Running a Restaurant

5 Tough but Important Truths You Learn Running a Restaurant

Whether stopping for a quick bite or going out to celebrate a major event, millions of people make daily visits to restaurants. On any given day, patrons spend some $1.9 billion at restaurants in the United States, with total national sales amounting to more than $709.2 billion, according to information from the National Restaurant Association.

Someone has to run all those restaurants, and one of them may be you. You may start small and open a local eatery that gradually builds a faithful following, or you may invest in an already well-known national franchise. You may even be happy managing a restaurant owned by someone else. The National Restaurant Association notes that 80 percent of restaurant owners say they started out with an entry-level position in the food industry, while 90 percent of restaurant managers indicate they started at the bottom and worked their way up.

If you have an interest in cooking, management, and customer service, a career in restaurant management may be for you. Before tying on your apron and making a commitment to life in the kitchen, you should know some of the more difficult facts about running a restaurant.

Here are six tough but important truths that you may quickly and thoroughly learn as a restaurant manager.

  1. You're going to regularly put in long hours. Restaurant managers don't just burn the midnight oil, they consume it by the tankful. Long hours are the norm in the restaurant business, especially for those in charge of making sure the restaurant is ready to open and is running smoothly throughout the day. Managers commonly arrive hours before the restaurant opens to do prep work and get the place ready to open. Those same managers can frequently find themselves still at work hours after the restaurant closes, making sure that everything is cleaned, perishables are stored, and money is counted and deposits made. Then they'll turn around and do it all over again the next day.
  2. You're going to be physically exhausted and mentally drained sometimes. The long hours and the pace required to meet customer needs in a restaurant can be physically taxing. You'll spend plenty of time on your feet, moving around the kitchen, checking with customers in the dining room, taking care of administrative matters in the office, and dealing with common problems and crises as they come up. The work can be mentally draining as well, stressing your patience and concentration.
  3. You'll get to see how creative employees can be at dodging work. Of course you'll make every effort to assemble the best staff possible, but people being people, sometimes you might be fooled and hire someone who isn't cut out for the restaurant lifestyle. Employees can show astonishing creativity in the excuses they provide for not being able to come to work. And plenty of legitimate events will occur, such as illness or injury that will keep your employees occupied elsewhere, often when you need them most. When employees aren't available, you may have to be willing to step in and do their jobs at the same time you're doing your own.
  4. You'll have to have a realistic view of your market and competition. Restaurant management requires a deep understanding of your local market and the competitors who are working in that market. You can find out much of this information from trade organizations or local business groups, but you will also have to be willing to do the footwork to find out what other local restaurants are up to. You also have to know what other local establishments are offering to their customers. If your town is already saturated with pizza restaurants, for example, reconsider starting yet another one, or give extra thought to a management position in the newest one that's opened up.
  5. You'd better have a passion for it. In the end, if you want to be a restaurant manager or owner, you'd better have a passion for it. If you don't have a deep interest in the restaurant business and the willingness to stick it out through the challenges and frustrations, the burns, the wacky employees, and the irate customers, you won't last long and your business may fail.

Do You Dream of Running a Restaurant?

By now you should know if you have what it takes to run a restaurant. Are you willing to put in the time, the hours, the physical and mental labor needed to keep the ovens hot, the grills sizzling, and the plates moving to your customers? If so, ECPI University's Bachelor of Science in Food Service Management could help prepare you for the challenges and rewards you'll receive as a manager at any level in a restaurant. Contact ECPI University today for more information and for further help learning about the opportunities available in the food service and management field. It could be the Best Decision You Ever Make!

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