most of the time i read a story like this, the infamous statistic of 90 to 80 percent new establishments failing is referenced, and then the person goes on to explain how they barged into the business like a belligerent, drunken bull in a china shop. this guy did zero research. zero thought was put into the costs involved. i am frankly amazed that this guy made it as far as he did. i remember the last time a story like this was posted, the guy got fooled into paying to renovate the building he was renting. i have a feeling that most of these restaurants fail because they are started by complete idiots.
I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.
121–130 of 190 posts
Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.
#122> In 2011, I applied to operate a booth at the Toronto Underground Food Market [...] my fingers cramping so severely from peeling 100 pounds of potatoes that I almost called 911. [...] I lost money So his first experience was extremely painful, almost landed you in the emergency room, and you lost money on it. What valuable lessons he learned going forward? > I didn’t care. None. > Eighty per cent of first-time resta…
> It's so rare to see people brag about being reckless, irresonsible, and wasteful of resources they cannot afford to waste.
I hate being sardonic, but we are on hacker news.
Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think his behaviour is already well described by Carl Jung. His world view is skewed by mythology (like movies and hero worship) instead of by rational thought.
So was the world view of Richard Stallman in Richard Stallman's Sedentary, Physically-Debilitating Quest for the Gnolden Treasure. I'm not saying that you imply his wasn't equally skewed. Just that when I read about Stallman or other people who rightly attract admiration this truism tends to be conspicuously absent. But the mythology is just as strong there too-- a rational person would not take years to find out fro…
Plenty of us dorks complain about Stallman's worldview and philosophy. I won't complain about the contributions he's made to computing, or even the world in general, but striking it lucky doesn't make you philosophically pure.
Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.
#124> In 2011, I applied to operate a booth at the Toronto Underground Food Market [...] my fingers cramping so severely from peeling 100 pounds of potatoes that I almost called 911. [...] I lost money So his first experience was extremely painful, almost landed you in the emergency room, and you lost money on it. What valuable lessons he learned going forward? > I didn’t care. None. > Eighty per cent of first-time resta…
To be fair, guys: find yourself in the right position in life and any act to try and enrich the thing you're calling life, enlighten yourself, and improve your lot will be considered irrational by somebody . Best take a few steps back. He's brazen, and maybe a bit dumb. I'd probably get along with calling him too proud, mostly. Now to reduce myself to platitudes: at least he did something. That's living. Who deserves…
> at least he did something.
I mean no offense, because I do sorta appreciate what you're going for, but this is almost the most philosophically, semantically, and most sillily empty sentence that exists.
Everyone does something. People who do 'nothing' do something. We only praise people whom succeed publicly or fail publicly. Even then, we only praise the people who fail when we ideologically align with them. We don't praise people who go out there and try to start a hate group, nor the ones who succeed.
Trying isn't really something that should count to other people. I won't say it shouldn't count to the person who tried it; self-esteem is a very personal thing. Failure shouldn't necessarily be a bad thing personally either, but let's not pretend that it's usually a good thing. The vast majority of failures are just failures. Starting a bead store in 2017 isn't a good idea, and we shouldn't congratulate my mother-in-law for doing it and wasting 30k in investments, nor should we congratulate her investors.
Edit:
Also, can anyone tell me if I should have used 'who' or 'whom' here? I don't 'think' it's the direct object, but I will defer to someone else:
'We don't praise people who go out there and try to start a hate group'
Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know much about running a restaurant, but I figured he'd be in big trouble as soon as I read that number after reading the condition of the place. I've done remodelings, and I'm pretty sure that just remodeling that place alone would eat up the entire $60k. I have to figure that bootstrapping a new restaurant would run at least that much on its own, between laying in food, kitchen equipment, hiring staff, doi…
I'm surprised there isn't a big WeWork for restaurant start-ups. A large space converted into numerous kitchens, that can be rented for relatively inexpensively (no large upfront cost to buy equipment or the building, no large initial lease, etc). The WeKitchen owner would have its own inventory of kitchen equipment that could be rented and moved as needed, to facilitate a lot of various types of kitchen arrangements…
There is actually something like this in Pittsburgh: http://www.smallmangalley.org. Although it's more of a restaurant incubator than just a space to cook.
Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.
#126ive always liked the idea of automated restaurants. weve seen what automation has done for car production, so its interesting to imagine what an automated restaurant might be like. since the food is the product of very exact expenditures of energy, time and resources, you could forecast, resupply and otherwise manage your output and resource levels in a much more accurate way, for one.
and of course, you could make the food a lot faster i would imagine. and you could make it perfect every time. and you wouldnt have to pay people huge amounts of money to make it. i would also advocate for automating the delivery of the food to the table but that might be off putting to customers, so you could just build a system that would automate most of the mental load of managing tables and just use your human employees as meat puppets for the delivery software. perhaps something like google glass could be used. i bet you could reduce your serving staff very dramatically by doing that.
and as for ingredients, you could even grow some of them. ive seen videos about restaurants in new york that use roof top aquaponics systems to grow all their vegetables. whether on the roof or off site, one would need to run both production and processing and delivery in order for uniform quality to be achieved. the quality of the ingredients is supremely important -- i went to sauls in the bay area and their cheese burger literally gave me pause. if you want to know the difference between average ingredients and good ingredients, go try the cheese burger at sauls medium well.
even outside of automation, there are so many improvements to be made. i used to work in a restaurant and they would cook food on these large woks. i would guess more than a third of the energy from the flames below simply go around the wok and up out of the vent hood. automating the heating of the food would probably make it much easier to capture and use all of that thermal energy instead of half.
Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.
#127> In 2011, I applied to operate a booth at the Toronto Underground Food Market [...] my fingers cramping so severely from peeling 100 pounds of potatoes that I almost called 911. [...] I lost money So his first experience was extremely painful, almost landed you in the emergency room, and you lost money on it. What valuable lessons he learned going forward? > I didn’t care. None. > Eighty per cent of first-time resta…
Have you ever heard the expression hindsight is 20/20?
Yes, he made a lot of mistakes but it wasn't clear to him at the time. And of course he didn't know what he was bad at. We are all bad at several things.
It's good to keep these things in mind, whether it is for a restaurant or a tech startup.
Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.
#128> 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.
Many of my dreams have died after I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation of startup costs and revenue potential.
Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, guys: find yourself in the right position in life and any act to try and enrich the thing you're calling life, enlighten yourself, and improve your lot will be considered irrational by somebody . Best take a few steps back. He's brazen, and maybe a bit dumb. I'd probably get along with calling him too proud, mostly. Now to reduce myself to platitudes: at least he did something. That's living. Who deserves…
> at least he did something. I mean no offense, because I do sorta appreciate what you're going for, but this is almost the most philosophically, semantically, and most sillily empty sentence that exists. Everyone does something. People who do 'nothing' do something. We only praise people whom succeed publicly or fail publicly. Even then, we only praise the people who fail when we ideologically align with them. We do…
Sure, sure—but you're cutting one small phrase out of my larger sentiment. I know it's a dumb platitude. I said as much. I'd prefer the focus of my comment be the rest of it.
I didn't think I had to break it down further, and I was trying to be cool and all that, but what I was trying to say is: [if you know that area of Toronto, the location he chose was not that out of the way business-wise, but it is a little bit and ] he was trying to bring growth and culture to an area of his city that needs it. He was trying to do something that would have a significant positive impact for his family and his community. That seems like a good thing to me, overall.
He didn't do everything wrong. The reviews he received, being rated higher at some point than Bar Isabel (one of the best, if not the, best Spanish restaurant in the city), and Cafe Boulud (one of the finest French restaurants in the city at the Four Seasons in Yorkville) are substantial.
Wasn't congratulating the guy. He's got a tough road ahead. I'm just encouraging the humanist understanding treatment vs. hard-analytical treatment of the article. He already knows he's screwed He's said as much. That might mean he wrote it for another reason, no? It certainly isn't encouraging charity. Maybe he just wrote it for people like himself to read? I think that's a good starting question.
Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.
#130> In 2011, I applied to operate a booth at the Toronto Underground Food Market [...] my fingers cramping so severely from peeling 100 pounds of potatoes that I almost called 911. [...] I lost money So his first experience was extremely painful, almost landed you in the emergency room, and you lost money on it. What valuable lessons he learned going forward? > I didn’t care. None. > Eighty per cent of first-time resta…
To be fair, guys: find yourself in the right position in life and any act to try and enrich the thing you're calling life, enlighten yourself, and improve your lot will be considered irrational by somebody . Best take a few steps back. He's brazen, and maybe a bit dumb. I'd probably get along with calling him too proud, mostly. Now to reduce myself to platitudes: at least he did something. That's living. Who deserves…
Unfortunately I agree with your intent (going after your dreams, trying to enrich your life or enlighten yourself in a way that may seem crazy to most) but disagree that it can be applied here.
He literally did nothing to prepare himself to fulfill his dream other than a mandatory 3 months of lazily being a line cook learning nothing, and a weekend cooking at a festival.
I'm not in the food industry, but off the top of my head here are basic things I would advise to prepare yourself for success:
1. Get yourself a year of runway so that you can spend 1 year being a restaurant owner's apprentice. Spend 3 months being a line cook, 3 months working bar, 3 months wait staff, and 3 months helping with the book. 2. Use this year network with restaurant owners. Agree to buy 10 them drinks so they can tell you about their biggest mistakes. This This plan took me 10 minutes to think of and could probably be vastly improved. Instead he just hoped things would somehow work out. At some point you shouldn't applaud someone for following their dreams and instead just call it what it is, dumb.