Have you ever sat home and wanted to start a business but don’t know where to start? Let me tell you that running a business especially a restaurant isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, with taxes, sales tax, rent, payroll, cost of goods, insurance, city taxes etc.
They say LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION is everything and I agree to a point but before location location location RESEARCH the location stay there for at least a month to figure the trends of the your location don’t assume that just because your there on Saturday that it will be busy all the time because chances are it won’t be.
Stay away from MALLS unless the mall is committed to your success. In running a business always follow you gut instinct, don’t rely on a business partner to make the decisions solely have a say in what is talked about or agreed upon. Another thing is to never sign any documents without seeing all the documents if the other business owner doesn’t want to give you the documents WALK AWAY.
A third thing is to be capitalized to at least 9 to 12 months of all costs those include 9 to 12 months of rents, payroll, insurance, taxes, and make sure you have a cushion for emergencies that arise and yes in the restaurant industry there will be emergencies that you didn’t think of or even knew that can happen.
Its good habit to do a cost analysis every 6 months to find out where you can cut costs without cutting the quality. Lastly make sure you accounting is up to date and to spend that little extra time to make sure everything is written down and to make sure you know where all the money is going and to make sure you keep good records, don’t get lazy. And if you follow the above guidelines you should do OK.