If you were going to open a business

[Morg_NZ]

If you were going to strike out for yourself and open a company.......restaurant!!!

what would you install or get to assist you!!!! filemaker pro, microsoft office, apple iwork or perhaps something else.

what or how would you do it???

 

[Mechcozmo]

A website.

 

[clayj]

I wouldn't even open a restaurant in a hypothetical situation...

 

[CanadaRAM]

First you need a business plan.

Operating a resturant requires an investment of dozens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and is an excellent way to work 18 hours a day for about $1.00 per hour net return.

Depending on the type of restaurant, you may need an ordering system specific to the restaurant industry, like the Squirrel systems you see with touch screens for the wait-staff. If it's a pizza delivery place you're looking at obviously the needs will be different.

You will want an accounting program, which may be intgrated with the restaurant program (above). Usually, you buy integrated restaurant management programs, you don't roll your own in Filemaker or something. And you usually dont get these on Macs.

You'll want to be able to prepare menus and printed materials fairly easily, and cost out your ingredients and menu items.

But don't put the cart before the horde here: your first job is to accurately assess your market area, competition, potential customers, their food preferences and your costs (both fixed and operating) and build a cash flow model. Health code compliance, taxes, insurance (esp. if you are serving liquor) wasteage and theft, and hiring/managing staff are also biggies.

Smart restaurant owners can make money - although these are usually families where everyone works their butt off for years at no pay until they are established. Something like 80% of restaurant owners lose money though.

 

[James Philp]

Yeah, owning a restaurant, that'll never make money (Maccy D's anyone?)

 

[clayj]

Yeah, owning a restaurant, that'll never make money (Maccy D's anyone?)

For every one restaurant that succeeds, there are about nine that don't. And a restaurant can NEVER rest on its laurels... even successful restauranteurs/chefs like Wolfgang Puck eventually close down once successful spots (Spago, for example, is closed now, IIRC).

And what CanadaRAM said is correct: You ain't gonna be running a restaurant using a Mac. It takes PCs, with specialized (and expen$ive) software for placing orders, handling inventory, running the register, etc. You might be able to use a Mac for some of the non-crucial stuff (like accounting), but all inhouse computer work is going to run on PCs or dedicated POS (Point of Sale) terminals.

 

[Morg_NZ]

First you need a business plan.

Operating a resturant requires an investment of dozens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and is an excellent way to work 18 hours a day for about $1.00 per hour net return.

Depending on the type of restaurant, you may need an ordering system specific to the restaurant industry, like the Squirrel systems you see with touch screens for the wait-staff. If it's a pizza delivery place you're looking at obviously the needs will be different.

You will want an accounting program, which may be intgrated with the restaurant program (above). Usually, you buy integrated restaurant management programs, you don't roll your own in Filemaker or something. And you usually dont get these on Macs.

You'll want to be able to prepare menus and printed materials fairly easily, and cost out your ingredients and menu items.

But don't put the cart before the horde here: your first job is to accurately assess your market area, competition, potential customers, their food preferences and your costs (both fixed and operating) and build a cash flow model. Health code compliance, taxes, insurance (esp. if you are serving liquor) wasteage and theft, and hiring/managing staff are also biggies.

Smart restaurant owners can make money - although these are usually families where everyone works their butt off for years at no pay until they are established. Something like 80% of restaurant owners lose money though.

Reason why I'm asking is because my wife and I have ran restaurants for others for years now......and neither have us have ran anyones elses company into the ground.
One thing we have learned is to ask a ton of questions and listen to everyone!!!!!

BUT, all the companies that we've worked for have been ran either by old style ledger books or windows based computer systems......now we see no reason why a restaurant cannot be ran on a mac and are after as much info and advice on accounting and such by people who are doing it OR know someone who is!!!!