Opening a restaurant can be an interesting business for those who are fond of cooking and enjoying great foods. The problem is ways on how to open a restaurant may not be as easy as your imagination. It can be daunting task, particularly when you have no experience in running business in this industry. Fortunately, many kinds of online tools like online forum and social media, can help you identify the core business problems and possible solutions.

How to Open a Restaurant: by Kevin Boehm and Rob Katz

Co-founders of Chicago-based Boka Restaurant Group – Kevin Boehm and Rob Katz – shared their experience in opening and running a restaurant business on Forbes lately. The following are some of them:

Building the Business Foundation

Before running Boka Restaurant Group, Kevin Boehm and Rob Katz made a shared agreement on the partnership. They took care of the entire minutia on their own way. They discussed the requirements and built their own supporting systems and infrastructure. At the beginning of the partnership, they did not delegate the tasks properly due to lack of trust and faith between both of them. However, they finally got the faith and trust after being in the partnership for sometime.

Based on their experience, Boehm and Katz noted that it is important for the co-founders to build the foundation as soon as possible. This way, you can run the business with trust and delegate the tasks properly.

Being Vigilant

For Boehm and Katz, being vigilant is the key for how to open a restaurant. You need to pay attention to even the smallest details, since the margin of restaurant business is too small. In other words, never leave any room even for small errors, since they can ruin the business.   The small details may include chair design, table placement, plating, or use of tableware, and many more.

Purchasing Above Your Weight

This seems counter-productive to the small margin in restaurant business, right? However, Boehm and Katz have a distinctive opinion on this aspect. They agreed to establish the business in higher-priced area instead of cheaper area. Then, they knew that they made the right decision. Establishing a restaurant in premium areas can be costlier, but it is worthy the profits. Therefore, do not be afraid of purchasing above your weight when it comes to location.

Being Realistic and Ready for Adaptation

Restaurant business can be very dynamic, as it depends upon the customers’ taste of foods, food trends, and many more. Therefore, make sure you do a close control on your data, such as daily or weekly visitor data. This way, you can detect the behavioral change as early as possible and make necessary adaptation for it.

Furthermore, a restaurant needs to have a realistic business model and specifies reachable targets. This way, you can set the strategies to achieve them in a specified timeframe. Then, do regular evaluation on your progress. Again, see the trends and behavioral changes and get ready for adaptation, if necessary.

Those ways on how to open a restaurant have been successful for Boehm and Katz. Make sure to analyze them and see whether they can work for you. However, the most important thing is that you have to know your strengths, weakness, and concept in running the restaurant.