3 Things Which You Could Be Doing Wrong and it is Causing Your Restaurant to Fail – Part 1

We all know that running a restaurant business is hard. In fact, a study shows that failure rates of restaurants to be about 60% in the first 3 years of their business. That means more than half of all restaurants that open in year 1 will be shut by year 3 of their operations. Why is that?


In running my retail consultancy for the last 15 years, I have found that most Food & Beverage entrepreneurs make one of these 3 mistakes. In today’s sharing, I will highlight the first (1st) of these three (3) reasons. So what makes most restaurants fail? Very simply its because a lot of them have the wrong Food & Beverage concept. What I mean by Food & Beverage concept is that the food served, design of the space, customer service, etc were wrong from the get go. A classic example of this is when restaurant owners tell me that their restaurant concept is “fusion”. What do they actually mean by that I have no idea, no one has ever told me that they wanted to have fusion for lunch or dinner. so let me make it clear to you, no one understands you if you tell them you serve fusion food. Your restaurant has to have an understandable food concept which means that as boring as it sounds you have to pick a particularly style of food and stick with it be it Chinese, Indonesian, Indian, Western (which is extremely wide), Japanese, etc.


Now, I am in no way saying that you cannot then insert some fusion elements into your food. In fact people love the idea of fusion food; for example, when you mix something like Pasta with Japanese flavours. It is just that when no one understands what your food is about, you can be sure they just will not be coming into your restaurant. A classic example of this was one of my clients which I worked with recently who told me that his food concept was western fusion when I first met him. I told him that although I loved his food, he had the wrong concept and true enough his business was suffering from it. When I started to work with him the first thing we did was to change the concept of his restaurant and voila his business improved by 50%.


So, how do you know your restaurant has the wrong concept? You just have to ask yourself these 2 simple questions:

1) Can I explain my restaurant’s food concept in 1 word? (and that word better not be fusion)

2) Do my friends, family and people I meet have a puzzled look after I explain my restaurant concept to them?


These questions can help you to understand if your restaurant concept is wrong and if it is wrong, then the first thing You need to do is to change it immediately. This one change though it may seem like a monumental one, will be the deciding factor between the success or failure of your restaurant business.


In my next sharing I will be talking about the second (2nd) reason why most restaurant businesses fail – Location.


article by Tim Liew

Retail is in my blood. In my 15 years as a retail consultant; I have work with retail brands with only 1 goal in mind, to build profitable businesses for my retail clients. Connect with me via private message if you have more questions about this article or even your thoughts on this sharing. Please feel free to share this piece with your friends who are in the restaurant business. For more questions about how we can help in working with you to design your retail space which will connect with your shoppers, connect with us at connect@viscreative.com #VisCreative #DesignProfitableSpaces #Retail #Business #Money #Mall