How to Choose Restaurant Menu Items !!!

The Right Dishes for a New Restaurant Menu

Creating a restaurant menu can be overwhelming. What dishes should you offer and what should you skip? The ideal restaurant menu offers a balance of unique dishes and old favorites. It also has the right food cost to maintain profits (ummm…which is extremely important) and can be easily reproduced in the kitchen during a busy dinner rush. Avoid Food Fads on Your Restaurant Menu
Just like fashion, there are trends and fads in restaurant menu items. Remember micro-brew beers of the 1990s? They were everywhere. Low carb menu items were all the rage during the Atkins Diet phase. Like those Co-Ed Naked t-shirts you wore in college and your favorite Kurt Cobain-esque flannel shirt, some food trends are really popular, but eventually fade away. While you want your restaurant menu to be exciting and trendy, you need to keep perennial favorites as well. Think of a burger and fries as the little black dress of your menu. It can be dressed up –perhaps a California burger with guacamole and pepper jack cheese- or served plain. Either way, it has staying power with most menus.
Restaurant Menu Items Need to Have Low Food Cost
In order to keep profits up and prices affordable for customers, each item on your restaurant menu should be priced to determine its food cost- the actual amount it costs you to make the dish. Pricey ingredients (truffles, anyone?) will result in pricey menus. This doesn’t mean the food you order should be the cheapest available- quality is the most important aspect of creating menu items- but you need to balance high and low food costs to for a reasonable profit margin.
Keep Menu Dishes Easy to Prepare
Unless you are an ultra fine dining establishment, the menu items coming out of your restaurant kitchen need to be moved quickly and efficiently through the line. Any menu items that have fussy presentations can potentially bog down the kitchen staff during a lunch or dinner rush. This doesn’t mean food needs to be thrown onto plates lunch-lady style. You can still offer great presentations, but keep it simple. 
Items on a Restaurant Menu Should be Versatile
Cross utilization of menu items keeps food spoilage down and allows you to use ingredients in more than one dish. For example, if you offer a homemade spinach and artichoke dip, try to offer other items that feature both spinach and artichokes. It is also a good idea to update your menu periodically and remove items that aren’t selling. 

Planning for a Restaurant !!!

If you're planning on starting a restaurant, you've got a lot of company. In my experience, more people seek advice on launching a restaurant business than any other type of business. While that doesn't make your task easier, it does mean I can help with some tips.
To start, you need to plan your strategy very well. Your restaurant has to focus on some key elements that'll set it apart from the thousands of other eateries out there. These could be location, cuisine, decoration or even--good luck with this one--price. Maybe it's located where there's a lot of traffic, or across the hall from a gym, or near a bookstore, or outside a theater. Maybe there are no fish tacos in your town, or no good Italian restaurants. Maybe there are no cafes near the river with outside seating. You have to know why you're different. In short, don't try to please everybody generally; find your niche market, and please those people very well.
By differentiating your restaurant, you make marketing it much easier. Marketing is critical to restaurant success, but marketing can be expensive. And in most cases, the most effective restaurant marketing depends on repeat business and word-of-mouth. Think about how you choose a restaurant yourself--do you look through your Entertainment book or other coupon source? Do you research with a Zagat guide or online reviews? Or do you ask for recommendations from friends? Ask yourself how people will describe your restaurant and why they'll recommend it. If you can't put that short conversation into easy words, you're in trouble.
Also, if you have a choice, don't start a low-priced restaurant. Low-priced restaurants are much harder to market than mid- to high-priced restaurants. Fast-food franchises are everywhere, and they have a huge corner on that market. People believe in cheap food when they see strong branding and lots of customers. You don't want to be the dive on the corner that can't attract business.
Unless you're already partnered with an investor, you should assume you won't be. In general, restaurants aren't targets for professional investors because they're so risky. The few exceptions include celebrities who back restaurants that capitalize on their names, and well-known chefs and successful restaurant owners opening new venues.
Not having access to startup financing doesn't mean you shouldn't start the business. It means you should carefully decide whether you're going to start slowly, minding expenses, or borrow enough money to start big. Your borrowing options include commercial bank loans, which require assets you can stake as collateral, and SBA loans, which require less collateral than bank loans but still require you to put up 30 percent of the starting costs to qualify for the guaranteed loan. When in doubt about loans, go straight to your favorite bank and ask for advice.
Be sure to count your startup costs well. You don't want to get into a bind where you've spent half of what you thought you needed and you've run out of money. You'll probably have to rent a location and spend a few months fixing it up, and you may need employees some employees to help out during the fix-up period, too. Unless you're moving into an existing restaurant, you'll need to buy kitchen equipment, tables and chairs, cash registers, phone systems and décor to establish ambience. And then you need to budget for what's called "working capital" for the startup period when your spending exceeds your sales. Some say you need at least six months of expenses ready to go; others recommend having 12 months covered.
Your sales forecast is also important. I like to build a sales forecast based on unit sales, meaning meals and drinks, not just gross sales amounts. That helps me break the sales forecast into components I can count. How many tables do you have? How many meals will you serve on Friday night when the place is almost full? What does an average meal cost? How many drinks come with the meals? Then calculate unit sales, average revenue per unit and average cost per unit.
Then comes your expense forecast. With meals and drinks already priced out, your remaining operating expenses are mainly people, rent and other fixed costs. Estimate those per month, and match them to your sales forecast.
When all the costs are tallied, you'll get a good picture of the cash flow and how much money you'll need to keep the restaurant operational. During the early months of startup, your cash flow probably won't cover all your expenses, so you'll want your plan to include how you'll cover the difference.
Finally, as you get started, remember that business plans continually go out of date, and good business plans are never done. You should take an hour or so every month to review the difference between what you planned and what actually happened, and update your plan accordingly.

10 Restaurant Menu Design Ideas !!!

Summary: If you got excellent restaurant menu design ideas with good choice of content, you got good menu and certainly you will get new guests which can become your regular guests and the best ambassadors of your restaurant. Restaurant menu design are very important but often disregarded part of the restaurant marketing.

Successful restaurateurs have already said goodbye to the classic menus, which were simply "just fine", but did not make a profit. Menus should be successful tool and serve as the good advertising. This will happened only if they have meet the essential requirements. This means that they are seasonal, visually pleasant, sophisticated, clear, various, targeted to a specific group of guests, and definitely must to be credible. This "silent salesperson" does not occur by accident - it needs to be strategically planned.
Good menus should be designed to match specific groups of guests, those with deeper, and those with less deep pockets. If menus are used and understood as a marketing tool, they could increase your traffic in one season and bring more visitors to your restaurant.

1. Four levels of menus

First, the menu is a list of restaurants offer with listed prices. But the restaurant's menu goes a lot further than that and has a big marketing function.
All you need to know about a restaurant should be found in the menu.
Since approximately 90% of guests still do not know what they want to eat when they enter in the restaurant, and 85% of them are carefully viewing and listing menu approximately for a 5 minutes, we can say that the menu is used on an emotional and effective level. Restaurant menu must meet the relevant tasks such as: Elective assistant, Additional vendor, Consultant for sale, Sales promoter and Funny Colorful notebook. It must arouses the curiosity, become gourmet deceiver, make a (food) wishes come true, etc..
Menu should also inform your costumer about some extra offers and opportunities too, like possibility of renting halls for various events, organization of catering, seminars and courses that can be held in the facility, special program for sale etc. Also menu should contain a reference to the website and Facebook page (link or QR code), articles and comments from newspapers and  hospitality web sites and flyers with the special offer.

2. How offer should be designed in your restaurant menu 

In all available menus there are so called "runners" which is popular food and "weak" food offer. Runners is best selling food often popular standard dishes - which are recognizable. If you look better you will notice that 20% of the total supply of food on the menu, make up 80% of sales. Successful restaurateur knows which food should get so-called. "star" profile. These are the "runners" who leaves the most money in the cash register.
How can you make a star dish? You should make it distinctive.  Customers should be able to recognize the uniqueness of your restaurant. For example if your restaurant offering a dish that has a unique shape and flavor and it is the one and only like that in your part of town you get the goal. Based on this, you can even increase the price. Follow the golden rule: Stars from the menu should be combined with the stars from the wine card.

3. The menu structure

The first thing which should be done when structuring menu is to:

• make a menu content - offer which will be included in the menu,
• then comes the the accompanying text,
• and at the end – menu design.

You should be aware these important things :

1. Right side of menu always sells more then left one.
2. Good texts in menus emphasize the specificity of that choice.
3. The first and the last dish placed in the menu card are in sections of commonly ordered dishes.

So it is clear where and how the stars of menu should be positioned in menu .A weak supply (those with a smaller margin) that we have on the menu, should be put on the left side of menu card.

4. Menu contents 

Be very careful with selection of the menu contents. Small number of offered dishes in the menu is not a mistake, but rather an indicator of quality. If you offered more food that would not make more traffic, and often will only confuse the customers. If your restaurant has clearl profile then it has better position in catering industry and your menu may contain less food/dishes. In this way your dishes got always the same unique taste which make your restaurant distinctive.

5. Menu design

Content determines the form of the menu – form may not be determined by the content. But definitely what form determines is the menu effect. So read carefully those restaurant menu design ideas. Menus are part of the marketing advertising. They must be harmonized with website, business cards, brochures, images, offers and billboards. Consistency in design, color, font and logo is important for recognition and restaurant image. Standard, plastic menus are a total failure. Caterers sale pleasure and a menu just has to evoke that. Do not let the decision for change of menu design is made only to replace "old for new". Take the opportunity to completely change the contents of the menu, of course, if it is necessary.

6. Professional design of menu

Find a professional graphic designer to design your restaurant menu if you can or made it by your own with menu templates. The menu title and the material from which it is made, should represent the type and quality of your restaurant. Hand-written menus indicate that the object is traditional, and that their guests can enjoy local dishes in your restaurant. Will the menu include pictograms and photos, depending on the style of the object, but certainly be aware that these graphical elements can make up to 15% more profit.
But at the same time never forget:
• Menus must be clearly readable
• Even in poor lighting conditions, for older people or people with low vision
• Pay attention to the font size, font and contrast.

7. Flyers

Gusts gladly take with them flyers which contain restaurants offer. Be sure that flyer contain all additional information : announcements, suggestions for outings, coupons, and advertisements. Flyers should be immediately reimbursed as soon as they disappear.
Flyers with an offer come "to the people" on various ways: for example, at the exit of the building, mailboxes, etc. In this world there are more and more vegetarians, vegans, diabetics and people with allergies to certain foods, and people who dine under religious aspects. The special menus will complement the main menu. Restaurants which have special menus for groups of guests have a much more profit, and can be proud on their service at a high level.

8. Prices in the menu

Price must be clear and credible - this should be certainly regulated by law . Psychology gives testimony for prices determination: Amounts that end with 95 or 99 cents are insignificant. But who does not increase the price from 50 to 80 or 90 cents has lost his money.
The most important note is: The menu is not price list. The menu which has been made in order to price level is not the best one. Guest should not choose his own dish regarding how much it costs, but according to what do they like to eat. The best solution is to mix more expensive and less expensive dishes in your restaurant menu.

9. Analysis of the menu

Modern designed menu is simple and affordable way to get traffic and to improve the catering business, but also to please the customer.
Recipe for success:

1. Regular analysis
   
2. Menu modification

Optimize menu gradually by strengthening peaks in the menus and ejecting failures. We suggest that you look at your menu card with the eyes of your guest because then you will easily notice the flaws and mistakes. Also, ask your employees for advice, because they are the ones that customers ask questions related to food and drinks. Check with them about costumers questions and where they had no answers in the menu. It is required to maintain the menu, and this includes daily cleaning, invisible repairing, and replacement of defective or fatty menus.

10. Tell me a story

We can say that the menu advance sale - and the staff performing the actual sales communication. Employees need to learn to look at the menu as a tool of communication. Domestic cuisine is a very popular - and so the story of the region and the place where it begins is very interesting. Guests highly appreciate and respect story about authenticity, family, and tradition - a story which provide additional information about the background and origin. In this way, the menu motivate the order, shows the power spectrum, as well as a fun way of showing the philosophy and identity of your restaurant. Creativity in the kitchen enticing guests. The menu also can do it the same. If you leave the menu at the table after ordering, it certainly provides additional sales.That s because nine out of ten guests in your restaurant after the election and ordering retake menu in their hands, and continue to browse it because it was fun. So most of them decide to order additional dish or drink or maybe desert. The good menu fulfill well its function as a seller, when telling different kind of stories. About the catering object, the staff, the restaurants theme etc. Almost every dish can tell some story. For example, about the origin of dishes, about its name, who and when was invented recipe, a particular way of preparing dishes, etc.

Do you dream of opening a restaurant? !!!

Are you ready to wear a lot of hats at once? At minimum, it’s a job for a hard worker who understands and can handle such diverse concerns as cooking, bookkeeping, marketing and managing people.
You know it’s going to be hard. But you feel like you’re up to the challenge. These tips from restauranteurs who went through the wringer and survived could help bring those dreams a little bit closer to reality.
What’s your concept?
What type of restaurant do you want? Will you serve the food that you like to cook? Or are you thinking about a franchise? With a franchise, you get a built-in menu, ready-made marketing and instant name recognition. If you are cooking this business up from scratch, you’ll need to first come up with a menu that reflects your passion and your expertise. What are your price points? Is there a demographic market yearning what you have in mind?  These are all questions you’ll consider as you develop your business plan.
Got a good location?
Location, location, location. It is the one factor that can make or break your biz. Luckily, it’s also a variable that you control. Choosing the right location invariably depends on accessibility, local employment and the demographic makeup of the neighborhood. Once you’ve decided on a concept, find a place where the residents want what you’ll be serving, one where they will pay what you’ll be charging.
Got a good name?
It’s smart to give your restaurant a name that reflects its menu. It’s also smart to have a name that’s easy to recall (or spell, in case customers will be ordering online). Make a positive first impression with a name that tells the world who you are.
Remember: The menu tells your story.
The menu is what will bring customers in the first place. So the design deserves serious attention.  A clean, easy-to-read menu will guide your guests to the items they seek.  Dish names are as important as the layout and design of the menu, so make them descriptive and distinctive.
Get the right people.
The right staff is the right stuff in the restaurant business. Competent, trained staff is critical. No matter how fancy the cuisine or how talented the chef, the front of the house and back of the house employees must be efficient and knowledgeable. The ones who will be dealing with the public have to do it with grace and likability. Your entire team has to make each person who sits down for a meal feel truly welcome.
Get the right gear.
Equipping the establishment will probably be your biggest up-front expense. The bulk of your budget will go to outfitting your kitchen, your dining area and your bar. Here’s where the high failure rate of new restaurants can actually work in your favor; there is always used equipment available thanks to restaurants that went belly-up. Craigslist is a restaurant supply graveyard (or goldmine, if you’re an optimist). Pro tip: If you’re planning on getting used or leased equipment, make sure that you or someone on your staff is familiar with the items. You don’t want to get burned by paying cold cash for a stove that doesn’t work.

Four Time-Saving Tips for Restaurant Owners/Managers !!!

How much time do you spend each week growing your restaurant business as opposed to running it?

If you’re like 99% of restaurant owners and managers, your answer is probably “not nearly enough.”
After all, running a restaurant is a huge job that can keep you busy from the start of your day until late into the night. So it’s no wonder you can’t find the time to focus on marketing strategies that can help you grow your business.
The good news is, an effective profit-generating marketing plan doesn’t have to take weeks to plan and execute.

Today I’d like to share my top 4 time saving-tips to help you set up an effective marketing plan that will help grow your business huge – working less than 5 hours a week on it.

… And yes, you DO have 5 extra hours a week to spend on your marketing, and we’ll show you where to find them.
Time-Saving Tip 1: Schedule 1 Hour a Week for Planning
The best time to do this would be every Sunday afternoon or early Monday morning, when business is slow. This allows you to create a schedule for the week ahead that identifies all the important tasks you need to accomplish and blocks off times when you can work on them.
We suggest you schedule your “planning hour” for the same time every week, so that you create a rhythm that allows for maximum productivity.
Time-Saving Tip 2: Spend 30 Minutes 3x a Week on Marketing Communications
In order to effectively market your business, you are going to have to stay on top of regular marketing communications tasks such as:

• Updating your restaurant website/blog
• Responding to positive and negative reviews of your restaurant on popular review sites such as Yelp.com and CitySearch.com
• Creating coupons and free gift cards to hand out to your customers in order to encourage repeat business
• Writing up posters announcing your upcoming special events
• Creating newspaper ads to promote upcoming events

The best way to manage this process is to schedule 30-minute blocks three times a week for yourself to work on these tasks. Again, if you schedule these 30-minute blocks for the same times each week you’ll  create a rhythm that will help you to be more productive.
Time-Saving Tip 3: Always Keep a Pen and a Notepad in Your Pocket
As a restaurant owner or manager, you spend a lot of time on the floor, dealing with your staff and customers. And all that time on the floor is time you’re not spending at your desk, working on your marketing plan.
… Or is it?
The truth is, when you’re in the thick of it, listening to your customers and overseeing your staff—that’s when some of your best marketing ideas can come to mind. You might suddenly think up a status update you’d like to share with your Facebook followers. Or maybe you’ll come up with a great idea for an upcoming promotion or special event.
If you jot your ideas down as they occur to you, then you don’t have to bang your head against the wall trying to remember what they were when you finally have a moment to sit down at your desk.  This will save you a lot of time and aggravation and will help you maximize your efficiency.
Time-Saving Tip 4: Schedule 15 Minutes for Facebook Every Day
Facebook can be an incredibly powerful marketing tool for your restaurant. Best of all, it’s free. It only takes a few hours to set up an effective Facebook Page for your business – and once it’s up, you can rapidly grow an audience and establish a strong connection with them.
And you don’t have to spend more than 15 minutes a day on it.
We recommend you schedule your 15-minute “Facebook Break” for the same time every day – maybe early in the morning when you first get into the restaurant, or in the afternoon once the lunch rush is over.
During your fifteen minutes, here’s what you can do:

• Send out a status update telling everyone about your specials for the day.
• Respond to any comments, messages, or Friend Requests you may have received.
• Spend 5 minutes searching for people you know on Facebook and asking them to “Like” you, in order to grow your audience
• Write a status update letting people know how preparations are going for your next upcoming event. It personalizes your business at the same time as it reminds people about your event. comment that everyone can relate to, say, about the weather, or an upcoming holiday.

By implementing these four tips, you can get an enormous amount of marketing work accomplished every week. All you have to do is create a regular schedule for yourself and then stick to that schedule. You’ll be amazed at how fast you’ll see results!

How to Drive Traffic to Your Restaurant !!!

Online marketing can boost a restaurant’s brand and attract new customers.

• Restaurants that use online marketing tools such as emails, daily deals or websites tend to be viewed by consumers as “modern” (67 percent emails, 59 percent daily deals, 65 percent websites) and “popular” (63 percent, 59 percent, 63 percent).
• Restaurant owners say the most effective ways of attracting new customers are websites (90 percent), TV ads (87 percent), social media (84 percent), restaurant emails (82 percent) and daily deals (77 percent).

Customized marketing messages tailored to the customer’s preferences lead to more sales.

• Some 87 percent of consumers would visit or order from a restaurant if they got a savings offer; 95 percent of restaurant owners believe savings offers are effective marketing tools.
• Consumers would go to or order from a restaurant if they received customized marketing messages that: referenced past visits (68 percent), allowed them to make reservations (66 percent), and identified them by name (64 percent).

Restaurant owners know what marketing tools work; they just need to implement them.

• 84 percent of restaurant owners think restaurant-specific marketing emails help increase revenue, and 78 percent of consumers say an email from a restaurant motivates them to visit that restaurant. Some 63 percent of restaurateurs say they plan to use such emails in the next year.
• 78 percent of restaurant owners say daily deals boost revenue for their restaurants, and 69 percent of consumers say getting a daily deal email motivates them to visit the featured restaurant. Forty percent of restaurant owners plan to use daily deals in the next year.

Online advertising and social media were less effective.

• I was surprised by this response, but consumers say the least effective ways to get them to visit a restaurant are online advertisements (58 percent), social media (56 percent) and radio ads (56 percent). Apparently, these methods still aren’t perceived as personalized or targeted enough.

3 Smart Ways To Market Your Restaurant On Pinterest !!!

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As a restaurant owner, you’re most likely always on the lookout for ways to market your establishment and get new diners in the door. Sometimes this comes easily via word of mouth from current patrons and other times we‘re sure – it’s a bit of a challenge

However there are numerous restaurants experiencing nice growth due to new web marketing trends such as social media. Many restaurant owners mention that they’re getting an influx of new customers due to efforts on Instagram, YouTube and the newest social media darling; Pinterest. Yes! Pinterest. But how are they driving traffic from this image based network to their doors? This article covers a few good tips and how you too can benefit. Read on.

# 1. Restaurant Photos

If you have a groovy place, by all means show it off to the world. Better yet let others show it off for you via photo pins on Pinterest. Take as many shots as possible of all areas of your restaurant; including indoors, outdoors, popular seating areas, your top dishes, etc and pin them on a board you could call “restaurant gallery” or something similar. Just be sure the photos are nothing short of stunning, creative or interesting as this is what will compel others to share and pin with their friends.
Feel free to continuously update this board with new photos as time goes by. Popular nights at your restaurant and or big parties are a great opportunity to take photos for this board.

# 2. Customer Involvement

Nowadays one of the best ways to keep customers engaged is to involve them. With Pinterest this would take the form of creating a board that allows others to join and pin in it. They call them group boards and essentially these are collaborative boards where you allow others to join and pin as a group.You could ask customers to submit photos of their favorite meal and best one wins a prize or you could ask customers to take a photo when they come in for their birthday party and so on. The ideas really are endless.
At The Menu Shoppe we try to take advantage of as many social media marketing efforts as we can and so far it is indeed paying off. Pinterest group boards are an excellent way to get new or current customers involved and engaged with your brand; and therefore your business.

# 3. Food Videos

Pinterest is known for images but they also allow videos and the savviest “pinners” know that videos do well when it comes to food, recipes and such. You know the old adage “if an image is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a million”. This could not be truer in the food niche, as would be customers want to see and experience foodie delights as if they were there sitting at a table.
So get your video camera or smartphone out and take videos of your food, your restaurant, your staff and anything else that takes the customer virtually “there”. Be sure that the videos are shot with good lighting, are crystal clear and short. Keep each video under two minutes long as anything longer than this will make you potentially lose viewers. And pin pin pin them to your video board.
Pinterest is an extremely popular social networking site that is mostly made up of females who love to drool and share food related items. So this makes it an ideal destination for your strategic marketing efforts. Try one or all of our tips above to get new foot traffic in the door or keep current customers coming back for more.

Biodegradable tableware !!!

Chinese designer Giyun Deng is the creator of graft — a set of disposable tableware referencing the textured skins of fruits and vegetables. This ideal creation for kids is made from a bioplastic derived from renewable resources. The series of utensils is completely biodegradable, solving the environmental problem typically prevalent in disposable products. The project blends the texture and color of culinary items into the cutlery, visualizing their source materials: the leaf of an artichoke becomes the bowl of a soup spoon, a stalk of celery transforms into the handle of a fork, a pineapple stem is the blade of a knife, and a whole carrot acts as the grip of a small spoon.

The process began with the decision to use plant skin as a textural medium. first, deng picked vegetables and fruits with special tactile features and reproduced their skins with resin to find a proper application. the textures were carefully copied to make sure they could seamlessly interface with the 3D printed parts.

Why do you want to start a Restaurant? !!!

Why do you want to start a Restaurant? The “Why” question is really critical as all the next steps you will need to take and the decisions you will need to make, will be driven by the “Why”?

The “Why”?

What could possibly be some of the reasons you want to start a restaurant business?

1. I am tired of sitting in front a computer all day along – I want to do something different. The restaurant business seems easy enough and attractive.
2. I want to be an entrepreneur and create the next big brand/company.
3. The food business in India is expected to grow significantly over the next several years and I want to ride the wave.
4. It could be a “Recession Proof” business – as the food is a basic need and will never lose money
5. It seems to be a very profitable business – most people I talk to tell me that I can recover my investment in 3 years (That turns out to be a 33% annual return on the investment – fascinating)
6. I have a passion/strong interest in this business and want to be seen as a restauranteur.
7. Other Reasons you may have

Reactions to the “Whys” 1 & 2.

• I am tired of sitting in front a computer all day along – I want to do something different. The restaurant business seems easy enough and attractive.

The best way to convince yourself that sitting in front a computer all day along is absolutely worth the effort and the best possible option for you (Return on investment for the amount of work you will put in and the sacrifices you will make), then I would encourage you to quit your job and start a restaurant. You will find yourself running back to the same cubicle you came from, sooner than you can imagine, and this time, you will use Araldite or something even stronger to hold on to your job.

• I want to be an entrepreneur and create the next big brand/company

I find the phrase “I want to be an entrepreneur” very confusing. If you have access to a lot (a few Crores of easy-to-get money – by this, I mean money that you can use to fuel your dreams) – could be your savings, could be from a rich father/father-in-law/wife etc. Essentially this will be money you can use at your will, without having to really tell anyone what you plan to do with the money. Now if your reason is to be an entrepreneur and try to create the next big/brand company, a restaurant business should feature in your evaluation.

If you are want to be a true blue entrepreneur (bootstrapping approach), then I believe there are better opportunities available – ones that are more Venture Capital friendly. With external investment your chances of building a large brand and a business is tremendously accelerated. Professional investors, who invest in start-ups, generally pick businesses where the founders already have some experience in the same business area. Plus they like IP (Intellectual Property) creating businesses, where scaling requires much lesser investment compared to the revenues/profits that can be generated.

I believe that the restaurant business fundamentally is NOT a Angel Fund/Venture Capital friendly business. Why?

Like I mentioned earlier, Angels Investors and VCs seem to like businesses that can create a product/solution/offering using the initial money they invest, that can then be scaled at a rate that is positively disproportional to any additional capital investment. For a restaurant business, even if your first unit is very successful, to grow, you would need a lot of capital again and again. If "x" is the investment for the first unit, to grow revenues by 100 times, you would need an investment of 100x (probably more if you need more money towards marketing/branding). VCs like businesses where if they invest “x” initially to create a product, then to grow revenues by 100x, they would probably need to invest 10x/20x, primarily towards sales, marketing and customer support. Having said this, there are quite a few restaurant businesses in India which have received VC funding so far. Plus with the market expected to grow significantly in the next few years, VCs may start getting more interested.