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.
#2This is really something everyone who opens a restaurant should be prepared for. An overwhelming majority of restaurants go out of business within a few years. It's a really difficult profession to be a part of, and if you want to be successful you've got to make some serious sacrifices--even then that might not be enough.
Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.
#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.
Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.
#4Running a restaurant is hard and unsurprisingly its even harder if you never have run one before. Staffing, food cost, vender management and health code malarky: these are some of the first things that make or break a restaurant. Then maybe location. Quality of food clearly doesn't make the list, at least not disconnected from price as Dominos, McDonalds and Starbucks succeed with high probability. Sad to see a vanity project eat up someones life.
Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.
#5This is really something everyone who opens a restaurant should be prepared for. An overwhelming majority of restaurants go out of business within a few years. It's a really difficult profession to be a part of, and if you want to be successful you've got to make some serious sacrifices--even then that might not be enough.
There was a Wall Street Journal article a few weeks ago that said banks were being far too lenient about giving out loans to restaurants and pumping money into an essentially dying, unforgiving market. I actually thought the WSJ was a little hard on the banks, since restaurants are so notoriously hard, but I wonder if this is more of systemic issue.
Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.
#6> 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?
Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.
#7> 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?
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Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.
#8This is really something everyone who opens a restaurant should be prepared for. An overwhelming majority of restaurants go out of business within a few years. It's a really difficult profession to be a part of, and if you want to be successful you've got to make some serious sacrifices--even then that might not be enough.
And yet it sounds as if his restaurant wasn't totally nonviable, he just didn't have nearly enough runway for all his first-time mistakes. He might even be successful next time with what he's learnt, if he had the stomach for another go … and another $200k starting capital …
Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.
#9I am surprised by the lack of up front number crunching that he did, seeing as his previous job was as an analyst.
Re: I poured my blood, sweat and life savings into my restaurant. It ruined my life.
#10> 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.
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, doing marketing, permits and taxes, etc.