If you have your heart set on opening your very own restaurant, this is sure to be an exciting time and there’s a lot of planning and preparation ahead before you reach your grand opening. We talked to a few experienced restaurant managers and asked them for some advice and they gave us a few things to avoid when setting up a restaurant business.
- Choosing the wrong location – Of course, location is everything and just because there is a suitable venue for lease or sale, that isn’t enough reason to base your business there. You need to do a lot of research before settling on a venue; aspects such as parking should also be taken into account. Do some investigating to pinpoint all eateries within a specific radius of your planned location and put pins on a map to show you where the competition is located.
- Buying cheap kitchen equipment – Rather than skimping on commercial kitchen equipment, contact Warewashing Solutions, a leading Australian supplier of commercial dishwashers and search online for commercial cooking appliances, where you will find the best brands at the lowest prices.
- Hiring the wrong people – Serving people demands a special kind of person and random hiring might not be the best way to source good staff. We recommend using a recruitment agency that works within the restaurant sector, as they would have the best people on their books. Waiting for staff with an attitude is the worst thing that could happen to your business and it wouldn’t take long before you lose a few regular customers.
- No marketing plan – If you think you can rely on word of mouth to promote your restaurant, you’d better think again; enlisting the help of a leading digital marketing agency is the best way to get your message out. Social media marketing is perfect for an eatery and with a team of experts, you will gain a large social media following and that should mean your restaurant is always busy. A good digital marketing agency can tailor their services to suit the client and after a free online audit to determine the strength of your digital profile, the agency can put together a dynamic marketing plan that delivers results. Click here for a list of the best red wines that you can include in your wine list.
- Too many items on the menu – You might think that having an extensive menu is a good idea, but you can give people too many choices and having to keep all items in stock can be a major headache. It is best to have a selection of dishes and you can add to that periodically; if dishes are not popular, remove them from the menu.
Just like any business, your restaurant needs a comprehensive business plan to give you some firm direction and this plan should be your guideline to success. Once you have registered the business with the Australian government, you are ready to implement your plan of action and hopefully, the business will be a roaring success.
