Updated: March 3, 2025 by Michael Kahn. Published: October 23, 2024.
Opening a restaurant is an incredibly exciting time. Perhaps you’ve spent years dreaming of selling your food, or maybe you’re keen to open a local franchise of a chain you’ve always loved. Either way, you excitedly stock up on restaurant equipment and dream of making it big. But, what can you do if that doesn’t happen?
In truth, many newly opened restaurants end up being a recipe for disaster and closing before they’ve ever truly made a name for themselves. In part, this tends to be due to business-wide issues that impact all industries, including high overheads and low initial returns.
But in theory, restaurants that provide a service people will always pay for should have an upper hand. They should certainly hold more upfront pulling power than, say, an unknown startup. People already know that they love to eat, after all. Your restaurant simply needs to provide them with the best eating experience possible.
With that in mind, there may be some surprisingly obvious reasons why your restaurant is a recipe for disaster right now, and we’re going to consider them here.
Reason 1: Undertraining Your Staff
Restaurant businesses are preaching to the choir in many ways – everyone needs to eat, and people are willing to pay good money for great food in even a brand-new restaurant business. However, three out of five new restaurants won’t last their first year, and a lack of staff training is often the main reason for this.
To understand why, consider that your point of difference largely comes from your service. This is what can set you apart in an oversaturated market. It’s also the thing that will stop consumers from returning if they experience issues like slow service, incorrect orders, and poor cooking.
Long before opening your restaurant, take ample time to prioritize staff training. You should also focus on this potential problem area with every new hire, and through regular training refreshers or advancements for existing staff.
As well as turning you into an industry-leading employer, this renewed focus can smooth out countless cracks, allowing you to turn new hires into some of the best restaurant staff around. Training that could secure you certified wait staff and specialty chefs will be particularly fantastic for attracting the best hires and delivering a little something different to all the other restaurants in town.
Reason 2: Overworking Your Team
Hospitality, and restaurant work, in particular, is unique in how grueling it can be. Unlike shop workers or office staff, wait staff and chefs can’t just ‘take five’ or stop for a quick break during the lunch rush. On weekends, they might not be able to do those things all day long.
To a certain extent, this is part and parcel of restaurant life, but you must never make the mistake of overworking your team and leaving them at risk of making costly mistakes or even looking for a job elsewhere. Expecting your employees to work through their breaks just because you’re busy is a particularly fatal yet common industry issue. Sometimes, it’s also more of an oversight than an intentional cruelty. The issue is that, on busy days in the restaurant, you’re hard at work too, and it’s all too easy to let regular breaks and other employee care priorities slide. Make sure that’s never the case by either delegating these tasks to someone with spare time to manage them or using something like this restaurant scheduling software, which will schedule breaks for you and even notify staff when it’s time to put their feet up. Even short breaks throughout busy days will ensure that employees are happier and better able to perform to the best of their abilities throughout service.
Reason 3: Overlooking Customer Experiences
So far we’ve spoken a lot about how you treat your employees, but what about your customers? Quality customer experiences are perhaps the largest indicator of whether your restaurant can earn itself a loyal following. And, without that loyal following, there’s every chance your new business won’t succeed.
Customer experience covers a wide range of factors, from how staff greet new tables, to the speed and ease with which your customers can order. To a certain extent, training your employees will help, but modern consumers expect more than just ‘good’ service.
In reality, you should go above and beyond to improve customer experiences with service additions that include –
- Greeting customers at the door
- Offering various ordering solutions, such as online or via wait staff
- Personalized interactions, including special recommendations for repeat customers
- Text updates to minimize wait times
- And more
In many instances, high-quality restaurant software and even app development are key here. Equally, you could improve customer experiences by simply walking through the restaurant experience you offer from a customer’s perspective, and considering any possible potential to simplify or enhance that experience.
Reason 4: Prioritizing Quantity Over Quality
The quality of your wait staff and chef are undeniably vital to your restaurant business, but there’s also a lot to be said about your menu. Considering your restaurant equipment closely can significantly impact both the efficiency and reputation of your service. High-capacity ice makers, for example, ensure that you never run out of ice during peak hours while maintaining optimal customer satisfaction and reducing wait times. This addition not only underlines your commitment to quality but also attracts returning patrons due to efficient and pleasant dining experiences.
In a lot of ways, this is your creme de la creme and is the thing that’s most likely to attract new customers to try whatever food you’re offering.
It can be tempting, especially as a new restaurateur, to pile that menu high with a wide variety of dishes. This is your best chance of catering to every taste, after all, and you could easily assume it would impress the most people. There’s just one issue – when you offer too many dishes, you compromise quality on all of them. Plus, with no guarantee of how many heads your restaurant will cover, an excessive menu could result in wasted ingredients that outstrip any profits.
In truth, experts generally state that you should stick to around seven menu items that your chefs can cook to perfection. This allows you to cater to all tastes without compromising the quality of any of those dishes. Wise menu planning should also see you using each ingredient for more than one dish, which makes it less likely you’ll deal with waste no matter which dish your customers order.
Reason 5: Ignoring Customer Reviews
Artists and authors might not read their online reviews, but a restaurateur most definitely should. As well as highlighting your particular pain points, online reviews are the most authentic way to understand the truth about the customer experiences you offer. Sometimes, you might not like what you hear but, as the saying goes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
If it helps, think of your online reviews as free market research, and make the effort to regularly gather information from this feedback. Look out for things like recurring suggestions, or areas of your service that receive regular criticism. Pay attention, too, to your most popular and least popular menu items according to customers.
With this information, you ensure you’re fully informed about how your business could improve. Taking the time to respond to negative comments, and offer things like personalized discounts, can also help to avoid the loss of a customer off the back of one negative trip.
Takeaway
Hospitality is by no means an easy industry to break into, and you could well end up cooking a recipe for disaster with your restaurant plans. The difference between success and failure lies in how you handle those problems, and whether or not you use tips like these to perfect your cooking processes and dish up a winning restaurant in the long run.
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Whether she is researching the latest trends in home decor, life-changing destination getaways, or the best way to maintain your finances, Dewey takes pride in leaving no stone unturned. She is passionate about distilling and delivering high-quality information that you can use to upgrade your life.
