted his ass 12-15 hours a day, at least 6 days a week, if not 7. Within 10 years, he owned three restaurants and a catering business, and as far as I know, retired by age 40.
Some people love being police officers, some people love being construction workers. Hell, some people even like going into the mortuary sciences (I’m not saying they’re creepy or immoral, but it’s a service that people need, and so some people enjoy helping others in that regard). Some people love (the idea) of owning a restaurant.
Of course, the Food Network celebrity chefs make it all seem glamorous. We know differently.
I think one of the key mistakes that a lot of new restaurant owners is trying to be too many things to too many people, with large, bloated menus (a common mistake on Kitchen Nightmares) that increase loss in spoiled food thrown away and make customers and kitchen staff have a harder time making choices or executing the food.
Family owned ethnic restaurants seem to do well due to focusing in on food from their country, and trying to just do that well. Most restaurants (that aren’t sports bar chains) should have a menu with like 4-5 apps on it, 3-4 salads, maybe a soup and about 6-7 entrees and that’s it! Focus on what you can do well, and just do that.
My son-in-law is a professional chef in New Orleans. He’s worked on casino boats and independent restuarants. He makes great money. The boats have decent benefits for employees. He would love to have his own place. He reports that it’s hard, hot and long hours. His feet are screwed up. It’s a bitch around holidays when everyone’s partying and you’re stuck in the kitchen working. But he loves it. He was telling us alot of chefs and line cooks are heavy drinkers.
That’s interesting, and something I wonder about. In my area, small, apparently family owned ethnic restaurants (Mexican and Chinese) come and go as fast as any other non-chain places. Which is to say, if they open in the spring, get there soon, because they’ll be gone by Christmas.
I have no idea why, other than guessing that the locals here just don’t like small places. The national chains, regardless of type of menu, last for decades. (There are exceptions, of course, but this is as a rule where I live, and of course, would be different for other locales.)
My brother started a restaurant. He worked long (80+ hour) weeks for months. He had a wealthy backer so at least he didn’t have to worry about that aspect.
Restaurants are hard. You have inventory with limited life. Since so many go out of business you will likely have to pay for stuff in cash
Since a lot of restaurant work is low pay you may not attract the cream of the crop (if you pay well your menu prices have to go up which may detract patrons)
Brian
Putting a delicious meal together, running a kitchen, and running a business require three very different skill sets. #3 is what gets most restaurants in trouble… and most small businesses in general.
From the POV of the non-owner kitchen line worker, server, busser and dishwasher, the skills needed to work at most restaurants are very transferable. Don’t like the manager at Olive Garden? Do the same job at IHOP. Don’t like the hours at IHOP? Get thee to Denny’s. It is *hard *work but but you can be gainfully employed for a very long time with very little skill to start and no education, with the ability to move towards management from anywhere in the restaurant. You can use line cook experience at a national chain as a jumping-off point to culinary school, or just a classier restaurant or both.
I worked in a restaurant/catering company for years when I was a teen and in my 20s. It was super fun as a kid (but still very *hard *work), kind of like summer camp with food. I was just a prepper and a plater. The head chefs we worked with were all stoners and alcoholics but they did in fact have a passion for food and did have culinary degrees, and skills involving the business end of things.
None of my chefs ended up opening their own places, except the baker who went on to own his own shop. Some chefs went on to bigger and better restaurants, some ran after those stable jobs at hospitals and nursing homes, one guy floats around and has a different odd job every few years (chef at a pasta company, chef for a monastery, chef on a yacht). I think some of them still do catering.
Anyway my point is that food service may not be lucrative for everyone, but there’s a lot of ways to work in food service and if nothing else, it’s not a bad way to fill up one’s resume. People gotta eat!
My father-in-law owned and operated a Chinese restaurant in Chicago for decades, apparently very successfully. He sold it when he retired.
The two Chinese restaurants near me have both been in the same families for the 22 years that I’ve lived here, and one of the two goes back to the 1960s with that family.
(And, yeah, some of the decor clearly dates from then. But, the food is great!)
But as an outsider, NEVER invest in restaurant stocks.
It’s a career/lifestyle that’s not for everybody. I cut my teeth in the restaurant business. Because the business itself is volatile, the pay varies, and it’s nothing to quit one place and start at another the same day, the underlying stress of that coupled with the stress of working in a hot, busy kitchen leaves a lot of wannabes in the dust.
As a result, a lot of culinary people like me turn corporate. It’s stress of a different sort but it offers a steady paycheck, benefits, and PTO. You rarely get all three in the independent restaurant business.