Has anyone here started their own pizza restaurant?
Question by Jansen Y: Has anyone here started their own pizza restaurant?
Im in my mid twenties but would like to start up a small dine in pizza restaurant with spirits one day. I would love to hear people that have done something similiar. Did you go the non-franchise way and save a lot of money on opening costs. How much do opening costs average? Was it enjoyable and are u still enjoying it?
Best answer:
Answer by Josh
I havent opened up a pizza shop but ive worked in pizza shops for about four years and been through a new start up situation at one. It is very very time consuming not to mention there are so many different pizza shops in every town. If you do try to open a shop up the startup can varry depending on the ingredients you use the cost of equipment and advertising.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
Firstly, if you have no experience in the pizza restaurant business, I’d advise that you work in one for the next six months or so doing everything from busing tables and washing dishes to waiting tables and making pizza if they’ll allow you back there and if you have the skills. This will give you some of the work experience that you’ll need to understand and run a pizza restaurant profitably.
If this is your first business venture, I would strongly recommend that you talk to a business counselor before you do anything especially spend money. I’d call the local office of SCORE (go to http://www.score.org and input your zip code to find the chapter nearest you), the advice is FREE. Ask for someone who has a background in restaurants and they’ll try their best to match you with the right counselor.
The counselor at SCORE will most likely advise you to write a business plan which is very good advice because it will force you to dig out all of the start up details and the costs of starting a pizza restaurant and force you to also understand all of the aspects of this business including the customers you’ll concentrate on (your market ) and how you’ll get them to find out and want to come to your fabulous pizza restaurant.
The location of the restaurant is important but doesn’t make it successful. To prove that all you have to do is walk down a street in your town where there are several restaurants all in a row and you’ll find one or two that are empty while the others are very busy. It has to do with menu, ambiance, and your reputation at the beginning and over time.
You also have to have food handling licenses, the right zoning, the right city and county licenses and permits and you have to be skilled at negotiating with your landlord about who’ll stand the cost of the build-out or the changes to the premises to make it ready for your look and feel. You also have to worry about the normal business planning and management issues related to starting up any business.
Take a look and read some of the articles at:
http://www.ychange.com/small-business-co…
especially the ones about a business plan and starting a business. Also try their Blog and their Bulletin Board.
Hope this helped.