Do you have a passion for food you want to share with the world by setting up your own restaurant? It’s a dream of thousands so well done on taking the brave leap and making it happen, but if you’ve decided to set up a business, what can you do to reduce the risk of failure and build a renowned restaurant with thousands of satisfied patrons? If you’re planning on setting up a restaurant or cafe then there are hundreds of decisions you’ll have to make to get ready to launch your latest venture. We’ve dealt with thousand of restaurants at Cardsave and here are their top tips.

1. Don’t rush into choosing premises – Never underestimate the importance of your premises in the success of failure of any business. Location and footfall are huge factors in how easy you’ll find custom and the ambience of the place will have a part to play in whether those first time visitors become regulars. So even though you may be in a rush to get started, don’t go for the first option that seems feasible.

2. Do some market research, is there a demand? You should never start a business without carrying out market research. Survey as many of your potential customers as you can prior to launch, it’ll help you avoid making costly mistakes in your first few months of opening. The scary truth is a few simple misjudgements in the early days of a restaurant can make the difference between success and failure. Reduce your risk and understand your customers as early as possible.

3. Price on costs not gut feel – You might think a dish is worth a certain amount, but that should never be the way you price your meals, it should be based on the cost of the ingredients and factor in the fixed overheads of the restaurant. If that makes each individual dishes more expensive than you think they should be then you need to reduce your costs somewhere.

4. Understand what makes you unique – In every area of business you need a unique selling point. This is especially true in the competitive world of being a restaurateur. You need to have something that makes your business stand out and you need your customers to know and understand that difference. Being another Italian restaurant that is slightly better than the three your town already has isn’t distinct enough.

5. How are you going to promote yourself? Promotion is vital in the early success of a restaurant, if a potential customer walks past at a peak time and sees you have hardly any clientele they will assume that something isn’t up to scratch. In your first few weeks you’ve got to make sure you’ve got bums on seats and make sure they have a great time so they recommend it to a friend. If you can do that you’ll have a great success on your hands.

6. Understand how to price your dishes – This is one of the most important things to get right from the day you open your restaurant. There are lots of different models but one common and popular method is to make the cost of the food approximately 30-35% of the total cost of the dish to produce and serve.

7. Get your marketing sorted – You need to tailor your marketing to your restaurant, if you’re a premium occasion visit your marketing needs to reflect that or if your focus is more around volume you need to make sure your marketing is targeted to reach high numbers of people.

8. Know how many bookings do you need to break even – If you’ve priced your meals right it should cover most of the variable costs but you still need to know how many covers you need on a daily basis to cover your fixed costs. If you know what this number is you need to keep track of this daily, it’ll enable you to spot any problems quickly and help you solve them, i.e. if you never break even on a Monday perhaps you should consider a promotion on that day or closing on that day.

9. Sort out wireless card terminals – If you want your customers to be able pay on their table you’ll need some kind of wireless payment terminal, Cardsave have several GRPS models which might be a good fit.

Tags: Hospitality, Start-Ups