The restaurant business is considered to be a high-risk business proposition for multiple reasons. The competition in the sector is at a loft level, and a lot of details need to be perfect. As a reputable study suggests, as many as 60% of businesses fail in their first year alone.
In this article, we’ll help to increase your chances of surviving in your new restaurant business by elucidating the common problems encountered in restaurants. Beyond that, we’ll also discuss the solution to each requisite problem.
The Menu
A very popular problem amongst restaurants is their menu list. The menu list of some restaurants are filled with food they have no idea about how to prepare them. This creates an unserious impression in the eyes of customers.
Your menu should include the right set of meals for your locality, and each menu should come at an appropriate price for your target market.
Instead of having a long list of meals on your menu, consider keeping your menu list in check. Rather than having a multiple page menu with meals that you can’t prepare well, consider a one-page menu with meals you’re extremely good at preparing.
Concentrate on your menu’s layout and try to make it more readable. You can achieve things by doing the following:
- Keep the menus clean
- Ensure the wordings are large enough
- Don’t use symbols
- Regularly update your menu
Customer service
Due to some restaurant owners’ lack of understanding of the importance of a top-notch quality workforce, they hire untrained workers that churn out poor service. Poor customer service is usually a deal-breaker for most customers, so much of a deal-breaker that it’ll cancel out any great impression they might have had from your meal.
The ultimate key to excelling in this business is having customers that always return, and a way to ensure this is through top-notch customer service.
Unique Selling Point
Except with international food chains, most restaurants lack any Unique Selling Point. This is why most customers are hardly loyal to any local restaurant.
What is your restaurant about? Is it a bar or a bakery? Romantic or diner experience? You should brand your restaurant in a way that your customers can easily tell what it’s about.
While having excellent customer service and a great menu are vital to your restaurant, they don’t qualify as a USP; this is basically meeting your customers’ expectations.
Employee Turnover
Among the numerous challenges faced in operating a restaurant is losing key employees. Restaurants are teenagers’ top choice to secure their first job, which means they hardly stay long. You can lose a lot of money to employee turnover because it cost money to hire new staff and train them.
To prevent this, you should think about who you hire. Prioritize individuals that have a long term plan to work in a restaurant. Ensure they have a sense of ownership in the business, and treat them with respect.
Health and Hygiene
You’ll start having major issues in your restaurant when you don’t meet the requisite health and hygiene requirements. It’s difficult but extremely important to maintain
Management
Management is one of the most vital pieces of having a successful restaurant. It’s imperative that you understand ways to analyze your business and ensure you’re still profitable.
Of all the common problems encountered in restaurants, this is the most recurrent as it requires some level of skills.
Capital
Lastly, we’ve gotten to a point where most restaurant owners have big issues. The lack of sufficient capital is responsible for the demise of numerous restaurants, and this is because restaurants require huge capital to run before it gradually starts yielding profit.
Before you start a restaurant business, you should have at least enough to cater for the needs of your restaurant for a year.
In Summary
This article is written for new restaurant owners that want to know some common problems encountered in restaurants, and how to solve them