Starting any sort of business from scratch is a lot of effort. It sounds easy because we have only ever heard the success stories, but behind a single success story, there are long hours of work, a lot of capital, and a lot of tears, so unless you already come from money, starting your own business is going to be difficult. Unfortunately, a lot of people end up trying to grab a slice of the proverbial cake without realizing it needs to be baked first.
One industry that is heavily saturated and is still having large volumes of new competitors every other week is the food and restaurant industry. Is it a multi-billion dollar industry? Yes. Do some restaurant owners pull in huge profits every other week? Yes. However, does every restaurant have a success story? Sadly, no. Yes, successful restaurant owners do rake in a lot of profit, but it has taken a lot of effort, ingenuity, consistency, and an overall good business model that gets them there. Luck can also factor in, because even good restaurants where the owners have tried their best also end up having to close down because they are not able to attract enough customers and have a stable profit margin to sustain their business.
If you are looking to open a restaurant or get into the food sector, you have to know what you need to do to make yourself stand out from the rest. A bunch of things ranging from your choice in the menu, your level of service, your choice of restaurant furniture, marketing strategy, etc. All factor into the likelihood of your business or restaurant succeeding. We will be going over a couple of features and things that make a restaurant stand out in more detail below, so if that is your point of interest, the rest of this article will prove to be useful for you.
Menu
What you choose to serve will factor into your restaurant’s success. Like we mentioned before, this industry is very saturated and the competition is very cut-throat, so standing out with your menu does help. You will find almost every type of cuisine being served, so standing out with your choice of cuisine will not work, unless you are operating in an area where your choice of cuisine is rare or new. Some restaurants bank on the “viral” aspect of their menu either through outrageous combinations of ingredients, different sizes, or just uniqueness. Designing your menu is very important and you need to decide whether or not you want to keep a fixed menu, a rotating menu, or a fixed menu with some room for variation and new specials every other week or month.
Customer Service
The restaurant and food industry also overlaps with the service and hospitality sector, so understanding this is important. Cheerful or good customer service usually makes people want to come again (provided that you are serving good food as well). You want people to feel welcomes and special in your restaurant space, on the phone, and while getting takeaway too. This sense of connection can be something people want, and understanding this early on will only mean well for you.
Furniture And Aesthetics
You do not need to have the most “instagrammable” space with a flower wall, gold decor, and all of that super fancy frills, but you still need to have a fullyrealized concept for your restaurant space. You want to have a consistent theme, and this includes a color scheme, furniture setup, lighting, and decor that complement each other. Clashes amongst these different parts will end up affecting how your restaurant is perceived. This might seem unnecessary to some business owners, however, you need to remember that we live in the age of social media, and the age where variety is endless. So, if people do not like what they say, they know they can go somewhere else easily because there is always going to be another restaurant that might serve similar food. Once people start taking pictures and uploading them on their social media, that also becomes an involuntary sort of advertisement for your business, and this can lead to more customer traffic if people are liking what they see.
Your furniture is also very important because it needs to meet the middle ground when it comes to both design and functionality. If your chairs are very ugly and look cheap, it can leave a bad impression, and if your chairs and not comfortable, people might not want to come again either. You can also lose out on different potential customer demographics like older people, pregnant women, people with back issues, and so on. You do not need to go to the most expensive furniture store to get what you need because there are smaller stores that sell good furniture. You should ideally also take your time in choosing your chairs. As a rule of thumb, you should sit on the chairs yourself for 15-25 minutes to see how it feels for you before making any decision about purchasing it. If you find yourself fidgeting already, then it is probably not a good option for your restaurant.
Marketing
Marketing and advertising your business is very important because people are not going to know about your restaurant unless you advertise it. You can have a marketing team or a social media marketing manager to help you out with advertising, making posts, engaging with people, and posting pictures, and so on. You can also do this yourself, but if you are oblivious when it comes to marketing, it is strongly recommended that you hire a professional and have them take it over for you because the results of poor marketing are evident in the form of fewer customers traffic.
You cannot do everything yourself when it comes to running a standout restaurant. You need to have a good team behind you that you can trust and fall back on, so hire a few people in the beginning, but make sure that they are people that are skilled at what they do, and are people you can trust.
