Cafe & restaurant startup workshop

This course will teach you everything you need to plan a successful cafe or restaurant. You will discover how to spot a good location, identify and side-step traps, do deals with agents and landlords that reduce the risks and boost business value.

The legal, financial and personal aspects of your business will be at the forefront of all discussions: set-up costs, hidden traps, return on investment and 'bottom line' success. Plus, how to set your budget and benchmark potential profit, before signing the lease.

No nonsense and beautifully low tech, this how to start and develop a cafe or restaurant course is designed to empower those starting a food business to make the right decisions at the right time. The course drives home the importance of relationships and how to communicate effectively with agents, brokers, lawyers and others involved in the process.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this hospitality business course, you will have enhanced your career prospects by:

• Judge the feasibility of your cafe or restaurant

• Prepare an honest business plan for your cafe or restaurant

• Calculate the profit potential of a typical small restaurant or cafe

• Understand the issues involved in buying an existing business

• Understand the broad legal and accounting issues involved and how to find specialist advice

• Identify and avoid unusual risks

• Negotiate on value, not price

• Engage effectively with landlords and sales professionals

Course content

What will be covered in this hospitality business course?

During this course, the intention is that the following topics will be covered, but not necessarily in the order given.

Introduction

• Cafes and restaurants as profit-making machines

• How smart operators reverse-engineer their success

• A smart business plan that actually works

• Starting with the end in mind

How cafes and restaurants are valued and traded

• Price v Value

• What a buyer is prepared to pay for your business

• How to increase the price without increasing sales

• Know the value of the business, before you commit to it

• Paths to market

Making a profit

• The breakeven point

• Set-up costs and investment

• Key performance indicators KPI

• The hidden value of simple menu design

• Why less service is more value

Legal structures

• The benefits of different legal structures for your business

• The downside to partnerships

• Licensing and franchises

• Personal liability and tax considerations

Pioneering a new site

• The benefits of starting from scratch

• The players involved in deal-making

• Proven negotiation strategies that work with landlords and shopfitters

• How to get yourself ready to negotiate

Buying a cafe or restaurant

• How to use the lease to determine true profit

• Benchmarks and rules-of-thumb the insiders use to inflate the value

• What to look for in the lease

• How to get cut-through with business brokers and make offers that get the sellers attention

Leases

• Leases as assets or liabilities

• Time decay

• Clauses to look-out for

• How to spot a bad lease a mile away