How to become A Restaurateur

• Restaurant Owner
• Restaurant Operator
• Cafe Owner

What do Restaurateurs do?

A Restaurateur would typically need to:

• Secure financial investments and loans to establish the restaurant and analyze fixed and discretionary costs to help ensure its profitability
• Develop management hierarchy structure and budget restaurant startup costs including fees for licenses and permits
• Handle hiring and recruitment, appropriate delegation of tasks, training programs, performance evaluations and promotion of team culture as well as manage the payroll
• Monitor promotion and public relations, sales data, customer reactions, problem areas and brand development
• Create a comfortable, friendly ambiance for customers, confirm reservations, spend time visiting and greeting guests, respond promptly to complaints and serve customers
• Serve customers during rush hour and hold holiday parties/seasonal discounts to attract more customers
• Track budget allocations, menu price points and purchases of food ingredients and equipment
• Develop an inventory control program that lowers costs and a schedule that manages the maintenance of and repairs to equipment

Restaurants can be very chaotic and tense at most times. They need to be handled appropriately and rationally. Business attire should be as professional as possible to let others know “you are the boss.”

Usually, the first person to arrive and the last to leave, a Restaurateur’s presence is required, especially at busy times like holidays and weekends.

Restaurateurs are typically self-employed entrepreneurs who may run a single restaurant or a chain of restaurants either alone or in partnership with like-minded individuals.

Restaurateurs are generally employed by:

• None but the Customer who is the King

Professional associations and organizations are a crucial resource for those interested in pursuing professional development or connecting with like-minded professionals in their industry or occupation. Membership in one or more looks excellent on your resume to bolster your credentials and qualifications as a Restaurateur.

• High-risk business proposition where 60 percent of businesses fail in the first year
• Intense competition and numerous details to perfect
• Keeping the menu aligned with the restaurant’s unique proposition in terms of a coherent theme, layout, number and pricing of dishes offered
• Encapsulating a unique reason why people should come to eat at your restaurant and not at your competitor’s
• Creating favorable long-lasting impressions that will retain customers and generate positive online reviews will bring in new ones
• Finding and keeping the perfect staff to reduce costs over time and enhance the diners’ customer service experience as well as training them, offering training manuals, checklists, goals, and incentives so that the restaurant runs efficiently even in your absence
• Paying optimum attention to marketing in terms of formalizing brand standards and engaging in social media and digital marketing
• Ensuring ample money to run the restaurant for a year and to cope with unexpected costs and increases
• Strong measures to prevent workplace harassment as well as workplace incidents and illnesses
• Scheduled timelines and accurate paperwork to be adopted for payroll and reporting as well as the adoption of fair employment practices to reduce employee turnover

Extensive experience in Restaurant Management will come in very handy. Often, both undergraduate and graduate programs for the post of a Restaurateur include an internship with a local Restaurant or a school-run café. This hands-on experience allows you to work with customers, kitchen staff, and servers.

You can learn the intricacies of owning a food and beverage establishment through public and private schools that offer associate, bachelor’s, and master’s degrees in hospitality and Restaurant Management.

The programs may focus solely on business management in the Restaurant industry or infuse culinary arts within the curriculum. Fully and partially online classes are available in Restaurant Management degree programs that might require some previous general education courses or some Restaurant experience.

Licenses and permits are required for a Restaurateur to open a restaurant, including a business license, a liquor license, a food service license, a food handler’s permit, and a permit to put up the Restaurant sign. It may also include legal paperwork and optional certification through professional organizations to show that you have the appropriate knowledge to manage a restaurant.

Finding a single magic metric that measures the success or return on investment (ROI) of a Restaurant business is almost impossible. There are several ways to measure the success, though, and together these metrics offer better insight. The most critical measure of success, if you want to stay in business, will always be whether people patronize your restaurant.

A detailed analysis of your social followings via Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook will help you get a fair idea of how successful your Restaurant venture is turning out to be. Research shows that a half-star difference on a Yelp review rating can swing the Restaurant business by a whopping 27 percent.

Running a Restaurant is no child’s play and requires that you deal with numbers day in and day out in order to gain true insights into how well your Restaurant is performing. You have to get into the habit of calculating metrics such as not only cost of goods sold, labor cost percentage, break-even point, food cost percentage, gross profit, inventory turnover ratio, and the net profit margin, but also customer retention, acquisition, and satisfaction as well as employee and table turnover rate.

Most Restaurateurs who have made it through the first two years might be able to get away with working only six-ten hours days per week. The Restaurant begins to show profits. Loans are usually completely paid off. A few look forward to buying out their backers.

Individuals with a passion for hospitality and a wealth of patience and adequate financial resources would have the best shot at opening and maintaining a restaurant.

The first few years of opening a Restaurant are filled with long working hours and managing the cash flow to an optimum level. After a decade into the business, you can spend much less time in the restaurant. The late hours may be entrusted to a general manager although the most successful Restaurateurs continue to pay surprise visits to the Restaurant to safeguard the establishment’s high standards. They will continue to keep an eye on the books.

The Restaurateurs who flourish tend to hire the most inventive chefs and pay close attention to trends in big cities. Keeping track of praise or critical feedback on social media, early on into the venture, can be incredibly helpful in solidifying your social strategy, training your staff, and so much more. Are the reviews of your customers consistent with your brand positioning? Do the comments regarding your restaurant’s food and service reflect your focus and your standards?

Cohesive promotions give your customers a consistent reason to visit. Offer smart discounts to get people in the door when you are new but do not lean on that strategy for too long. The slim margins of the hospitality industry will increase the risk of bankruptcy in the face of ill-conceived discount practices.

The vision for your Restaurant should go beyond drafting a business plan: a solid brand vision encompasses knowing who you are and why you are here (mission), knowing what you stand for (purpose), and knowing what you want to become (goals). Educating your staff about your restaurant’s brand strategy creates ownership and accountability, whereby there is a huge probability every guest is properly and consistently taken care of.

Engaging with the team and getting feedback will create a culture of lifelong learning within your restaurant, validated by consistent experiences with the guests. To become an expert at anything, you need to put in 10,000 hours of practice. A household name is not built overnight - give yourself and your team time and patience to grow and iterate on your Restaurant brand strategy.

If you find something about your brand that does not resonate with your target customer, tweak it until your brand and values are synonymous. Persistence and patience are key when it comes to implementing a Restaurant branding strategy. Keep up-to-date with trends in the industry by reading industry publications in print and online. Read the Restaurant review sections in online and offline sources to stay on point with customer expectations.

A Restaurateur is typically the top manager of either a privately owned or franchised location. Restaurateurs split their time between managing the kitchen, the dining room, and the back office.

Checklists - An Ingredient of Success

Opening and closing checklists help Restaurateurs reduce forgetfulness, decrease human error, shorten the amount of time it takes to complete a task, and increase the quality of each task’s execution. The internet is replete with sample templates that allow for customized versions.

Acquiring and Renewing Licenses and Permits

Business and liquor licenses are issued by the government and need to be renewed at regular intervals. They are notoriously difficult to acquire and very easy to lose. A food service license is issued by the city health department to regularly check the restaurant is operating per restaurant food safety regulations. A food handler’s permit is to be purchased by the employees and renewed every three-five years to guarantee that the restaurant meets food sanitation, storage, protection, and preparation regulations.

What are the Odds of Success?

About one in four restaurants close or change ownership within their first year, and about 60 percent fail within their first three years. Labour and food alone make up almost 65 to 70 percent of just opening up the door.

Some Useful Strategies

Build a stable Rolodex of chefs, cooks, waiters, and other staff. You should be able to spot your employees if they start falling on the job and hire good ones at a moment’s notice if required.

Know how to play or calm the powers that be in your area, including the local union and other local businesses and interests. Your liquor license, the frequency, and severity of inspections, and even media coverage depend on it.

Get to know your suppliers while regularly inspecting every delivery sheet. Once you have all this in place, you need an investor or have enough money set aside to maintain your operations for six months ultimately.

Chefs, once employed by the French nobility, found themselves jobless after the French Revolution and opened their fine-dining establishments, offering prix fixe meals to the masses.

Though the challenges are many, Restaurateurs enjoy building something nothing, take a lot of pride in the establishment they run, and find it incredibly rewarding to provide hospitality and delicious food to people.

Do not serve just food in your restaurant. Fulfill dreams with a taste. Train your waiters to be friendly. Your food can win the appetites of your customer, but your manners will win their hearts.