The Restaurant Addiction

I love this business, I love the industry, the people working in the business, the food, beverage and creativity. I have since I started working as a busser in Hawaii when I was 22. But I left it and pursued another career. Then in that career, specialized in the restaurant industry. Then, left that career and developed some restaurants, worked with some world- class operators, celebrities, celebrity chefs and some goofballs too. Well, that's it, my 30 year career in a paragraph.

Here's what I love about business. There is something called The Great Equalizer out there. It's a mysterious force. You can't see it. Can't buy it and in many cases, you really don't know about it until after it's become part of your life. It balances over-thinking and over-tinkering and really amazes me, particularly in the restaurant industry. Why? Here's why...

Business case #1: Smart, savvy, restaurant executive, WTF, from a public company leaves with fully vested stock options worth $5 million and intends to start a restaurant company.

In any event, he does this very entrepreneurial thing and spends months sourcing real estate, orders demographic studies, conducts focus groups, hires a consultant to write the business plan, generate a financial model and design a restaurant concept. WTF then invests $1.5 million of his own capital and $1.0 million from a landlord and opens his first independent restaurant. No corporate services to support, no national purchase contracts, no net. WTF works like a dog, calls all his former operator employees for advice and at the end of the year, has put in another $350,000, borrowed another $150,000 and is still barely at breakeven. Ugh.

Business case #2: Goofball, a former flea market vendor travels to Cabo San Lucas on vacation and sees a small restaurant and bar near the ocean with lines out the door. Goofball plants himself on a bar stool and drinks beers, eats food, talks with the bartender, customers and the hostess. Goes back to the hotel room, gets his laptop out and builds a spread on what this little shack was doing in revenue. Wow, says Goofball! I could do this, he says.

The next day, he takes a camera and completes his due diligence, including stealing a menu. Back to the states he goes. Six months later, Goofball is raising money from friends and family, hocking his condo and sets his sites on leasing a shack; and I mean a shack near the water in Laguna Beach. Burgers and beers to start...and the lines are out the door.

WTF did all the right things, and for the most part, so did Goofball. They just approached the market and built a business case differently. The Great Equalizer is a force to be embraced because start ups succeed and fail for any number of reasons. How many times have you said or heard, "man, they are successful in spite of themselves". Next time, remember they are successful because of the great force called The Equalizer.