It’s a well stated fact that a high percentage of new restaurants don’t last the distance. But only around 17% fail in their 1st year, however the figure rises to around 80% after the first 5 years. So what can you do to give yourself the best chance of starting out strong and making a good start to put your restaurant in a strong position to continue throughout the years? Let’s have a look at 5 things that can make or break a new restaurant.
Choose A Good Location
Getting the location right is almost the most important thing you can consider. Is it in a busy area and, if so, are there enough restaurants already and what quality are they? Where will you fit in and is there a gap for your particular type of restaurant? Take into account this in reference to how much the rent is, and this should let you know if it’s feasible within your business model and how much revenue you will need to be profitable.
Opening Before You’re Ready
First impressions definitely count and that’s never more true than in the restaurant business as you’ll find that opening up, especially if it’s in the right area, will be one of the times you get the most word of mouth as people are naturally curious and you’ll often have heard the question, ‘have you been to that new Indian place?’. So be sure not to waste this golden period of free word of mouth publicity and not make the answer to that question a negative one.
Source Good Quality Supplies
Your menu can be as good as you like but if you are making the dishes with sub-par ingredients then your work and insight into the dishes and your chef’s skills will all be wasted. Take your time to research thoroughly and find out who the go to guys are for different products rather than a one place for all restaurant supplier, for example we always use this dedicated chicken meat wholesale supplier and are never disappointed, same goes for our fresh veg who we use another dedicated supplier for.
Not Having A Clear Identity
What type of restaurant are you going to be? This is a key question that should be answered early on and should be firmly established through the whole business plan. If you don’t know what you are then neither will your customers and the footfall will suffer as a result. It may be tempting to try and cater to everyone and offer everything but what will happen is you will end up doing everything at average quality and nothing well. Make your menu clear and easy as well so there is no ambiguity.
Promotion
These days promotion is key and luckily it is easy to find many different ways to get noticed. All the traditional ways are still good, adverts and restaurant reviews for example. But also be mindful of your online presence and be sure to set up and use social media accounts monitor reviews on any platform online and follow up on poor reviews as aftercare in this regard can turn a negative into a positive.
