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I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.

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Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.

#31

Post by photoJ »

wil421 wrote: post #22

A bit of advice from someone who was in the restaurant industry for 7 years. Don’t start a restaurant especially if you work in tech. 80-100 hours a week for managers and owners is mandatory. Tech is easy money compared to what it takes to create a profitable restaurant from scratch. The author made the same mistake I’ve seen people make before. This guy did no research at all and sadly this is extremely common.

Breakfast prep starts at 6am, maybe 4am if you are baking. In a restaurant lights out might be midnight, later for a bar. Which staff do you trust with free access to the thousands of dollars of liquor, food and property? Do you stay closed for two days a week?

Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.

#32

Post by muzani »

wil421 wrote: post #22

A bit of advice from someone who was in the restaurant industry for 7 years. Don’t start a restaurant especially if you work in tech. 80-100 hours a week for managers and owners is mandatory. Tech is easy money compared to what it takes to create a profitable restaurant from scratch. The author made the same mistake I’ve seen people make before. This guy did no research at all and sadly this is extremely common.

I've done both restaurants and tech. I had to think for a really long time which one to focus on. It just so happened that the startup hype kicked in around that time.

Tech is mentally exhausting. Really short but painful hours. Food & beverage is not exactly tiring, but the hours are very long. With tech consulting, you might be working 4-6 hours a day, with restaurants, expect around 14 hours/day. One involves a lot of slow, deep work, the other involves lots of rapid, shallow work.

With tech, you can get away with 0 employees, and everyone you hire is smarter than you. With restaurants, you regularly hire idiots who sleep while at work, don't show up, can't read simple instructions, steal from the charity jar. It's highly frustrating. It also drains a huge cut from your daily sales, which might seem like a lot until you look at profits.

It's really tempting to do a restaurant, because it's sort of "stable" source of income. But tech is much better and once you get tired of it all, you can just sell everything off at a higher price.

Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.

#33

Post by vmarsy »

dahart wrote: post #28

Having started a software business with too much optimism and too little business knowledge myself, and failed, I seriously have no idea how people start successful restaurants at all these days. No matter what mistakes he made, I feel for the guy, and the thousands of people every year trying to get a restaurant off the ground and ending up bankrupt. Aside from marketing, the initial costs of getting a SAAS business…

> Having started a software business with too much optimism and too little business knowledge myself, and failed

I'd say trying in itself can be seen as a partial success, hope you didn't get too financially impacted.

Is there any books/resources you (or other HN readers who also started their businesses :)) wish you had read before starting? Or that you did read and consider essential?

Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.

#35

Post by kbos87 »

I grew up working at a very successful family owned restaurant and landed in tech after college. The two can’t be any different.

Owning a restaurant is a lifestyle in ways that working in tech never would be. There is no free time, there is never a day off, there is no exit in sight. It’s 80-100 hours in per week, small margins, and frequent turnover.

Can it be profitable? Yes. But it requires as much, if not more domain expertise as anything else, including doing a startup. And, there are far fewer people out there talking about the valuable details of doing it correctly - very different from the startup world.

Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.

#36

Post by scarface74 »

photoJ wrote: post #31
wil421 wrote: post #22

A bit of advice from someone who was in the restaurant industry for 7 years. Don’t start a restaurant especially if you work in tech. 80-100 hours a week for managers and owners is mandatory. Tech is easy money compared to what it takes to create a profitable restaurant from scratch. The author made the same mistake I’ve seen people make before. This guy did no research at all and sadly this is extremely common.

Breakfast prep starts at 6am, maybe 4am if you are baking. In a restaurant lights out might be midnight, later for a bar. Which staff do you trust with free access to the thousands of dollars of liquor, food and property? Do you stay closed for two days a week?

It doesn't help with inventory loss, but these days I think I would try to run a non cash business - credit cards only.

Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.

#37

Post by AndrewKemendo »

Pretty much every restaurant owner I know is in the same situation - maybe not quite as bad - but generally they have at least one total nightmare horror story about a restaurant they owned that burned down/got shut down/went bankrupt.

I find similarities to being a founder in a super risky high tech startup - but with higher possible payoff.

Yet, I don't hear a chorus of bar backs, dish washers, servers, hosts and chefs complaining about not having a life outside of the restaurant or needing "work-life balance." What gives?

Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.

#38

Post by dahart »

vmarsy wrote: post #33
dahart wrote: post #28

Having started a software business with too much optimism and too little business knowledge myself, and failed, I seriously have no idea how people start successful restaurants at all these days. No matter what mistakes he made, I feel for the guy, and the thousands of people every year trying to get a restaurant off the ground and ending up bankrupt. Aside from marketing, the initial costs of getting a SAAS business…

> Having started a software business with too much optimism and too little business knowledge myself, and failed I'd say trying in itself can be seen as a partial success, hope you didn't get too financially impacted. Is there any books/resources you (or other HN readers who also started their businesses :)) wish you had read before starting? Or that you did read and consider essential?

Well I (and my family) was hugely financially impacted, as a result of my own choices, but I also had the best few years of my professional life. I made big mistakes, but I don't really have big regrets, if that makes sense, aside from losing angel investments and scaring my wife. I hope to do it again some day.

There are some great resources here and in books, but I can't think of anything I wish I'd have read earlier, and nothing I know of that would have changed my course. It might be out there, but I haven't read it yet. ;)

My team wasn't balanced enough, and we underestimated how much marketing we'd need. We were conflicted about raising VC money, so we wasted time dithering. We didn't figure out the right business strategy and our market until it was too late. All the books say to pay attention to this stuff, but none can really tell you how to do it in your case.

Great books I read include "Early Exits", "The Startup Owner's Manual", "Lean Startup", "Pitch Anything". I think I learned more about startups reading HN than in those books, but it's all good stuff. Seek out a wide variety of conflicting advice, find the best team, and go for it! ;)

Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.

#39

Post by astura »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #6
acchow wrote: post #3

> We had started with $60,000; after six weeks, we were down to $3,000, and there was still so much to do. I don't think he did nearly enough research into how much it costs to start a restaurant.

Approximately how much would you say it costs? Could he have gotten a small business loan?

No loans/outside funding was available.

>I contacted the banks to apply for a business loan, but I didn’t qualify. I looked into a few angel investor groups, but it turned out that they didn’t “do” restaurants. I even considered Dragons’ Den. As it turns out, no one invests in first-time restaurateurs, no matter how mind-blowing they think their cooking is.

Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.

#40

Post by jlarocco »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #6
acchow wrote: post #3

> We had started with $60,000; after six weeks, we were down to $3,000, and there was still so much to do. I don't think he did nearly enough research into how much it costs to start a restaurant.

Approximately how much would you say it costs? Could he have gotten a small business loan?

> Could he have gotten a small business loan?

Not without a ton of experience running profitable restaurants.

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