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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.

#151

Post by iKlsR »

synicalx wrote: post #20

I've known two chefs who've gone on to start their own restaurants over the years, and the one thing they have in common (other than smoking) is they are REALLY highly strung. I don't just mean a little anxious/fidgety - they quite literally don't seem to be able to sit still even for a few seconds. Even little actions like pulling out a chair to sit down happens as fast as they're physically able to do it. Noisiest…

You ever seen Gordon Ramsey when he's demonstrating or standing in place gesticulating, dude is like a jackrabbit on meth, he can't keep still.

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

#152

Post by ImSkeptical »

gpsx wrote: post #127
Lazare wrote: post #76

> 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.

He makes a lot of mistakes that are just inexcusable though. For example, just when fights through the painful start, he shuts the restaurant down to give everyone a week off. A week! I've never run a restaurant, but my guess is that it's difficult to make money while being closed.

He doesn't do simple math to figure out how much money he'll need, what runway he has, or what he should be charging for his food. He pays three grand to incorporate a business, when a Google search tells him it could be done for far less. When he gets the opportunity to work for a few months in a restaurant, he squanders it.

Sure, hindsight is twenty twenty, but a lot of these obstacles aren't hard to see coming. If you're going to gamble with your life savings, your friend's money, and your family's financial future, you should do the research and put the thought in to make sure you aren't throwing it all away.

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

#153

Post by rconti »

jroseattle wrote: post #54

"What I lacked in experience I could make up for in enthusiasm." 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...

Or worse. See: "We have a great team, funding, want to start a startup, but have no idea what to do".

It would be like wanting to start a restaurant because you like to eat, but don't know how to cook or what kind of food you should focus on.

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

#154

Post by averagewall »

wheresmyusern wrote: post #126

ive 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 t…

Perhaps it can't scale up enough to make automation economical because the customers have to be located nearby. You might make enough of a particular dish to satisfy the whole neighborhood in your delivery radius but still be too small a scale for robots to be cheaper than humans.

I suppose TV dinners are made like you say, but they can be frozen and transported to allow higher volume production.

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

#155

Post by marak830 »

dahart wrote: post #81
notl4wy3r wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think that you'd work at a restaurant a little while before trying to start one. Learn the ropes a bit, etc. That has got to help with your chances of success.

While I agree deeply, it's kinda hard to get the right sort of experience without just jumping in. Owning and running a restaurant is very different from working at one, right? Same with software; I worked in software for a couple of decades before trying to start my own, and while it did help me with the writing software part, it didn't help me with the running the business and marketing and pitching parts. If anyth…

"Owning and running a restaurant is very different from working at one, right?".

Not if you have worked in a restaurant as a high level employee(eg exec chef) for quite a while.

(Exec chef here, 17 years experience)

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

#156

Post by marak830 »

kbos87 wrote: post #35

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 do…

The reason people like me don't talk about the valuable details is, it has taken me 17 years to learn those details, and I sell that expertiese :-)

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

#157

Post by [deleted] »

djsumdog wrote: post #139
Lazare wrote: post #76

> 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…

You know the story of the FedEx guy right? He could afford to pay the staff or put fuel in the planes; riveting speech; gambled the money in vegas and kept the company going. This guy is praised, but he was a fucking pyscho (literally). He didn't give a damn about his own staff and risked everything. He got lucky, made it big. If this guy had made it, we'd see him as a "The Hundred Foot Journey" style success story.…

[deleted]

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

#159

Post by JBlue42 »

adventured wrote: post #72
needcaffeine wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really that a factor with 24/7 surveillance and legal repercussions for theft? I mean...you're making it sound like it is, and I believe you but it's just so hard to people employees are that stupid.

Yes it's a big factor. Walmart employees, watched by 37 cameras from right over their heads, will still steal cash from the purchase flow. For an organization their size, it's a big problem. You can guess the kind of people you often get for $11 per hour, when you need a million of them (ie 1% stealing means you've got 10,000 people stealing from you). Not much has actually changed regarding this structurally, the su…

What if Walmart paid more than $11/hr to decrease the immediate incentive?

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

#160

Post by enqk »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #41

> 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.

I find this tendency in tech a lot: people don't seem to want to collect and analyze data about their software, check their budgets etc... For all the supposed "technical" ability, tech is awfully loose compared to people working in factories/logistics.
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