Hello chefs. You're listening to chefs PS a
podcast. I'm your host Andhra natera.
On today's episode, I'm going to take you through the mental
process of opening your restaurant.
So let's start first with an update.
What have I been up to? I've been very busy this past
week. I haven't been posting enough on
social media for the chef's psa's.
I had to take a couple of days off.
It's traveling cooking. I did a dinner in El Paso,
Texas. I know I had talked about this
earlier and I shared a story on social.
But it was a group of chefs. All of us are from El Paso.
So you had Rico Torres from me, SLI.
He's kind of the organizer of the El Paso, family meal.
He's been instrumental in getting all the chef's bringing
us together and getting us to cook together.
Hopefully at least once a year, but sometimes a couple more
times than that but you have other great chefs on there like
Jake Rojas Gaber alehsalaam, Delgado, Fordman Union as Omar,
Flores undress, Padilla. There's there's a lot of really
good chefs in the group and we all got together and we all
cooked was it was a great time I was in charge of the dessert
course Self and Gaber Alice. We did a, we were in charge of
the desert and overall, it was a good event.
We raised a lot of money. We were able to give back to
help people. Texas Food Bank, nonetheless,
that tied, me up for a couple of days with travel.
But update to other things, I finished the line.
Cook survival manual. The book is done.
The e-book is live. The paperback version.
I'm struggling with a little bit.
These are the struggles that I deal with right?
So writing the book is not that hard editing, the book and
catching, all the little mistakes is very hard and
there's there's a glitch right now with the book where there's
110 pages, but it shows that there's 112 pages.
So, It's it's a little messy and I'm like trying to figure it out
so I'm like beating my head against the wall, trying to
figure out what the glitches because, no matter how many
times I've tried to correct it every single way the file that I
have says, one thing and the file that the publisher has
says, something completely different, no matter how many
times I submit it. Anyway, neither here nor there,
that's what I deal with. That's the hard part about
writing books, but the book is done.
I will announce it on social when the paperback version is
live, the e-book is life. Now you go get it.
After that, I'll start working on the audio book.
I'm still working on the audio book with culinary leadership
fundamentals. That's not far off, but it's
taken a little bit longer than I thought.
It's a longer book. So it takes a little bit longer
to read. It's probably going to end up
being about anywhere from five to eight hours for the audio
book, where the first audio book we did was just under an hour so
you can see that there's a significant difference.
I will do a line, cook survival manual audio book as well but
that's That's probably that's probably most likely early next
year. I've also been working on a
culinary leadership fundamentals.
Video course. That's pretty much done.
Couple weeks away, I will have that available for sale on my
website but anyway let's move on and talk about today's subject.
So the mental process of opening up a restaurant and why I want
to take you through this. So a lot of people go to
culinary school or they dream of becoming a chef because they
want to one day open. Our own restaurant.
I'm not exempt from that. When I first got into the
industry, that's all I want to do is have my own place, but I
think there's a lot of things that people don't realize that
they don't know when it comes to opening up your own restaurant.
Thousands of little things that are going on that you need to be
aware of and that you might not think about.
And so, One of the things that I do so my my job right besides
chefs PSA is I Mentor chefs. I work with a lot of chefs
executive chefs, Cooks people in The Culinary World restaurant
owners, I work with them to help them become successful at what
they do. And that's my business, that's
what I do. One of the things that I do with
my mentees is sometimes I take them through mental exercises.
So someone had said to me, one of my mentor meetings is I
should do this. Mental exercise on the podcast.
So hopefully, you guys can go along with me and you'll
understand what this may look like.
When I interview people, you know, when I used to be a chef
and if I was interviewing to cook and I'd say, you know,
what's your, what's your goal? Many people would say, I want to
one day, have my own restaurant and I would say, okay, tell me
about it and they'd really have no idea they'd say, oh, you
know, something small and what kind of food and they'd say, you
know, this and then beyond the food, they'd kind of get stuck
because they haven't, We thought through all the small details
that go into opening up your own restaurant.
In my opinion, if you want to manifest something, whether it's
your own restaurant or any sort of thing that you want to
manifest into reality, I think it needs to First manifest in
your mind. You need to have a clear idea of
what that looks like, because if you can't see it in your mind's
eye, then most likely, you're gonna have a very difficult
time, manifesting it and reality, and I think as a chef,
you need to think about all the little things that you would
have in your own restaurant. Durant.
So, I want to take you through the experiment through the
experience. That I take my mentees through,
or people that I've interviewed through, in the past of what it
takes to open up your own restaurant.
So I would start out with the question and by the way, while
I'm asking these questions, you should be answering them in your
own mind because I want you to think about this.
Oh, this is good exercise for you.
If one day, you want to open up your own restaurant.
So, the first thing I'd ask them is tell me about your
restaurant. Then they'd say, oh, you know, I
want to Open up my restaurant said, okay, what kind of food
are you serving? You got to think about that.
Like what kind of food are you serving?
Most people say you know, maybe fine dining.
I said okay, what do you mean by fine?
Dining, tell me the price point. What's your average check
something that they don't think about, okay, now once we've
established stablish that, are you doing tasting, menu?
Or you doing all a cart? Okay.
They haven't thought about that either.
You know, the funny thing is, most people say, oh, I do a
combination of tasting, menu, and all the cart.
Okay, great. How many items are on your a la
carte menu? How many items are on your
tasting menu? How many cooks do you have in
the kitchen? Okay, let's say you have a lot
of people say oh I have a grill, a Satay maybe a fish cook, an
entremet dessert person, agar Maj a pastry chef, a couple of
people in the back. Okay.
How many is a couple? How many people are prepping?
What time do they come in? What time does your am team
start? What time does your am team,
leave? What time does your p.m. team
coming? Then they start to answer these
questions because now they're starting to think.
Okay, well shit, I want to do all this food and then I'll ask
them. Do you think you could execute
that food with that many staff? Okay.
Great. Let's think about it.
Now that we've determined all this, how big is your
restaurant? Who, so we designed the kitchen
before we even thought about how big the restaurant was, okay?
So maybe the restaurant is 100, 100 seats, okay, great.
How many days a week, are you open?
Five? What days are you closed?
Sunday, Monday. Okay.
How much money do you make per day?
Hmm, we didn't think about that. How many covers do you have per
day? How many covers do you need to
break even great? What's let's talk about your
labor costs? What does that look like?
What is your average rate to that?
You're paying your Cooks? What do you pay your most
expensive cook? What do you pay your most?
Newest cook. Mmm.
They got to think about that great.
How many hours a week are they working?
What's your kitchen hierarchy? Look like who's the chef?
And they'll say I'm the chef and said, are you the chef or you
the restaurant owner? Does that mean that you're doing
the butchering? You're doing the ordering you're
standing on the pass every day? A lot of them will say, no, I
hire a chef de cuisine. You know what they think about
it, this in I'll get a chef de cuisine because I'm the
restaurant owner. Okay, great.
What are your Cooks? We're in the kitchen.
What kind of uniform do they have?
What colors their apron do? They have uniforms, or do they
not have uniforms, is your kitchen open or is your kitchen
closed? What is your line look like?
What equipment do you have? And they'll say this, I say,
okay, well, what brand is your stove?
You have a French cooktop, do you have induction?
Do you have a hood cleaning company?
Who's your hood cleaning company?
How often do they come? Who cleans the kitchen?
Do your Cooks clean it or do you have night cleaners?
How expensive are these night cleaners?
What's your budget for that? So these are all those things
that you start to think about, right?
So you start going through the exercises.
Okay, great. Now, let's talk about the dining
room. What do your servers, where?
How many servers do you have? Do you have a Hostess or a host?
What's their uniform look? Like, who takes reservations
when the host is not there. Do you have an answer in
service? So now the wheels are really
starting to turn. And by this point, I've lost
most people because they haven't really, they haven't really
thought of all these things, right?
Do you have a general manager from the front of the house?
Is there a separation between the service team in the culinary
team? Or are they under one
management? Meaning a lot of lot of
restaurants is like the chef is the main person throughout the
entire restaurant, is that the same thing that you want to
achieve, or do you want to have them being equals the front of
the house manager, and the person that's in charge of the
kitchen? Again, something that you need
to think about We talked about the service.
What style of service do you have?
Who makes their uniforms? Are they custom made?
How expensive is each uniform? What did the plates look like,
do you use, you know, bernadotte Fine, China, Rosenthal, or do
you use a custom Artisan who's making plates for you, what's on
the table tablecloths, right? Why do we use tablecloths a lot
of places use tablecloths because the tables are beat up?
So just because you use a tablecloth doesn't necessarily
signify like people are like oh we don't want tablecloths, okay?
But then sometimes you have beat up tables, right?
What's the trade-off? Do you want to have beat up
tables? Are you okay with that?
That's up to you? That's, that's your choice.
Or would you prefer to have tablecloths, okay?
You want tablecloths, how much does that cost?
Who does your linen? What stem, where do you use?
Right, are using real wine glasses or using some off-brand
are using the generic Edward. Don brand, right?
What's the flatware? What is your Cutlery look like?
Do you preset? Cutlery is it rolled silverware?
What are your napkins? What color are the napkin?
What is the design of your restaurant?
Is it bright to with Windows? Is it?
Dark are the chairs comfortable or are they cheap?
Write all these things matter when you're opening up a
restaurant. Do you want to scale your
restaurant? You want multiple restaurants?
Where do you want to the location of your restaurant?
What city? Is it in a busy part of town?
Or is it in a slower part of town?
Is it in the suburbs? Are you trying to open up a very
high-end experience in a secondary Market?
Where you open it in a primary market, right?
What's the demographic of the area in which you're opening up
your restaurant? So you start to run through all
these things in your mind and now your wheels should be
turning. Your sure.
You should probably be thinking right now to yourself.
Should I never thought about all of that?
Or I have thought of all that? I'm not sure which one it is.
But if you truly want to open up a restaurant, I think you need
to go through this exercise and keep asking, what's this, what's
that? Get down to the smallest detail,
who's creating your logo? What's the name of your
restaurant? What does it mean what's the
story behind your Cuisine does? Every dish have a story or whose
food are you cooking or even cooking your own food or
cooking? Someone else's food.
The more you think about this? The more you can manifest it,
the more it could materialize in the real world.
Very successful, people who own restaurants.
No down to the mine. Show what they're doing to the
placement of the fork, where it goes to, which way you flip the
plate. And can they read the name of
the plate straight up, or is it upside down?
So, think about all these things.
I know this is just kind of an exercise.
This is something I take people through.
I believe it's a good exercise to take yourself through.
If you're a chef for one day, you aspire to open up your own
restaurant. So you can start thinking about
all these things. But I will say that when it does
come to opening up a restaurant Aunt, I think a lot of people
don't realize the cost Associated, you know, I don't
know, having a conversation with a couple of chefs the other day
and we were throwing out numbers.
We were in this restaurant. We're looking at, like, how much
do you think it cost to open up this restaurant?
Two million, four million? And the fact of the matter is,
like no one's ever saying, oh, you know, 50,000 that that price
just doesn't exist. I mean, maybe you could get a
food truck for 50,000, but even then I'm not even sure if you
could get a food truck for 50,000.
I think, for, for the most part, you're looking in the millions
of dollars when you're trying. Open up a restaurant.
So do you have funding do you have investors behind the fact
of the matter is? A lot of restaurants don't make
it. That's that's the harsh.
Reality of this business a lot of restaurants don't make it a
lot of people fail. So if you have a million dollars
of your own money, let's say are you willing to gamble that you
might lose it. All in six months, it's a tough
decision and there's inevitably delays.
And you know, one of my friends is open a restaurant.
Right now we're talking about all the delays that go into
construction. I know when I was opening up the
last thing it was like we're going to open up in June know,
we're gonna open Up a July August.
And then next thing you know, we're opening in September,
right? Inevitably there's delays in
restaurants and there's the unknown unknown, when the
restaurant opens and then you get a food critic or Yelp or
whatever and you could go from busy to not busy in a matter of
a couple of reviews. So all these things are things
that you need to consider. If you want to open up your own
restaurant and I'm not trying to discourage anyone from doing
that, but I want to make sure that you're having real
conversations with yourself, because the more real, the
conversation you have with yourself, the more likely, you
will be able to succeed. Seed in your restaurant, you
have to think of everything because inevitably, there's
going to be things that pop up that you didn't think about.
But if you've got most of it covered you can then put your
attention on the things that you didn't think about.
But if you didn't think about a lot of things, you're going to
spend a lot of time dealing with those and the things that you
didn't even know. You did it.
No, anyway, That was a that was a fun little exercise.
I like to take people through that.
I hope you enjoyed that. Let me know if you like that
style. Like I said, I do a lot of
mentoring with chefs and these are some of the things that I
take people through. If you want to know more about
that you could DM me if you want to support chefs, PSA,
subscribe, leave five stars on the podcast.
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I appreciate it. Go get the book culinary
leadership fundamentals. How not to be the biggest It in
the kitchen. And now the line.
Cook survival manual. Go get some of the merch on
Chefs. PS a.com, the t-shirts are great
anyway. Thank you all.
Hit the point of Music. See you next week.
It in the kitchen. And now the line.
Cook survival manual. Go get some of the merch on
Chefs. PS a.com, the t-shirts are great
anyway. Thank you all.
Hit the point of Music. See you next week.