Start a Creative Restaurant
By Steve Gillman
I went to a creative restaurant in Chicago where the wait
staff played the roles of various television characters (ours
was Greg Brady of the Brady Bunch), and were purposefully rude
to customers. The place was busy, and with repeat customers!
The food was pretty good. An even stranger theme that at least
two restaurants have used is dining in the dark. No lights allowed,
and waiters wear night-vision goggles. The New Lucky Restaurant
in Ahmadabad, India has tables situated between graves in an
old Muslim cemetery. There is the restaurant in Taiwan where
customers sit on toilets while they eat. In Boston the Medieval
Manor serves up a banquet with no silverware, and in Milwaukee
the Safe House maintains a spy-theme. The list goes on.
There two most common ways to design a unique restaurant are
to make the food itself something uncommon and to make the experience
and surroundings unusual. Some restaurants serve insects, for
example, and one in Florida serves alligator, skunk and other
animals that most people have never eaten. Vegetarian themes
are common now, but there are still niches here, like raw-foods
and liquids-only menus. Themes focused on the setting perhaps
allow for more creativity. At Casa Bonita in Denver, for example,
the food is typical Mexican fare, but there are waterfalls and
cliff divers. Beds and stand-up tables have been tried, and there
are certainly many more themes waiting to be invented or marketed.
How Much Can You Make?
One of the advantages of a good theme is that you are not
competing directly on price with other businesses. For example,
my wife and I ate a delicious lunch at a simple Thai eatery in
Las Vegas for just $15. The next day we paid $50 for a minimal
lunch at the Rainforest Café. The extra $35 is what a
restaurant owner gets for vines, waterfalls and monkeys swinging
in the trees. Your initial investment is usually higher with
a fun or creative theme, but the profit margins can be much higher
too.
There are hundreds of thousands of restaurants in the U.S.,
and the unusual ones do not get a category of their own in statistical
data. But for a general idea of what is possible, consider the
fact that more than 100,000 restaurants do $1 million or better
in annual revenue, at least 7,000 do over $5 million per year,
and a profit of 25% of sales is typical in this industry.
Note:
This page is from a chapter that didn't make it into 101 Weird
Ways to Make Money, my most recent book, which is now available
at your local bookstore or from these online book vendors: Barnes
and Noble ... Amazon ... Books-a-Million
Ways to Make More | Related Opportunities
| Tips
One good thing about opening a unique restaurant is that free
publicity is virtually guaranteed if you plan well. A "soft
opening" is best to start, in order to be sure that employees
and equipment are ready and everything works like it is supposed
to. At that point it is time to announce a grand opening and
inform all the local newspapers and television stations.
Qualifications / Requirements
Starting a unique restaurant is a big job. It takes a lot
of money, planning, and faith in your idea. The more unusual
the theme, the less likely you are to get financing from a bank,
so you may need to look for investors. Have a complete business
plan prepared, and get help with this if you haven't done it
before.
First Steps
Do some market research to see if there is enough demand for
another restaurant in the area you're considering, and to see
if the theme you have in mind is appealing to people. Visit several
unique restaurants to see how customers react and to get an idea
about menu prices. Then get to work on that business plan.
Resources
Running a Restaurant for Dummies by Michael Garvey,
Heather Dismore, and Andrew Dismore - Wiley 2004.
http://www.ninjanewyork.com
- A ninja-themed restaurant in New York.
http://restaurants.about.com
- Articles on everything from how to design a menu to choosing
a location.
http://www.restaurantowner.com
- Information resources for restaurant owners.
http://www.motorestaurant.com
- Creative restaurant in Chicago, with a futuristic theme.
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