4 ms·

I know what you mean, but it’s only part of it. Plenty of restaurants fail despite excellent bookkeeping. Personally I’d posit that the ability to create, measu

I know what you mean, but it’s only part of it. Plenty of restaurants fail despite excellent bookkeeping. Personally I’d posit that the ability to create, measure, and manage operational processes is far more important, because operations are where the (often invisible) opportunity costs wreak havoc on restaurants.

toomanybeersies 9y ago
The fact that he managed to run out of money before he even opened shows that he had no idea of the cost involved in opening and running a restaurant. He then reinforces this by telling us that he was selling his food too cheap, so he was running at a loss. It seems like he actually did have his processes in order in the end, he got to a point where he was running a bit of a profit, and was on track, until he decided to close for a week, which managed to quickly suck his funds dry and plunge him back into debt. This could've been easily avoided. Obviously that wasn't his only problem, but it's one of many. The fact that the restaurant succeeds today, without him, is interesting, because it sort of proves that he was the failing factor in the restaurant. Often it's external factors that doom a restaurant, poor location for instance.
- mgkimsal 9y ago
  > until he decided to close for a week And it was the week before 'the slow season'? They came back to the start of a slow period. It's almost comical how little thought/planning he managed to put in to things, and after getting a 4 star review, and things picking up, he decides to close things down "for a week"? Closing down during a known 'slow period' - that makes sense. I know seasonal/tourist places that do that. This was just... yet another misstep that, as you said, could easily have been avoided. It became painful reading this. And it makes me think... this whole notion of '80% of restaurants fail' stuff is partially due to just really poor planning or non-critical thinking ability by people up front. Of course, more planning and analysis up front may just stop people from opening in the first place, which may bring the % rate of failures down, but the overall numbers would be lower too. It's hard not to read this and think "I'd be smarter than that - I wouldn't make those mistakes" (having worked in restaurants, I wouldn't make those mistakes - I'd likely make other ones!)

toomanybeersies 9y ago

The fact that he managed to run out of money before he even opened shows that he had no idea of the cost involved in opening and running a restaurant. He then reinforces this by telling us that he was selling his food too cheap, so he was running at a loss. It seems like he actually did have his processes in order in the end, he got to a point where he was running a bit of a profit, and was on track, until he decided to close for a week, which managed to quickly suck his funds dry and plunge him back into debt. This could've been easily avoided. Obviously that wasn't his only problem, but it's one of many. The fact that the restaurant succeeds today, without him, is interesting, because it sort of proves that he was the failing factor in the restaurant. Often it's external factors that doom a restaurant, poor location for instance.

mgkimsal 9y ago
> until he decided to close for a week And it was the week before 'the slow season'? They came back to the start of a slow period. It's almost comical how little thought/planning he managed to put in to things, and after getting a 4 star review, and things picking up, he decides to close things down "for a week"? Closing down during a known 'slow period' - that makes sense. I know seasonal/tourist places that do that. This was just... yet another misstep that, as you said, could easily have been avoided. It became painful reading this. And it makes me think... this whole notion of '80% of restaurants fail' stuff is partially due to just really poor planning or non-critical thinking ability by people up front. Of course, more planning and analysis up front may just stop people from opening in the first place, which may bring the % rate of failures down, but the overall numbers would be lower too. It's hard not to read this and think "I'd be smarter than that - I wouldn't make those mistakes" (having worked in restaurants, I wouldn't make those mistakes - I'd likely make other ones!)