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The Insanity of Opening a Restaurant

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Something light for New Year’s. 

 
I suffer from RCS — Restauranteur 
Compassion Syndrome.
 
I cringe every time I pass an empty restaurant.
I will no longer remain silent
about this calamity that befalls 
my fellow man. 

(From April 15, 2015)
by Henry Makow Ph.D.

If I were starting out in life again, I would become a psychologist instead of a writer.

I would specialize in the special dementia that invades peoples’ minds and causes them to open a restaurant.

Approximately 60% of restaurants fail within three years.  And no wonder. There are tons of restaurants competing for business.

Indeed, restaurants compete with everyone who has a kitchen and a cookbook, which is almost everyone. My cooking is as good as most restaurants. They advertise “home cooking.” I just eat at home.

When I consider the cost of food, equipment, furnishings, rent, advertising, labor, taxes, utilities, etc. I can’t understand how restaurants survive.

For me, opening a restaurant would be like renting, furnishing and staffing a reading room where people can buy my books and then sit down and read them. I would go broke.

Once I’ve finished a book, it’s done. But a restaurant must manufacture its product anew every time, to exacting standards or face the indignation of the customer and a scathing online review. Not just one product, a menu of dozens!

Did I mention the hard work and long hours? The city health inspectors? How one bad customer review online can spoil your business?

My sister owns a successful restaurant. The margin is 5%. You must do a lot of business for that to pay. My brother-in-law says it’s like preparing to give a concert every night, and not knowing if anyone will show up.

What inspires people to get into this thankless business? Couldn’t they just throw a dinner party instead?

COMPASSION

I can’t help but notice if a restaurant is empty. I feel the helplessness and anxiety of the owner as he contemplates the weekly payroll. Certain restaurants are on my deathwatch. I pray for them but am relieved when they finally go to a `better place.

A upscale restaurant opened in my budget conscious neighborhood. It struggled for about two years before closing.

Meanwhile across the street, a new restaurant did a thriving business catering to the grunge crowd. They treat their customers like shit. Their ratings are awful. Yet it is packed. It caters to masochists.

After a brief hiatus, a new restaurant opened in the same location as the upscale restaurant. It was a Deli featuring the best smoked meat sandwiches in town. It was packed from Day One.

I felt so bad for the owner of the upscale place! Imagine how he felt!

Imagine my elation when I discovered that he started the deli!

In conclusion, when you’re eating out, don’t be a cheapskate.

Buy a drink.

That’s where they make their profit!
—–

Comment from PJ:
 

I was born into the restaurant business. For 40 years my family has managed to control this beast of a career. I know all about the missed holidays, the horrible hours, the late nights, and the crazy staff members. I’m not here to crush anyone’s dream about owning a restaurant but this business isn’t for anyone normal…You have to be a little insane. It takes lots of money, passion, determination and grit just to get through a lunch rush. Employees calling in and training someone to cook is a whole new level of hell. Everyday I ask Myself how in the F did I end up doing this?? I’ve got a degree from college and I’ve landed a career that isn’t much respected. Yes I’m the boss, but I’m more of an employee. The money is decent and I’ve got bills so….I’m stuck. Ahh, it just feels good to vent and read what others have written. Good luck to everyone. You’ll need it eventually.

Comment from AQ:
 

it’s midnight and I just finished reading your article about the restaurant business.
well I have opened a pizza joint with Mediterranean food five years ago and now i’m closing doors after I have depleted my savings trying to revive it. I am surrounded by big name corporations, papa jones, pizza hut, dominos and the likes. they have been crushing me since I opened, it is a war, they have guns and tanks and I have knives and sticks . guess who is winning. I entered the restaurant business because I Iike to cook.
 
and now I have no choice but to close doors . i’m by myself by the way and I don’t deliver pizza. but taxes , licenses, insurance, dumpster fees, health inspectors and the rising food costs are killing me. just yesterday I had to pay the sanitation department $950.00 for grease trap fees alone or they were going to shut off my water.  had to borrow half of the money from my son. he did not ask for collateral by the way. anyway i’m finshed, saddened and old with no skill and nobody would hire me. I guess i’ll deliver for papa jones .
 
thanks henry for hastening my decision and helping me cut down my losses. by the way on the same street there are little caesers , papa jones , pizza hut , dominos , and 2 other locally – owned joints.
well i’d better get some sleep and figure out a way to store my stuff until I sell it.
good night

 

CR writes:
I wish I had read this article 15 years ago.  I went to cooking school with hopes to one day open my own restaurant, if only I had known what I was getting myself into.  Needless to say, I never opened a restaurant.  Little did I realize that here in Ottawa to open a simple restaurant with 20 seats or so would cost around $250,000 and no bank will give you a loan because of the excessively high risk.  Unless you or your business partners have the money you will need to find private investors, which is not easy at all. 
 
Most people who open or want to open a restaurant are motivated by the fact that they “like cooking” and think it will be “fun”.  Anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant can tell you that there is very little about it that is fun or to be liked.  I enjoy cooking at home, but a restaurant environment is something completely different.  When it’s busy, you are under constant stress.  When it’s not busy, you are either stuck scraping some grease in the corner or you are going home.  It’s a business in which employee’s rights are rarely recognized – no overtime pay, no holiday pay, no breaks (even though they deduct money for them), no chance to eat even though you are working with food all day long.  Not all restaurants are equally bad, but these are regular things to expect. The next thing is wages – although minimum wage (in Ontario) has gone up by nearly $4 in the last few years, the average restaurant wages have barely increased.  When I look at job ads they are offering the same wages I was making in 2008.  In most restaurants there are maybe one or two people (chef and sous-chef) who get a decent salary, but often they are working 60-80 hours a week for no extra pay over what they would have made for 40 hours.  There are few cooks and waiters over 35 years old, most are single and childless, many have drinking and/or drug problems.  You wonder why.  Those who have their heads on somewhat straight are often motivated by a misguided sense of pride, “look at me, I’m a cook in a fancy restaurant but I live in my mom’s basement”.  Currently, I cook for a nursing home and also as a personal trainer.  Nursing homes are far from glamorous, but the hourly wage is a lot more than what most restaurant cooks make.
 
On a side note, I try to avoid eating from restaurants as much as possible.  After seeing what goes on in there I don’t want  to take the risk.  “What?  There’s no time to wash your hands!”,  “Just pick it up off the floor, we can’t throw out steaks”, “No need to wash the lettuce, there’s black pepper in the salad dressing, nobody will know the difference”.  These are not imaginary stories.  Speaking of lettuce, most restaurants I have worked in use the same sink to wash lettuce (the ones that actually do) and dump the water from the mop bucket.  Is salad really a healthy option?  If you are hungry and don’t have time to cook you are better grabbing a burger at McDonald’s or something like that, it’s greasy and doesn’t taste so great but you won’t spend the night on the toilet.  If you are worried about your weight then skip the fries and soft drink, eat some fruit when you get home instead.


Source: https://www.henrymakow.com/2016/12/the-insanity-of-opening-a-restaurant.html


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    • Real Expert

      What most people do by mistake is think that if they can cook good food,
      that they should open a restaurant. That is where they start their mistake.
      If you cook well, do so for family and friends only, and save the heartache
      of opening and then failing in the restaurant business. If it’s a hobby, leave
      it as a hobby. Why take something that is fun, or you like to do and turn it
      into the biggest nightmare of your life? Leave it as a hobby, and a thing of
      enjoyment. No need to ruin your life. You should like yourself better than
      putting yourself into hell itself.

      There really is not much gratitude for creating good food at all. If you are
      looking for some big pat on the back, it isn’t that important to people to give
      you accolades for having cooked them a great meal. Their isn’t much
      pride involved in doing a great job cooking. Their is no return in that department.

      If you think it’s going to make you rich, think again! It’s hard to compete against
      the big chains, who buy products for pennies on the dollar because of their
      volume. You won’t ever get to their level, unless you are truly at the right
      place at the right time, with the right products to sell to the right customer base.
      Your volume of traffic has to be so high in order to make any real money in
      that business, and only a few out of a thousand are going to achieve that.
      So, you have to be realistic. Don’t make that your dream. It is easier to
      win a lottery, than to win in the restaurant business. Now go make yourself
      a sandwich and get over it!

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