101 reasons why I do not want to open a restaurant.?

Question

I am writing a book call 101 reasons for not opening a restaurant. I am stuck half way and I need reasons why you do not want to open a restaurant.
Besides the normal reason like financial, staff and rent...need more real life situation reasons.

Answer 1

Most restaurants fail, especially in very trend-conscious, ADD-prone areas.

And any restaurant worth starting will have capital requirements in the millions of dollars.

Answer 2

If we give you reasons why not to open the restaurant you will have to change the name of the book to "101 Reasons Why I And People On Yahoo Answers Did Not Open A Restaurant" that's one long title. Will I get a credit in your book?? I hope so!
Here is a reason, customers are very hard to deal with.

Answer 3

You can't pay someone to care enough about it like you do.

When you calculate how many meals a week you need to sell just to pay the rent, you understand why restaurants are open 2-3 meals a day, 7 days a week.

Food poisoning lawsuit. Nuff said.

Forget any weekend life. You'll miss your kids (grandkids') ball games, recitals, attending any sporting events, patties, and most weddings and religious services.

If your spouse doesn't work w/ you, you will never see them. And that's assuming you could stand to work together.

Calling in sick is a favorite past-time of employees, who tend to do it in 3's. Running 1 person short 1 day is do-able, but 3 every day? No way.

Employing tipped staff? Then you get to keep up with tips, in both credit cards (easy) and cash (not so easy) and figure out how much more to pay them over $2.05/hour.

Control over food supply is critical. One beef roast beef or case of meat alking otu the back door smuggled underneath a bag of garbage takes days of lost profits just to recover food cost.

Answer 4

My best friend has a restaurant. She works no stop. Her hubby goes there at 9 in the morning and leave at 10 pm. They now have Mondays off because they decided to close the rest on Mon. Shortage of staff. People to do things nicely, as if they care. Stress, debts, income not so great.

Answer 5

Some customers expect their food to be very good, staff training and evaluation is tiresome, long hours, weekends, high failure rate, distributors screw up deliveries or orders often, some employees are not reliable, high turnover rate, some employees steal, some use drugs, some are hard to get along with, some don't do their job when you're not watching them, good managers or cooks are the exception, When food costs rise customers expect your menu prices to stay the same, picking the right location and staying under budget is hard.

Answer 6

At our restaurant we've been writing the same book for years!!

-1/3 of the employees never get along with the other 2/3rds, constant restaurant drama.
-overachievers never stop complaining about the underachievers.
-you can always tell which employees are the resident pot-smokers, cause theres always a dozen or so in every restaurant.

Answer 7

You will work for hours tirelessly perfecting a culinary masterpiece. . .and some customer will promptly douse the whole thing in ketchup.

Your friends will expect you to cater their next anniversary party, bar mitzvah, etc. for 300 people. For free.

The chef will quit, the wait staff will all have the flu, the refrigerator will go on the blink, and the oven will decide to burn everything to a crisp. All before 6:30 in the morning.

And last but not least:

Murdering snobby newspaper food critics is still illegal.

Answer 8

I worked in the hospitality industry for many years. If someone ever said: Look I have a great job for you. You are going to work Long Hours, With Low Pay and work every Holiday and Weekend. Do you want it? I would have said Hell NO! But now that I have been in it except for the Toll on relationships. It was a Blast, Loved every stress full minute of it.

Answer 9

1. I do not want deal with the awkwardness of friends and aquaintances expecting a discount. Should I, Shouldn't I, how much? Was that enough? Did they tip? etc.

2. Having to do clean up when your staff calls out sick. Millions of dirty plates and plans and utensils that have to be loaded in the machine. Yuck. No one else to leave it for!

3. I don't want the stress of having to pick out a name. It is just cheesy to go with a chain restaurant and to find something creative on my own is hard. The name can't be to cute or to plain, has to deal with the type of fare we offer....to much stress.

Answer 10

As happened with my former employer, you spend all of your money on the business, setting it up, wages, etc. then realize you do not have any money left for marketing expenses.

Marketing is the key, yet so few get that part right. And good marketing is tough. Restaurants are a picky sector of society.