What does it take to create a successful restaurant?

Originally posted on Quora, replicated here. Please let me know what you think, I am genuinely interested in your thoughts.

I presume for this write-up that “success” means to make more money than you spend, have a steady and predictable diner ecosystem, enjoy your work, and are – if not plastered with awards – at least regarded as a good choice to spend money on food.

So, what does it take. First of all it takes a great crew to make this happen. Some restaurants “come together” in the fire of hot service nights, others enter the business as a unit (some chefs are famous for bringing their brigades with them wherever they go, same for front of the house (FoH) leaders and personnel), but it’s always the job of the restaurant’s leadership to enable and support the forging and maintenance of this team.

Secondly it takes great leadership. Good leaders plan ahead and allow everyone to partake in successes (and give everyone equal credit for them) while keeping hardships and failures from them. Good leaders are interfaces between the many aspects of a restaurant, from diners to FoH and back of the house (BoH) staff, from suppliers to the regulatory and legal representatives of city, state, and other entities. Good leaders are in tune with the community, the food, and the restaurant itself. I always tell people to think of the community as a sound wave – good leaders hum in tune and compliment it, they’re not trying to drown it out or to go against it.

Next it takes great food. Great food doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive. Great food is what people want to eat. Great food comes from great suppliers and is made by a great team. Once the first two, leadership and team, are in place, food is just a simple extension of those things. A chef with a vision, a restaurateur with enough trust but good oversight, and service that compliments and enhances the food, that’s the baseline for this particular aspect. It doesn’t matter if you sell wraps from the counter or fancy prix fixe in muted light.

What follows is service. From the second your diners enter the place they have to feel not only welcome but sheltered and “waited on”. Again, burger from a grill or salmon en papillote, a successful restaurant, something people come back to, doesn’t skimp on hospitality. That can be small things or big things. “Never start anything you can not deliver 110% on” is my motto here. Hire good service personnel and make them stakeholders in the success of the restaurant not just their own tips. Make them identify with the place. If I am in a new town looking for a gig I usually go to the well known late night bars where FoH and BoH hang out after work. The difference between a failing restaurant and a successful one is usually rather easily discerned by talking to one of their servers. If I get a “I am a server at X” as the first line, I know I am looking at a decent place. If “I am a writer/actor/student but I make some money waiting at Y” is the line … I am cautious to say the least.

All this combined gets a good start on that front. Now we have to look at the foundation that makes these things possible.

Money. No one wants to talk about it. But a restaurant needs it. More than most other businesses. If you are selling computer games and don’t come through with your payments someone will come and repossess the games. Sell cars and the same thing will happen. Food items are lost the second they leave the warehouse, so your purveyors will ask for money up front and/or a solid history of buying and paying. The better one’s financial backing, the better purveyors one can approach. Cheap places will deliver cheap food at higher risks to the seller. Good places won’t.

It doesn’t end there. Money makes kitchens happen. A good kitchen can push a good team into great food. A bad kitchen can still turn out excellent items but the cost, in human capital and long term costs, is much higher. Money also makes service happen. Better glasses, better plates, better linens, faster service, less returns, all that can be bought with money and becomes more and more an issue the less money there is.

I generally tell people to never start a place unless they have at least a year’s worth of operating and food cost expenses in the bank plus whatever it takes to turn the place into “your” place. Some laugh, some shrug, some go and raise the money. Guess which places I still eat at…

Once money is settled, it’s the restaurant itself, its vision. I want to play a game of 3×3 with you, one I play a lot. Let’s assume you want to start your own restaurant and you know what you want. 3×3 is simple. In the following blanks add words, three each, that describe your vision. The one limitation is, you can not use slogans words or buzzwords. So, for example, “local”, or “fresh”, or “seasonal”, or “vegan”, or “delicious” is out.

Three sections, three words:

My DINING ROOM is:

_________________ and _______________ and ____________

My DINING MOOD is:

_________________ and _______________ and ____________

My CUISINE is:
_________________ and _______________ and ____________

Every vision needs stewards. Those people work hard to make it reality. Usually that’s your chef, your maitre d’ (or whoever else works the front), and your restaurateur. But success hinges on more people. Successful restaurants understand how and why the dish washer is as integral to the vision as the chef is – and make it happen.

Now we come to marketing. Marketing is important. There are so many ways to skin that cat, I’ll just slap a few out there. In general here’s a simple rule of thumb – any and all marketing that requires the restaurant to keep banging its drums to keep diners coming in is bad marketing. Any and all marketing that takes time from the jobs everyone in the restaurant has to do without paying for it double is bad marketing.

Consider this for a second: two scenarios. You are dining in your favorite place when, suddenly, the doors to the kitchen swing open. A loud, teutonic, voice, honed by years of military service and working in loud kitchens, screams at you: “My name is Jonas M Luster. I am the best chef in the universe. Be amazed by my creations and worship me. You may call me “The Creator”.”

Now consider the other possibility. After you are done eating, your check signed and paid for, I join you at the table. I ask questions. How did you like it? How was the beef? Were you treated well? What can I do to make you even happier next time? And I listen. A lot.

Good marketing is the second kind. Informations instead of proclamation. Interest instead of strutting around like a mad cock. “Conversation” that means listening more than talking, receiving instead of broadcasting.

What is good marketing then? Good marketing is anything that makes diners feel and be in control of their dining experience. And that makes them want to relinquish some of that control because they trust. It doesn’t matter, again, if that’s a dirty water hot dog stand in NYC or the French Laundry.

After all this is said and done, after diners know about the place and come to find everything they expect and more, every time they come, there is only one things left to do.

Consistency. Being consistent is the marrow to the body of dining. It is what, deep inside, makes us successful. No roller coaster rides of service quality. Next months’ steak has to be as good as this months’ and last months’. Even where dishes change and servers rotate and wallpaper gets replaced, the consistency in vision, the dependability, is what makes people come back and makes places successful.

All this can, and most often will, make a successful restaurant. Be open to challenges, be ready for roadblocks and pains, be consistent in a solid and firm vision, and you will be a success…Edit