Article

Overcome key challenges to grow your restaurant business

May 2, 2024 · Authored by Brian Campbell, David Foster of Foster and Associates

Growth

For most restaurant owners, the urge to grow comes along at some point. The pursuit of growth can bring great rewards, but usually comes with great challenges as well. What are those key challenges and how do you overcome them? Well, the answers to that depend upon where your starting point is as you contemplate growing your restaurant business.

Let’s talk about growing and how that might look different dependent upon your starting point.

For an existing, single-unit restaurant owner/operator, growth could mean:

Growing sales by adding services or meal dayparts

• Adding breakfast or a late-night bar menu
• Adding weekend brunch
• Adding catering
• Expanding takeout and/or delivery

Increasing your building size to add seating

• Adding or expanding an outdoor patio area

While these scenarios come with challenges, these challenges are usually manageable by the owner or operator. They can control the environment in that single restaurant and can control the pace in which to integrate sales-building changes. The biggest challenges are usually time or capital related. But for a single unit restaurant owner, unless they have a great management team that can take on day-to-day tasks to handle, any expansion often means more demands upon their personal time. Obtaining capital can be another challenge, but one that can be overcome with a sound business plan, solid cash flow and a strong balance sheet.

For an operator that wants to grow from a single restaurant location to a second unit, the scenario is quite different.

You, as an owner that has developed, opened and operated a profitable restaurant concept can take pride in that. But you need to be able to put your pride aside and answer these questions honestly as you determine if you (and your restaurant) are ready to take on the multi-unit restaurant plunge:

• Is your first location successful because of the appeal of the concept, the menu, and the quality of the food and service? Or is the location just so good (or is the competition just so lacking), that it has overcome mediocrity in these areas and succeeded despite being mediocre?