19 posts.
Starting a restaurant
The right offbeat town is not on a travel list. It has long visitor stays, locals for the quiet months, reliable supply and state rules you can work with.
Property, design & sourcing
A local-produce food business starts with the harvest, not the menu. How to choose a format, plan and price around seasons, and work with growers.
People & careers
A chef-patron owns the restaurant they cook in. Here is how the role differs from a head chef, what it really involves, and how to decide if it suits you.
People & careers
Ten real books for people opening a restaurant, chosen by the question each one answers, with what it is good for and where it falls short.
Starting a restaurant
Independent restaurants that did well lately tested small, found a second way to earn, made their best cooking easier to reach and watched a few numbers closely.
Starting a restaurant
Opening goes faster when you order the work by lead time, not by tidiness. Ten steps, four decision gates and the paperwork to start first.
Starting a restaurant
A single headline figure for the cost to open a restaurant hides more than it shows. Here is the line-by-line structure, the reserve most budgets leave out and a way to price delay.
Starting a restaurant
A restaurant business plan is read by people with a short list of questions. Lead with the answers: what you are asking for, what it buys, who runs it and how it survives a bad year.
Starting a restaurant
A restaurant concept is a set of promises that the room, the menu, the price and the team all have to keep. Seven questions to test them before a lease makes them expensive.
Starting a restaurant
There is no single normal restaurant profit margin. There is a margin your format, rent and labour model make possible, and a few warning signs that show it slipping before the bank balance does.
Starting a restaurant
Eight ways to fund a restaurant, matched to the costs they suit. The usual mistake is using one source for every line of the budget.
Starting a restaurant
A restaurant lease is a long commitment that gets tested three ways: when you succeed, when you struggle and when you sell. Here are twelve clauses to read twice, sorted by the moment they bite.
Starting a restaurant
The famous 90 percent failure figure is not supported by the data. The real risk is structural: fixed costs, the wrong site and no exit plan. Here is how to design against each one.
Hotels & lodging
Most guides start with the building. Start with the maths of a small room count and the question of who will run the hotel, then let the design follow.
New formats
A restaurant pop-up is cheap to run and easy to misread. Decide what result would stop you before the first service, and you will learn something real.
People & careers
An independent hospitality career is a portfolio of work, not a single job. Here is a simple model for building one, and the facts official data leaves out.
Property, design & sourcing
A restaurant location is a bet on sales you cannot yet see. Use gates first, a daypart street audit second, and a rent stress test third.
Property, design & sourcing
Buy new, used or lease by asking what each machine does for the kitchen, not what it costs today. Here is a decision rule by category, with the compliance checks.
Places & perspectives
Ten cities from five regions, judged on demand, ease of setup, cost of space and labour, food culture and the professionals you can hire. An editorial ranking, with a caveat for each.
