Tons of people decide they want to jump into the restaurant industry without really knowing what they are getting themselves into. Everyone seems to think that that being your own boss and making your own hours is the dream.
Just because you are a consumer and you frequent restaurants, does not really qualify you to run your own shop. My advice is you go work as a server at a nice restaurant before you waste any time or money on the dream of running your own restaurant. But if you really want to open a new restaurant, you have a passion for food and service you should reach out to a local restaurant consultant.
Why do you need a restaurant POS consultant? Because they help fill the holes in your business plan with a few hours. These guys do not have to be food-service specialists by any means. A lot of the people will be connected to restaurants through their core skillset.
The POS also known as a point-of-sale system is one of the most important tools in your business. The first iteration of the POS was a cash register but, nowadays in the world of the cloud and API ecosystem this tool is really the nucles of your business.
The POS systems can manage your payroll, accounting, inventories and e-commerce. You should call on a restaurant POS consultant to make sure that the system you decide on will be able to handle what you need it to do. AND if you plan to grow, the system needs to have the ability to scale with you.
A restaurant POS consultant can also be a book keeper who works with restaurants or someone like myself that has worked with hundreds of restaurants. When you are putting in 70+ hour work weeks in and your profit margins are thin is it very easy to miss over the things you should be doing.
Marketing is expensive but, 100% necessary. Other restaurants are your competition and they are everywhere. First lesson in advertising is location, location, location. You need your signage to jump out at a potetntial customer. I think the number one reason why restaurants fail is because they do not provide anything that is unique. There are so many people that open a bar with the same unhealthy apps and cheap cocktails, so dare to be different.
If you have something unique and of value tell the world. Do not cheap out on your website and partner with everyone you can to drive foot traffic. There sites like Yelp, Grubhub and OpenTable that you cannot ignore. Speak with these sales reps and even if you do not buy use every opportunity to better educate yourself. Find out what your competitors are doing and weigh the pros and cons.
A restaurant POS consultant can really help you with that by drawing on their experiences to educate you. Do not do that because, I have seen that fail time and time again. If you are seriously interested in getting into the restaurant business get in touch with me and I'd be happy to have a conversation.
