Is your dream opening your own restaurant? Are you ready to take the big step and realise your dream? Before jumping into it make sure that your dream will not turn into your nightmare. Make sure that this is your favourite recipe to achieve professional satisfaction.
The invasion of the reality TV shows into our living rooms like, master chef and Top Chef, channels like BBC food and superstar chefs like Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay & Nigella Lawson, have idolised and gave glamour to the restaurant business. They make it seem fun and simple. It can be great fun, if you’re passionate about it, but it is definitely not simple. You do not become a superstar from one day to the other.
Cooking in a restaurant is completely different than cooking at home for your couple, your family or your friends. It means cooking big quantities in efficient but unattractive kitchen utensils, ensuring dating everything you want to prepare in advance, ensuring inspectors can verify that you follow hygiene rules etc. Yep! you do not mind doing that because you love cooking and feeling the oven heat….that is not even half of the story.
If you love cooking and you’re passionate about it, it does automatically mean that you will love owning and running restaurant. It is one of the ingredients, it is obvious however it is not the only one; like you can not make a potatoes soup with only potatoes. There are other skills besides cooking that can be equally or more important than cooking. A potatoes soup will not be tasty without salt and pepper.
Enjoy general management and marketing skills
As a restaurant owner you will have to manage a team (small or big) of kitchen and waitstaff. You will have to manage logistics, marketing, pricing, react to competition etc. As any good manager you will have to know how to react to crises, have excellent time management and organization skills.
Good management decisions can make or break the success of your business. Making great food is not enough.
Be a people’s person and good in public relations
As the owner of your restaurant you will have to interact with people all the time: your staff, your suppliers, your clients and potential clients, municipality officials, food critics etc. If you do not enjoy interacting with people then you should consider again if owning a restaurant is really your dream.
Understand money (bookeeping, accounting, financing) –
At the end of the day you want to open a restaurant to make money. If you hate accounting and bookeeping, if you do not understand anything about financing then maybe you are not in the right path. Like any business owner you have to be hands-on with the money part and make sure you have a healthy cash flow and making a profit. Or maybe you should take a course!
Hard-working
This is a very important part that many people forget when looking reality shows in front of their TV. Running a restaurant means long, I should say, very long working hours. It means management, cooking, cleaning, waiting, accounting, logistics, after and before opening restaurant hours. You usually work when other people work and during the time their free and have a time to enjoy. Are you ready for that?
I hope this post will help you to avoid appearing “on Kitchen Nightmares”
