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> 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?
A year later, he is bankrupt, has lost his house and his marriage.
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Gordon Ramsay is one of the most experienced and successful restaurateurs ever, and has had numerous failures along the way. Before he became TV famous, he worked in his restaurant every day until 1 AM, and back to it 6 hours later...every day, for many years. People vastly underestimate the time and dedication needed to run a restaurant. If you aren't built for it like Ramsay, you will regret it. For a lot of owners…
Right and with that much work you know how to fix a menu so your food cost is managed. You know how many servers you probably need for that day of the week and how likely they are to disappear. You know how your staff will steal your booze, pocket the tips, or kill you clientele with a food allergy. You know how many people will complain and you will have to comp their bill. You know you should stock pile supplies be…
So many startups are based on this very premise.
Reminds me of this poster: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/incompe...
I wonder if some suffer from the same mistake people doing entrepreneur IT do. I fix computers at home, how hard can it be? I cook at home, how hard can it be?
I ran a business out of high school / college summers networking up college kids in dorms. This was before computers came with ethernet cards by default and while dorms were being wired. My biggest mistake was not charging enough and not doing enough marketing. The university offered a similar service for 3x more than me.. I offered a flat rate including the card (which I got cheap.. easy drivers etc..) but I should have offered a choice of cards (fast, faster, fastest) and charged way more than I did as well as up sell (or sell an extended warranty or something...) It was a flash in the pan business only viable for 2-3 summers.
To follow up I also did computer IT consulting.. later and I still charged too little!! I guess one issue is that there is a ceiling on what you can charge (since you can just buy a new computer) unless it's in regard to recovering some important data... even then and nowadays you can just take the hard drive out and stick it in a usb enclosure, tell them to buy a new machine and call it a day.
> At work, I had trouble concentrating on spreadsheets and instead found myself scribbling menus on graph paper Funnily enough, if he wanted to be successful, spreadsheets could've been the key to his success. He would've known his Cost of Goods Sold, he would've known his staffing costs, his rent, and how much money he had and could spend.
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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.
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…
