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Running a restaurant is hard and unsurprisingly its even harder if you never have run one before. Staffing, food cost, vender management and health code malarky
by photoJ 9y ago
Running a restaurant is hard and unsurprisingly its even harder if you never have run one before. Staffing, food cost, vender management and health code malarky: these are some of the first things that make or break a restaurant. Then maybe location. Quality of food clearly doesn't make the list, at least not disconnected from price as Dominos, McDonalds and Starbucks succeed with high probability. Sad to see a vanity project eat up someones life.
- AmVess 9y agoGordon Ramsay is one of the most experienced and successful restaurateurs ever, and has had numerous failures along the way. Before he became TV famous, he worked in his restaurant every day until 1 AM, and back to it 6 hours later...every day, for many years. People vastly underestimate the time and dedication needed to run a restaurant. If you aren't built for it like Ramsay, you will regret it. For a lot of owners, it's a really good way to earn not a lot of money for a massive amount of work.
- photoJ 9y agoRight and with that much work you know how to fix a menu so your food cost is managed. You know how many servers you probably need for that day of the week and how likely they are to disappear. You know how your staff will steal your booze, pocket the tips, or kill you clientele with a food allergy. You know how many people will complain and you will have to comp their bill. You know you should stock pile supplies because the vendor will run out. For an industry that is terribly easy to get into as a bus boy/server, prep cook, its amazing to me that more people don't just start there. Or maybe they do, but they don't write hand wringing articles about how they failed.(hopefully because they'd didn't and are too busy working). I once heard a story about an area for wine production in USA that you could buy for reasonable amount of money. Every few years, a 50 year old man would come and buy it, and start to work it. After 10 years about the time he might be getting the hang of what it all entailed he would be tired and sell it to the next 50 year old. The locals just watched the same story play out over and over again...
- paulie_a 9y agoI always thought Gordon Ramsey was a douchebag from a cursory glance. But after watching his shows and reading his books, he is pretty awesome. I think he is justified in being annoyed by amateurs asking for help then arguing/ignoring his advice.
- mgkimsal 9y ago> I think he is justified in being annoyed by amateurs asking for help then arguing/ignoring his advice. Anyone who is an expert in their field should feel justified in being annoyed by people asking for help then ignoring or arguing with said help. Happens to me on a regular-enough basis that I can usually predict how a request for help is going to turn out. Not alway, but often enough.
- mattnewport 9y agoA point that Gordon Ramsay makes is that consistency is more important than peak food quality for a restaurant. Occasionally serving bad food does way more harm than occasionally serving amazing food does good since many customers will not return after one bad experience and you won't establish regulars if your quality is not consistent. What McDonalds and Starbucks do well is produce consistent (though not particularly high) quality at a price people are willing to pay and with staff who are not coming on board particularly well trained or talented. They also systematize / automate a lot of the other things you mention.
- photoJ 9y agoThat's correct. It worse now that a motivated irate customer can magnify the damage to small restaurant with only a handful of bad reviews.
- Antimachides 9y agoI worked in a few kitchens for a few years. I regularly read reviews on yelp and I would say that near half of the negative "reviews" that showed up on there that pertained to what I myself witnessed or pertained to the kitchen were mostly to totally unfair. The one's that were fair I owned. One of my favorites: one star review for not being seated without a reservation on mother's day. Another favorite review: "I've been a regular here for quite a while and love this place but my porridge was too cold this one time: one star." Another gem: "Food is A+, waiter only refilled our water once: one star." (Pretty much any negative review that centers on waiters can be disregarded; they don't want to eat, they want to be served). I also witnessed outright lies by apparently angry and, I assume, tortured miserable people who were looking to be displeased in every realm of their life. You find those kinds of people in fine dining a lot, rich entitled pensioner types with no respect whatsoever. Unless there's a major sanitation or corruption issue on yelp reviews I take them about as seriously as youtube comments.
- photoJ 9y agoYeah, what's fascinating is that some non-trivial percentage of your customers are going to be unhappy. Pretending it won't happen is silly. You're just insuring you don't have a strategy for when they are displeased. Some complain to your face, and in a perfect world you can do something to remedy that. Others behind your back, which is worse and unsolvable. Porridge should be not "too warm" nor "too cold" but "just right" Great, where have we heard that before.