Have the right intentions
If you want to make it as a restaurant owner, you have to love what you do, Kim Strengari says. While she knew a restaurant was the right path for her, she had to work nights cleaning office buildings to make ends meet when she first opened her restaurant.
“I wanted the restaurant more than anything else in life, so the sacrifices were endless and I never minded making them,” she says.
To be successful, you’ll invest a lot of time and money—so make sure that starting a restaurant is your passion, not just a business venture you hope will make money. “It’s harder than you can imagine,” says Omer Orien, “but people do it all the time. It’s not at all dreamy.”
In these early days, it’s also a good idea to figure out what you want your restaurant to look like. What will be your restaurant’s aesthetic? What furniture will you need to purchase to fit the theme? How will you lay your restaurant out? Trent Furniture, a British furniture company, has a great article on the topic to help you get started.
Orien says, “A lot of it has to do with figuring out what kind of environment you want to work in, what will make you feel the way you want to feel. It also doesn’t hurt to have people in your life who have an eye for design.” Orien sat down with his co-founders and built a 3-D model to plan the layout of their first location. And ultimately, they did most of the work to build out the space themselves.