Think You Want to Own a Restaurant? Read This First. Our website and magazine attracts lots of people with a dream of someday opening their own restaurant. These folks often use our discussion forum to run their ideas and plans by our veteran members and solicit their feedback and advice. These threads usually received lots of attention and interesting responses. Heres one such response. It offers an honest, direct and heartfelt glimpse into the realities of what it can be like to own and operate your own restaurant. My wonderful husband wanted to own a business that I would run while he kept his job. We purchased a cafe that I loved. Neither of us knew anything about running a restaurant! We were very successful in the business world... but the restaurant world is a little different. The cafe only seats about 50 people and we are open only for breakfast and lunch. We bake on-site so we have someone at the cafe 4am until 5pm every day. For the first six months, I worked almost 100 hours a week. The first weekend, I had the grease trap explode on me. The second month, the proofer went and I had to floor proof all the bread because I didnt know I could rent one. During this time, I didnt have ANYONE on staff that I could trust. Seasoned food workers didnt want to step into to my chaos because they knew better. The only employees I could get were ones who were really bad. I had no family to help and my husband had to be superman at his job and was only here on the weekends. When the dishwasher broke the third month, my wonderful friend who was retired washed dishes for me three days a week because she knew I was sinking. The first two years tested my marriage and my sanity. I honestly didnt realize how hard this industry was until I jumped in. I was a project manager for an environmental consulting firm with a very difficult president. I worked my butt off for that firm and had a very impressive skill set.... until I got schooled! My husbands job is impressive too but he is right here with me on this. We knew nothing! I wish I could invite you to life my life for a week. The moments of reward that we get, take your breath away and touch your heart forever. I am still in the startup phase since I have not had the place longer than 5 years. I have NO friends that I get to see because I lost them all the first two years. I have NO life. I have nothing on paper to show for all my hard work. At this point I have a very expensive hobby. One that still requires 60-70 hours a week with NO paycheck. And I cant sell right now because of the current state of the economy. Having said all of that, I would not change a thing. The moments of reward are priceless! The personal reward for me has been worth millions. My marriage is stronger today. My relationship with my son (16 and finishing up his first semester in college) is wonderful. Most of my employees stay with me for years, these young men and women who are so clueless. One guy was living out of his car when he first started here three years ago, a young man who drank everything away, I even picked him up off the side of the road once now rents an apartment, handles all his bills, and has been working towards becoming a man (in his own words). He is one of eight misfits I call staff. They all have similar stories. They just needed someone to cares and somewhere to grow. My customers bring me cookies over the holidays, knit my staff scarves, and even help them set up their first apartments. One customer helped me repaint the entire cafe one weekend. She got volunteers and they all painted the cafe with very little help from us. Other customers bring out of town visitors to meet me and my staff because they want to share their lives with people who arent here all the time. Many visit daily. I get to celebrate births and grieve the still births. I get to watch cancer patients grow stronger or fade away. I watch the sons of a young mother who died while crossing the street grow up. I watch love bloom and divorce shatter. I have helped build a community in the middle of a shopping plaza. Owning a restaurant is so much more than profit and loss, firing employees, or chopping onions. As the owner and leader, you have to be the life force behind everything from the toilet paper to the pasta sauce. You have to be everything to everyone at every moment. You have to know what is making you be obsessed with opening a restaurant. What is driving you? Once you find the answer to that one question, the rest falls in to place. Yet another reminder of why we love working with the best people on the planet, independent restaurant owners.
Posted on: Tue, 08 Apr 2014 15:08:28 +0000