Opening a Restaurant Is a Scary Business

Think of the scariest haunted house you’ve ever been in, with unknown dangers lurking around every corner and monsters jumping out of the dark. Feel the tingle down your spine? That gives you an idea of what a new restaurant owner may be experiencing.

Let me walk you through a recent experience in my life as a restaurant whisperer. These stories are all true, but the names have been changed to protect, well, me.

A Haunted Building?

My clients looked at a building that, for the past 30-plus years, had been a restaurant of one kind or another. They did their due diligence, had an inspection that, overall, found a few things but nothing major. No water damage, no holes in the roof, no mold and no asbestos. So far so good. 

They purchased the building, and my designer and I went to see the place. We walked around and immediately noticed “soft” spots in a number of places. We had the floor cut open and discovered that a foundation had never been laid!

What a nasty surprise. In order to make sure that the building would be safe and last for generations to come, the owner had to put in a foundation. You can only imagine how much it costs to jack up a building to pour concrete and how far behind schedule this put the opening. 

Hoodwinked

We needed to take down the existing exhaust hood over the cooking equipment and put up a new one. Unfortunately, a year or so before, the state changed how a hood should be hung and we were essentially going to have to move it less than an inch.

Also unfortunately, the state required architectural drawings so we could apply for an exception. All of this was done and approved – that was the good news. The bad news was that the state took almost four months to even read the plans. 

Equipment Nightmares

COVID had a lot of people leaving jobs for greener pastures. One industry that suffered is the restaurant equipment industry, especially those responsible for packing and shipping equipment. Over and over, we opened boxes to find that equipment was damaged, dented or even in pieces. 

One of the badly damaged pieces was a bar refrigerator, but of course we kept it because a replacement would be 10 weeks away. It was so badly dented that it would not even fit under the bar. The installer had a plan to make it fit, but what made this (sort of) entertaining was that he had to lie on the floor during two hours of service on opening night, while four bartenders kept stepping over him. 

Scary Staff, Too

Just when I thought I had seen it all.

I have often commented about restaurant staff spending more time on their cell phones than serving guests. We hired a woman for the host station who was outgoing, bubbly and seemed like a fun person. During training, she was told that using her cell phone for calls or texts during her shift was not allowed.

Imagine our surprise when guests lined up to tell the owners what was going on at the host station. Apparently, we forgot to tell the woman that showing explicit photos to incoming guests was also not allowed. 

I’m happy to say that the restaurant got off the ground and seems to be doing well. I can only hope my next job isn’t quite so scary.