Dining for Dollars: How to Save Money When Opening an Eatery
Opening your own business is never easy, and when you’re opening a restaurant, you can rest assured that hard work is on the menu. As an aspiring restaurateur, you have two priorities: please yourcustomers and save money doing it. OrderBeeZ invites you to keep reading for information and resources that can help you do both of these.
Have a plan. You can’t start a restaurant without a plan. You can’t even get funding without a well-thought out business plan. Before you start making the menu, make sure to research the market; this includes localtaste preferences and competitors. Silver Chef stresses that you must consider every aspect of your business, from kitchen equipment down to the salt shakers.
Hire the right help. Finding people to work isn’t aproblem, but finding the right people could be. Just as it takes a village to raise a child, your culinary empirerequires lots of hands and lots of minds working together. Keep in mind thatthe best employees are those with skills that complement your own. So, forinstance, if you’re a great chef, add someone to your staff with restaurant business experience.
Take the time to researchthe best interview questions that can help you narrow down your search.
This brings us to the next step on your early stage checklist: payroll. If you’regoing to have employees, then you’ll obviously need a payroll system. Not only will a payroll process help you pay your employees on time, but it will also help you understand the deductions you need to make from employees’ paychecks. In addition to paying your employees, part of your payroll process will involve filing and paying payroll taxes; otherwise, you could face steep penalties.
Master the menu. Ideally, your menu won’t look like a novel.You don’t have to offer hundreds of different choices. Make sure you have a fewcore menu items that you do well. One or two pages is plenty, and you can addand take away items as the market dictates. One important point is to ensurethat your menu works with the concept of the establishment. You would not want to offer nachos in an Italian restaurant.
Online ordering. Bear in mind the need for an online ordering platform if you plan to offer takeout a wise choice in this day and age. Sites like OrderBeeZ can create a branded app for your restaurant through both iOS and Google Play, and they also make it easy to add ordering channels through your social media pages. You can even use their QR menu generator to create a contactless menu, which provides customers an extra layer of confidence in your pandemic approach.
Try out technology. In today’s tech-heavy world, it seems likethere’s an app or service for everything. Your restaurant is no different. There are dozens of options that can help you lower operational costs. Open Table recommends Plate IQ, WarePoint, and When I Work.
Don’t blow the budget. You know you have to have a budget,but you also want to make sure your restaurant has the best of everything. Someof the biggest expenses when opening a restaurantinclude equipment, marketing, and decorating. Give yourself some wiggle room,but remember there are ways to cut costs without sacrificing quality.
Take advantage of in expensive advertising. From Facebook toyour local Chamber of Commerce, there are plenty of opportunities available to get outinto the public’s eye. Get involved with your community by donating to localschools or nonprofits, post pictures of your best menu items on your socialmedia accounts, and look for innovative ways to keep your customers engaged. Thismight be something as simple as a weekly open mic night, daily happy hour, or monthly tasting. Trying out something new when opening a restaurant. Opening afull blown restaurant can seem like quite the challenge, especially in the faceof a pandemic that has challenged the service industry. A couple great ways tothwart this pandemic and start off on your new food journey are to either opena pop-up restaurant or start a food truck. Both options keep you mobile as you try to establish a customer base. Both options will also ensure that your customer’s safety is front of mind during the pandemic.
Keep in mind that restaurant profit marginsare extremely slim. Even when you cut costs, you probably shouldn’t expect toget rich. If you manage arround €1 million in sales, you are still likely looking at a salary of just in the north of €$25,000 to €40,000. Being a restaurant owneris a labor of love, so keep your expectations reasonable and enjoy doing what makes your heart flutter.