Why good restaurants fail

You might have experienced a new restaurant opening up close to your place. It had a nice ambiance, variety of dishes, well dressed waiters, adequate hygiene, and food that if not out of the world did leave a pleasant taste on your tongue. So while you did not really have a “bad” impression of the place, it shut down after few months. Despite getting so many things right, they did not survive.

It’s inevitable that the mediocre ones would fail. But why does this happen to the better ones? Because of the following reasons.

1. Too many things at once. Any new restaurant should start with only a handful of dishes instead of giving just about every possible option. Let people who visit know what the exclusive stuff is that they won’t get anywhere else. If not exclusive then they must know what the specialty of that place is so that diners won’t end up having a semi-decent Continental cuisine in a restaurant specializing in excellent North Indian dishes. Provide lesser options but the ones that go in must be essential or the best ones. It’d be easier for a new diner to make decision and have a memorable experience.

2. Lack of full time involvement by owner. No matter how many people the owner hires, no one can possess his/her vision. So when a new customer comes to the place, no one else can make him/her as convinced with the restaurant’s vision as the owner. It is only the owner who can be genuinely concerned with winning every customer that comes to the place, instead of a salaried employee whose bank balance won’t increase with every new visitor to the restaurant.

3. Bring change gradually. Do things step by step. Don’t show you have plenty of money. Show you are fulfilling a cause by this restaurant. You may do things such as adding variety of dishes and launching online presence gradually on user demand. Show them that you are someone who’s ready to change and lend an ear to user suggestions. Show that the customer is always right and that you can be wrong, even if you do know that their inputs might not eventually help.

“Sometimes, I think my most important job as a CEO is to listen for bad news. If you don’t act on it, your people will eventually stop bringing bad news to your attention and that is the beginning of the end.” – Bill Gates.

4. The underdog factor. Ask people to bring in more customers saying you have a vision and it would be a loss to humanity if place shuts down. If they feel that you are financially well-off then they would shift their priority to someone similar who might be requiring more help. After all, the masses always root for the underdog, isn’t it?

5. Focus. The most successful eating joints I’ve observed are those where owners believed in their vision, had belief that they were doing something genuinely good, and took multiple risks over which they worked really hard for prolonged period. So what if some other place was successful by doing so and so? If you spend your precious time observing what your rival is doing, whereas they utilize that for improving their own standards, then it’s obvious who’d travel the distance.

6. Being consistent.

“Genius is 1 percent inspiration 99 percent perspiration” – Thomas Edison.

You do need to work several times in proportion to your initial success. I’ve seen restaurant owners who started with a bang, got some great customer feedback, felt their job was done, proudly proclaimed that they wouldn’t have to work as hard as earlier days, and let their workers took charge of the place without significant increase in salary or aligning their vision to same level as theirs. No prizes for guessing how this story ended.

7. The customer is always right. Don’t let customers feel they are inferior by not knowing or appreciating your beliefs. It is no longer the case of being the first to enter, in today’s competitive times there are already several well-established places and whatever cuisine you offer can be provided by your competitors as well. People already have a lot of tension and sadness in their lives. They need to be pampered, to be cheered up, and be exclusively told that they are special. If you develop a great bond with your customers then they may or may not come back for the food but they’d surely come back for the royal experience.