So you want to open a restaurant. Read the other articles listed here first, and if you're still interested, come back and read this.
As you will have noted the restaurant business is not easy, money is always a problem, costs are high, profit is low. Despite what you see in other articles the average profit for the restaurant business is less than 5%. This is a business you either love or hate. If you are going to succeed you will need to love it. There is no other success formula. It is LONG hot hours, (avg owner 80 -100 hrs p/wk); highly demanding customer base (we want it in 5 minutes & perfect every time); and for the most part good help is extremely hard to find.

Still interested? Good.
Twenty plus years of building restaurants and concepts tells me that it IS possible to succeed in this business.

FIRST: Look at your concept and business plan. Is it really feasible? Are the funds there for you to work with? The property will not become self sufficient for approx 2 years (industry avg), which means that you will continue to invest capital in it for two years AFTER you open your doors. This is the area that causes most restaurants to fail. High opening costs and high overhead are the number one killers of new properties. You CANNOT expect to have your costs covered by your customer base for at LEAST 2 yrs. If it does happen, and I've only seen that occur twice in 20 yrs, you'll be ahead of the game, so count yourself lucky.

SECOND: Location DOES count. Look at the traffic in front of the property you're considering. It should have a traffic rate of approx 10k-100k cars passing per day depending on the size of your city and the location within the city. Is the property easily accessible from the road? This can be a major problem if you're looking at a one way street and traffic must cross over to get to your property. What is the competition like within 5 blocks (all directions) of you? Look at and test your local competitors. What are they selling, how are they selling it, what's their foot traffic like, how do they perform? AND, how much of their customer base do you think you can get? Don't assess this by car. Walk the blocks. Look at the aesthetics of your potential property and your competitors' properties.

THIRD: The property. I do NOT recommend building a new site. Look at existing properties that were previously restaurants first. It will save you tens of thousands in build-out costs, and potentially in equipment costs. Consider leasing

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