10 Books Every Restaurant Founder Should Read

The best books for restaurant founders are not the ones with the most recipes or the loudest titles. They are the ones that answer the questions a founder actually faces in the first two years: what kind of welcome am I building, will the numbers work, who will run this when I am tired, and what is kitchen life really like.

This list is organised around those questions. Every book on it is real, in print or widely available second-hand, and checked against a publisher page or library record. Each entry says what the book is for and where it falls short, because no single book will tell you how to run your restaurant.

How was this list chosen?

The list was chosen by job, not by fame. A founder needs five kinds of reading: a philosophy of hospitality, a grip on the money, a way to build systems, an honest view of kitchen life, and a deeper sense of food itself. Two or three books per question is enough. Reading twenty business books before opening is a way of postponing the real work.

Which books teach the philosophy of hospitality?

Two books from the same New York group of restaurants have shaped how a generation talks about hospitality.

1. Setting the Table, by Danny Meyer (2006)

Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business (HarperCollins, 2006) is the New York restaurateur's account of what he learned building his restaurants. A 2006 review in J. Weekly captures its two lasting ideas. First, excellent food and service get you only "49 percent of the way", and the rest comes from "how well you make people feel". Second, a clear order of priorities: staff first, then guests, then the community, then suppliers and investors. Read it for a vocabulary your team can share. Its limit: it is a New York story about a growing group of restaurants, so translate the principles, not the scale.

2. Unreasonable Hospitality, by Will Guidara (2022)

Published by Optimism Press on 25 October 2022, according to its Penguin Random House page, this is Guidara's account of turning Eleven Madison Park from a struggling brasserie into a restaurant named the best in the world. The publisher's description sums up its thesis: "the best way to build your bottom line is to give more, not less". It is practical about small, personal gestures and about building a team culture that produces them. Its limit: grand gestures need margins to fund them. Read it alongside the money books below.

Which books help with the numbers?

Every founder should read at least one book written by someone who reads profit and loss statements for a living.

3. Restaurant Success by the Numbers, by Roger Fields

Fields is an accountant, restaurant operator and consultant. The second edition was published by Ten Speed Press in 2014, according to its Bookshare listing, and covers funding, location, hiring, menu planning, sales forecasts and operating budgets. It is the most direct book here on whether a concept can pay for itself. Its limit: examples are American, so rents, wages and tax will differ from yours. Use the method, not the figures. For a local worked model, the guide on what it costs to open a restaurant is a companion.

4. The Restaurant: From Concept to Operation, by John R. Walker

This is a textbook rather than a memoir, which is its strength. It walks through concept, location, menu, kitchen design, staffing and operations in a structured way. The library record for the third edition (John Wiley, 2001) lists Walker with Donald E. Lundberg as co-author; later editions exist, so look for the most recent. Use it as a reference to check you have not skipped a step. Its limit: textbooks age, especially on technology and marketing.

Which book helps you build systems?

5. The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael E. Gerber

Not a restaurant book, but one of the most useful for chef-founders. The HarperCollins edition listed on Bookshare carries a 2007 copyright date. Gerber argues that most small businesses are started by skilled technicians who then get trapped working in the business rather than on it, and that the cure is to document how the business runs, as a franchise would. For a restaurant, that means recipes, opening checks, service standards and a manual someone else can follow. Its limit: the tone is evangelical, and a restaurant also needs warmth that no system can write down. Pair it with our guide to the restaurant operations manual.

Read one book for the welcome, one for the money and one for the systems. Then go and stand in your kitchen.

Which books show what kitchen life is really like?

Founders who have never worked a busy service should read at least one honest account before they hire a kitchen team.

6. Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain (2000)

Published by Bloomsbury in 2000, according to this library record, Bourdain's memoir made restaurant kitchens visible to the general public. Read it for the texture of the work: the pressure, the camaraderie, the hours. Its limit: it describes a culture of late twentieth-century New York kitchens, including habits the industry is rightly trying to leave behind. Read it as history, not as a model.

7. Blood, Bones & Butter, by Gabrielle Hamilton (2011)

Hamilton opened Prune in New York's East Village in 1999, and this memoir, reviewed by Publishers Weekly and published by Random House, tells how she came to cooking and to owning a small, unpretentious restaurant. It is the better book for a founder thinking about a personal, chef-led place, and pairs well with our piece on what a chef-patron is. Its limit: it is a memoir first and a business book hardly at all.

Which books deepen your understanding of food?

The founder does not need to be the chef, but should understand what makes food good, and where it comes from.

8. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, by Samin Nosrat (2017)

Published by Simon & Schuster on 25 April 2017, with illustrations by Wendy MacNaughton, according to its publisher page. It teaches cooking through four elements rather than recipes, which is exactly the language a founder needs to talk to a chef about why a dish works.

9. The Flavor Bible, by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg (2008)

Published by Little, Brown in 2008 and winner of a 2009 James Beard award for reference and scholarship, according to its Bookshare listing. It is an alphabetical reference of ingredients and the flavours that pair with them, drawn from chefs' experience. Useful when developing a menu; less useful as cover-to-cover reading.

10. Indian Food: A Historical Companion, by K. T. Achaya (1994)

Published by Oxford University Press, first in 1994 and in a revised edition in 1998, according to this book page at IIT Kanpur. Achaya (1927 to 2002) was a chemist by training and a food scientist, and the book draws on literature, archaeology, philology and botany to trace Indian food from prehistory to British rule, region by region. For anyone building a concept around Indian food, in India or abroad, it gives depth and stories that no trend report can. Its limit: it is scholarly and dense, best read a chapter at a time.

How should you read these books?

Read them in the order of your decisions, not in the order of this list.

1. Before you write a business plan: Restaurant Success by the Numbers and The E-Myth Revisited.
2. Before you design the concept: Setting the Table or Unreasonable Hospitality, plus one food book that fits your cuisine.
3. Before you hire your first kitchen team: one kitchen memoir, read with a critical eye.
4. During pre-opening: keep The Restaurant: From Concept to Operation as a checklist reference.

Take notes in one place. For each book, write three things you will do differently and one you disagree with. The disagreement is often where your own concept begins.

Key takeaways

• Choose books by the question they answer: hospitality, money, systems, kitchen life or food.
• Setting the Table and Unreasonable Hospitality give your team a shared language for welcome.
• Restaurant Success by the Numbers is the most direct test of whether a concept can pay its way.
• The E-Myth Revisited explains why documenting your systems matters more as a founder than as a cook.
• Read kitchen memoirs as history, not as a model for culture.
• Write down what you will change after each book, and what you disagree with.