7 Things You Need to Run a Successful Restaurant
Running a restaurant isn’t only about good food, it is about creating a entire positive experience for the customer, with operations that work, and creates profits.
Over the years I have observed many different restaurants and concepts, and have noted the following 7 key aspects that I believe every successful restaurant should have:
1. A strong brand image
From the moment the customer walks in front of your restaurant, it should be clear what you offer, from front-window singage to look & feel. Are you a restaurant, or a coffee shop? Do you offer an Asian or European cuisine ? Or is it fusion ?
Whichever direction you choose, the customer needs to understands what he can expect from your restaurant at first glance.
Unpolished storefronts will leave the customer confused, and reduce the likelihood they will stop and look at your store.
For example: if I walk in front of McDonalds, I know from their colors and pictures that I can expect a fast-food with burgers. Similarly if I walk in front of a coffee shop where I can clearly see the bar from the outside through the window: I know I can expect to have a sit and drink a coffee.
2. A simple and aligned menu
Unless you are a spohisticated food critic, a customer visits a restaurant to be guided through an experience, and this should also be the case in the menu.
Your menu is your opportunity to take the customer through your story: who are we, what do we offer and why did we start this journey. Customers are more attracted to personal stories, as it triggers empathy, authenticity and trust.
Your story can be very simple “we are a korean restaurant with korean food”, or it can be your menu mixed in with personal pictures (for example: the team, the restaurant construction, or your latest teambuilding). This second story is a lot more powerful.
Of course, like my university professor used to say: “keep it simple”. Ideally you should create a menu that not only takes the customer through your brand story, but also provides a quick and good overview of what you physically have to offer (food & drinks).
It should be simple and powerful: the customer should be able to read your menu with ease and easily find the dish he will order, while also learning about you.
If you are ever in Vietnam, I strongly recommend you visit Pizza 4Ps, a very succesfull local pizza (yes, pizza) chain in Vietnam. Both locals and foreigners absolutely love it. And I personnaly think they have the best menu & storytelling example I have ever seen.
3. Great service through training
We said the menu was about “telling your story”, but let’s not forget: your customers are here for the experience. And the experience will be almost entirely transmitted through the service.
You can hire good service staff, but even then they need to know who we are and what we offer to be able to deliver a service that is in line with the restaurant. And this is only possible through good training.
Guests come for the experience of being welcomed, heard, and cared for. A good attentive service will be just as importnat (maybe even more) than the meal itself. You need to make sure your customer leaves your restaurant with a smile, and only your service staff can provide that positive experience.
4. Presentation that works on social media
We can’t deny that, today, the two most powerful methods to get your restaurant “out there” are: word-of-mounth (which will always be the strongest, and is also why it is so important that your customers leave your restaurant with a smile) and social media. Social media has created for restaurants an “easy” and “low-cost” method to showcase your restaurant without customers having to physically walk in front of it.
This is a major opportunity for restaurants that should not be underestimated.
But what does this mean in practice ? And how do you make it work by keeping the investment low ?
You could opt for a full-on marketing communication and frequently create trendy videos and push your posts by paying Instagram’s marketing fees. But let’s be honest, most restaurants don’t have the time or budget to spend on this. There is a much simpler way to achieve the same results: make your food presentation “Instagram-worthy”: plate your dishes beautifully, offer a fun experience they can capture: torch the creme brûlé in front of the customers, or offer a sauceboat so the customer can pour sauce on his korean fried chicken.
Customers will capture the moment, which will create several effects: they will either share the moment online, share it with their friends, or physically store the picture on their phones. If your customers are sharing the moment online, this will be your strongest leverage as it will act as a word of mounth. And even if your customer only stores the picture on his phone without sharing it online (which would be the “worst” scenario of all) it will still be a reminder for him of the time he spent in your restaurant. And if the experience was positive, he might turn into a repeat customer.
There is one Italian restaurant in Brussels I love. And it is not because of the food: it is specifically because they will hand-whip the Zabaglione on a gas stove and in a copper pot right in front of you. That is a great experience, and something great for the customer to capture. I am going to be honest here: I have captured it, I have talked about it to my friends, and I will come back, just for this.
5. Clear processes and documentation
To keep the customer experience similar over time, there is no choice but to document your processes. Document your recipes, closing and opening tasks, cleaning shedules, and in general what you expect from your employees. Hang it up in the kitchen, make sure they are up to date, and show them to your teams so they know where they are and can refer to them when needed.
Staff turnover being generally high, documenting processes will ease up new staff training and guarantee that your service and quality levels stay the same. Creating clear task allocations will also provide a clear structure to the team, avoid misunderstandings and help them in taking initiatives around the kitchen and restaurant floor.
Additionally, as the staff can refer to the documentation when needed, managers can be confident that daily operations run smoothly, whether the manager is absent or not.
6. Realistic food & labour cost
Having great service and great food are great… but making sure they are aligned to your brand image and prices is more important. The industry standard for a belgian restaurant is currently 30% food cost, and 40% labour cost (used to be 30%, but the recent inflation and drops in consumer consumption have brought this up). This means that the cost of your food cannot be more than 30% and the cost of your labour cannot be more than 40% of your dish price.
For example: if my dish is sold at 15€ (VAT excluded), my food cost should be maximum 4,5€ (30%) and my labour cost maximum 6€ (40%). For food cost it makes sense to look at it from a dish point of view, but for labour cost you should look at it from a daily, or weekly perspective. If on Monday I sold for 1500€ (VAT excluded), my labour cost cannot be higher than 600€ for the day.
Of course this is a theory, in practice every restaurant is different: location, experience, food, market positionning, making these numbers unique for each. But complying to these thresholds is a great start.
7. A system to track revenue & costs
How do you know your restaurant is doing well, if you don’t know exactly what sales and costs you have each month ? Do you know how much you are spending to keep your restaurant online on UberEats and Deliveroo ? Do you know if what you sell through delivery platforms actually brings in profits ?
As restaurant margins are low, it is important you monitor your revenue and costs very closely. It doesn’t need to be super accurate, but it needs to give you a good overview of your restaurant status, and most importantly, it needs to work for you and give you the ability to take data-driven decisions. If the system is too time-consuming, it will be abandonned quickly and long-term benefits will be lost. So make sure it is easy to use and that you actually use the results to put corrective actions in place.
For example: it can be interesting to track how many drinks you sold of each brand - one week you might sell more kombucha than coca-cola - but you will most likely only actually use this data every few month to decide which drinks you should keep and which ones you should drop. So don’t create unnecessary work by tracking too much data. Again, “keep it simple”. Also, there are some great tools out there that can do the work for you, let me know what you are looking for and we can figure something out together.
With these 7 foundations: brand, menu, service, presentation, processes, cost control, and tracking, you are giving your restaurant the structure it needs not only to survive, but to succeed.
→ Do you also feel your restaurant could benefit from this kind of structure ? Every restaurant is unique, and the right solutions depend on your situation. Let’s identify together what would make the biggest impact for you.