/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>13496816

Not a restaurant but I own a bakery, so food related if not in the same category.

My biggest piece ot advice is to identify the things you don't like to do and pay someone well to do them. Forcing myself to sit down and enter receipts into QB was always frustrating and I'd get behind on it and then be anxious. I finally just payed someone to do my books for me and I've been a lot less stressed out since.

Also, get a password manager. Ther are like 14 different government websites you're going to need logins for and you're not going to be able to keep track of it all.

>>13496834
Thank you. How was your experience opening the bakery? When you first started?

>>13496840

I was lucky enough to buy from the previous owner but still made my own LLC so I went through most of the same process apart from initial customer acquisition and sourcing equipment.

It's pretty brutal to start. I was and then continued to be (am still am) the head baker so I was working 80 hour weeks for the whole first year pretty much. Stress levels definitely elevate a lot, because even if there isn't actively something going on that you have to deal with, there's always the threat of that. It's an existential sort of exhaustion but it's worth it, imo. I do also have the benefit of doing really well, though, so I'm not dealing with the stress specific to restaurants of extremely narrow margins.

>>13496860
Hard work pays off. Congrats on your success

>>13496877

Thanks. Good luck if you go for it.

>>13496816
Basically what >>13496834 said. Decide your niche well ahead and plan accordingly. Do the spitballing and idea guying well before opening and mercilessly cut down all the stupid ideas. Have the ENTIRE concept from decor to menu to future staff planned and accounted out well before opening too. HIRE A GOOD ACCOUNTANT!!. Consult with lawyers on local laws and regulations on the regular, so you wont get fucked over stupid shit. Be prepared to be in the red for half a year or even more and plan accordingly, always have cash reserves. Hire a competent, experienced manager and a skilled head chef. Don't skimp on their pay, in fact paying your workers well is extremely beneficial on several levels, even if you are still losing money. You will want competent, motivated workers to pull through who are scared of losing a good gig, not overworked, apathetic drones who dont give a shit and just want to slack of whenever possible. Don't try to cut corners at the start and dont micromanage, if things get rolling, you will have a good profit margin anyway, no need to fuck over your future potential and just keep barely treading water for years. Gather shit tons of information on restaurants and common reasons why they fail. Basics, like keeping your menu short, so you wont have to stock 9001 ingredients rotting on you and choosing your locale and target demographic well. You cant please everyone, dont even try. Double-check every idea you have with incredibly harsh and critical people poking holes in them. Customers wont give a shit about how great your idea is or your feelings either. Never trust a nigger. Be mentally prepared that you will most likely fail anyway and keep a level head when things dont immediately go your way. Never let any friends or family members backseat manage your place. Never let them hang around at your place or allow employees' to do the same. Reiterating to know your concept before you start out, savesyou half the hassle

what kind of restaurant are you going to open OP?

>>13496816
I have no experience with it. I just want to say I do not understand why people want to open restaurants.
>you have to mark up the price of food to ridiculous heights
>you have to rely on employees who are either junkies or illegals
>your customers will 9 out of 10 times be shitty, picky, unpleasable people
>you're totally dependent on location, and it's really hard to pay for the exact kind of real estate you need (trendy but low-crime area)
>as people learn more online, they will become better cooks, cutting into your business
>food prices continue to climb, so you can't offer great value

From a business perspective, I would look to make a food delivery business, either something like GrubHub or BlueApron.

>>13496957
dunno, thinking of a pho soup place

>>13496957
Sandwiches/soups/salads/desserts. lunch and dinner.

>>13496816

My mother runs a cafe in the Lake District in the UK so I can only say things I know from her:

Running your own eatery is usually more a hobby than a way of getting rich. Margins are often tight and lots of food places are staying afloat because of effectively unpaid work by owners and family.

After a few months of stability and hopefully within the first year. Start planning for a manager who you'll be able to trust to run the restaurant if you're not there for a few days. You'll need holidays and closing the place if you get the flu is bad for you, your customers and your staff. My mum has struggled with this and as such, in about 7+ years her only holidays have been long weekends (even worse in the first couple of years)

Plan for high staff turnover, especially if you hire people of university age. Make sure you have auditing procedures to detect theft and other dodginess ( if done well this will also help identify wastage too). Third party accountants to check your books and inventories will help a bunch (and could pay for themselves telling you about tax breaks you could earn)

Get detailed health and safety training yourself. Pass that training onto the staff and get them to sign that they've been trained, even if they're still shit at it. Health Inspectors expect staff fuckups and will penalise them less if you can prove the staff should know better.

Good suppliers are a must. Expertly cooked pies with a great crust and tasty gravy are no good if people keep spitting out connective tissue because the meat is a low grade cut from a shitty butcher. In the example of my mums cafe, the breakfasts it serves are amazing because she gets in a specific type of bespoke sausage from a local butcher that are among the best I've ever tasted. Also spend money in the right areas, is anyone really going to notice if you use the standard strong bread flour instead of the artisan imported Italian bread flour. Little bits of needless spending add up fast.

>>13497189

(continued)

If you're opening a casual dining place, watch out for space hoggers. People on laptops, groups of old people who meet up and hog a giant table for 90 minutes (just having a cheap drink during that time) etc. Kicking them out can kill your reputation.. Letting them be can mean profitable customers can't get tables or think the restaurant is too busy. It'll depend on location and type of place as to if you get these but it's worth while planning to make sure you either have a good way to discourage this (without being hostile) or that you've enough small and large tables and chairs to cope.

Few people want to eat in an empty restaurant. Obviously you won't willingly have an empty restaurant but don't make the place more uninviting. Someone sees the owner in the middle of the restaurant staring at the door, they're going to check out the next place. A sneaky tactic is a waiter 'tidying' who'll ask diners how many they want a table for upon entering the restaurant, before they can notice it's empty and exiting. In a fast service place, keep someone on the till always, I've turned and left quiet fast food places because fuck having to call out into the kitchen or backrooms to get someone to be bothered to serve.

>>13496816
The millennials and zoomers seem to care more about fancy playing than food quality

>>13496937
>Never trust a nigger.
I love how you just casually snuck that in there.

>>13497297
Plating

>>13496957
a glory hole

Thank you all for the meaningful replies. We are taking notes.

>>13496860
Did you feel a bit restrictive creative-wise taking over someone elses business? I imagine you'd need to keep all the same recipes to keep customers. How much does owning a bakery generate anyway? Salaries for bakers are absolute trash so I'd assume it wouldn't be that much higher

>>13497405
>Did you feel a bit restrictive creative-wise taking over someone elses business?

This is not arts and crafts shit or home decoration for some soccer mom, buddy. Its a business "creativity" is something that makes money, not "expresses" your beautiful snowflake soul.

t. not him but manager.

>>13496816
Plan on long (16+) hours a day, at least 6 days a week and to not turn a real profit for at least 2 years.
Also remember that all the food does is pay to keep the lights on, you make your money with the bar so plan accordingly.

>financing doesn't come from were you want
>it causes problem down the road, r-ship/family
>work 18 hours a day 7 days a week
>dirtbag FS workers constantly high, drunk, don't show up
>have to hire illegal aliens who can't speak english and don't warsh their hands
>no one likes your signature dishes, you succumb to serving the same food as all the restaurants you hated
>2-for-1 Early Bird specials serving Octagenarians
>dining room carpet looks old after 4 years but you can't afford the $35,000 to replace it
>A/C on the fritz
>end up like Arty and Charmane

Have fun.

>>13496991
going to guess you're the actual OP based on your typing style. so you want to open a generic restaurant with no identity?
why do you want to open a restaurant?
what do you get out of it?
what restaurant experience do you have?
what cooking experience do you have?
what business experience do you have?

>>13497405

Not because of taking over the business per se, but because we are a wholesale operation. I added a few recipes of my own to our product line but at the end of the day I'm making maybe 3 or 4 types of bread. One day it would be nice to have a retail bakery where I could make whatever I want day to day.

Salary is fairly decent. I pay myself 32k/year plus 18k in tax free dividends, and we're doing a 33% margin on sales after that. I could pay myself more but like to keep money in the business.

>>13497470
>so you want to open a generic restaurant with no identity?
Not at all. Simply don't want to type out at length the menu, creative decisions, themes, etc we have come up with.

>why do you want to open a restaurant?
Because so many restaurants suck. Bad food. Poor service. Lot of disappointment. We are very passionate about food and want to make something good in a world that has a lot of bad.

>what do you get out of it?
To be our own bosses, to create something, to make people happy with good food.

>what restaurant experience do you have?
Several years at every position in a Pizza shop and sandwich shop. KM'd for a couple years.

>what cooking experience do you have?
A lot.

>what business experience do you have?
None.

>>13497459
Kek, this.

>>13496816
I've never opened a restaurant but I've seen plenty closing. From that I can tell you two things, nobody is going to get to drive across town to eat at a restaurant that just opened. Depending on the type of restaurant you want to open, you'll get different customers and they'll come at different times.
The second thing is, if you hit a rough patch or just don't get customers when you start and start getting debts, do not, understand any circumstances, think you can compensate by increasing your prices. That's just a fast track to bankruptcy. Nobody will pay double the price for the same food they ate just a few months ago. Instead, it's often a matter of publicity, so yeah, you should be shilling, not doubling.
Lastly, you should set it up as a LLC, in case something go bad, you won't have to sell everything you own. Admittedly, I'm no expert on this and you should get actual legal advice from a lawyer or notary.
All that assuming you know how a restaurant works in the first place, it's definitely not the same as home cooking.

>>13497495
so you have no business education, you worked at a pizza restaurant as a "kitchen manager" which most people do at 18-19, and you think all the restaurants suck but you'll be the game changer
hilarious
please entertain us with just three menu item ideas you have and try to list what you think good prices would be for them

>>13497459
>>no one likes your signature dishes, you succumb to serving the same food as all the restaurants you hated
>2-for-1 Early Bird specials serving Octagenarians
>>13497495
>Because so many restaurants suck. Bad food. Poor service. Lot of disappointment. We are very passionate about food and want to make something good in a world that has a lot of bad.
It's like I read your mind kek
It's not fair though I've been involved (I'm not a kid, I wasn't the dishwasher) in a restaurant venture.
You can make it but if you open one as a Hub/Wif venture, you will LIVE in that restaurant. It is your life, marriage, and family, to the exclusion of all else for at least 20 years.
If you don't count on that, well figure it out.

>>13497513
TopFUCKINGKek

>>13497513
These are all true, but there's no need for you to be a dick. I came here looking for advice. You can be honest with me without being mean.

>>13497510
>Lastly, you should set it up as a LLC, in case something go bad, you won't have to sell everything you own.
that's not how it works. sure, an LLC will protect your personal assets, but it doesn't let any random moron start a business free of consequence
just to open my coffee shop i spent well over $200,000 of personal capital because no one will lend money to an empty llc
and as you can see >>13497495 no one is going to lend money to op and his retarded coalburner wife even if he manages to open the doors because he thinks he can run a home kitchen restaurant and that no one has ever tried it before

>>13497530
Thanks.

>>13497542
so what are three of your dish ideas for your sandwich/salad/dessert/lunch/dinner restaurant?

>>13496816
Don't do it dude

>>13497542
Post your wife's feet and butthole

>>13497550
If the day ever comes that we decide to open a restaurant (which, again, is now just a thought, not a goal we are hell bent on), I hope you will come in and find out. I'm off for the evening. Have somewhere to be. Thanks to everyone that offered advice. Have a nice night everyone and I hope you eat something tasty.

>>13497542
>You can be honest with me without being mean.
I don't think you realize where you are buddy. Though brutal honesty is probably what you need here. Your customers aren't going to be nice to you either, whether they say it or not.

>>13497568
Your such a fucking faggot, post your dishes you little shit

Keep your menu small and reuse as many items as possible to keep your stock fresh.
Learn your local laws inside and out, no need to be fined for stupid little shit, and you will get fined.
Get really good at making 1 thing, the rest of the menu can be filler but you are going to need something to stand out with.
Dont be scared of starting out with pop ups before you get your brick and mortar place going. It will build up a name for yourself before you dump all the money into your own kitchen.
Consider buying a food truck. They are much easier and cheaper to get going and are much easier to sell off if it doesn't work out.
You are probably going to fail with at least your first 3 attempts. Give it your all but save up for failure because it is most likely going to happen, a lot. It's harsh but true.

>>13497440
You're a literal moron. Not every recipe is the same.

In future, shut the fuck up when you have no idea what your talking about, and no, being a manager means fuck all.

>>13497614
>Not every recipe is the same.

Indeed, some makes money and some doesn't. Don't screech at me snowflake, because you can't understand how the world works.

>>13497625
You have no idea how cooking works and you're on a cooking board. Back to the fast food threads retard

>All food is made the same way and there's no room for for changing it at all because MUH BIZ hurrr durrr

Dunno what part of "shut up about shit you have no clue about" puzzled you, because you did it again. Sorry that you're an imbecile. Go read how recipes work if you want to be less of a moron, but I won't hold my breath.

Anyways, I'm done educating you, I've done that enough today. Enjoy spergraging about shit you have no clue about even though no-one intelligent will be reading it. Thanks for playing, kid

>>13497736
It's always nice to observe some genuine anger.

>>13496860
Oh dude I remember you. Glad to hear it's still working

>>13498245

Thanks. I'm probably looking to sell in the next year or two. I grew the business quite a bit and also bought it at a pretty decent discount, so there's the potential to make bank from the sale, and then I'd road trip around with my dog and a Ural for a while. We'll see. I'm at the point now where even if business completely shut down for some reason I have enough in the bank plus equipment that I could finish paying off the financing and still have some left over, so that's a nice spot to be in.