The Difference Between an Entrepreneur and a Restaurateur

“The customer is always right, in matters of taste.”

How many of you just read that full quote for the first time? It is commonly misused. You could be creating the most precise and authentic cuisine of all time, and if a customer doesn’t like the taste, they are right. It does not mean you made the dish wrong. It only means they do not like it.

If the customer were always right, things would be free, made to a three-Michelin-star level, and available 24 hours a day. I am sure the business plan for your restaurant is a little different. This is the service industry, or it once was, but can be again. Food is life-sustaining. What we ingest are the building blocks of health or sickness.

During your restaurant fitouts planning, see things through the eyes of those who will have to clean it. Cleanliness is of the highest priority due to the extreme level of consequences for small failures. Similar to any other process, keep things simplistic. You can still reach your branding, style, and design goals while thinking of operations.

I have worked in restaurants for decades, from dish boy to head chef, management, ownership, and advisor in multiple nations. Just because you drive a car every day, do not believe you could build one. A profitable and frequented restaurant is no less complex to assemble. Being a restaurateur is a separate category of entrepreneur.

The smartest business builders know to hire the smartest business maintainers. We are two different types of people, our personalities demand it, and our innate skill sets support our building or maintaining success. It also means we should find our counterparts, as we need more people to represent all skills. Those skills can be fulfilled by third-party solutions, but you will need to discover them one way or another.

The work/life balance has been flipped to a life/work balance. Across generations and demographics, people are identifying a new level of freedom in remote working and business ownership. The food service industry is strong and will remain strong as everyone on the planet hopes to eat more than once a day.

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You know how you and your friends or family trade experiences from various authentic foreign cuisine restaurants you go to? You could be one of those authentic foreign cuisine stories for another family as you sell pies and sausage rolls in the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, or wherever the business and visa climate supports your dream.

I know you can see it. You can see the rising tide of remote work. There is no stopping it. Some professions will be completely wiped out, and many more will be automated. A key difference between an entrepreneur and a restaurateur is the relationships they keep with their customers.

While I do not believe AI will replace culinary skills, I am light-years away from thinking any AI-generated interface will be able to replicate the interaction a caring owner has with the people he or she gets to feed and give life to. You can install all the custom cabinetry and employ industry masters to craft gastronomic glory, but the life of every restaurant is the customers and your relationship with them.

My initial dreams included fifty locations of various menus and concepts. I had trouble keeping up with all the great friends I was making in only three, so I stopped building more and started advising. You and I know all too well that not every eatery is the same. That is a mouthful.

Make your eatery a destination for the community. The same number of taste buds are active whether we smile or not; however, the positive power of wearing and receiving smiles influences perceptions. Smile, and your food will taste better.