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Opening up a restaurant is a costly, time-consuming process. For months – or even years – you have toiled over a menu, branding ideas, a business plan, and legal requirements.  Now the big day is here: you’re opening your restaurant to the public. How can you make sure that it’s a success? There are a lot of things to take into consideration when launching your new restaurant. For example, if you’re located in an area surrounded by office buildings and…

Craft or micro breweries have become incredibly popular in the United States. Fed up with bland, watery beer, consumers are turning to small, local breweries. While the sale of beer has decreased overall in the United States, craft brew sales have actually increased by 6%, and now make up 25% of the $116 billion American beer market. Craft breweries offer an opportunity for beer aficionados to taste a range of unique flavors and to have a different experience than just…

There are currently more than 1 million restaurants operating in the United States. You might dream of opening up a restaurant yourself one day, eager to show off your incredible cooking skills or your flair for business. Yet you may find the concept of starting your own restaurant to be daunting. Without a doubt, opening up a restaurant requires a lot of time, energy — and money. Depending on your concept, location, and other factors, you could spend anywhere from…

Coffee shops, like other types of food and beverage establishments, run on an incredibly tight margin. While the food costs for coffee shops tend to be low, labor expenses are often high. As a result, smaller coffee shops often have a profit margin as low as 2.5%. In the COVID-19 era, these margins have shrunk for many coffee shop owners. Between patrons working from home and shutdown orders, the days of customers hanging out, buying multiple drinks, or getting an…

In the best of times, running a restaurant can be a challenge, with tight margins, high turnover,  and a demanding schedule. During a global pandemic, it has become even more difficult. Restaurants have been particularly hard hit by shutdown orders, along with laws that prohibit indoor dining, or limit capacity to 50% or less. Restaurants across the country are facing dire circumstances due to COVID-19. One way that many restaurant owners can tighten their belts and increase their profits is…

Jump To Your State When you open up a restaurant, you probably spend a lot of time thinking about the big picture: what will my restaurant look like? What will we serve? Yet you will soon find that you spend a lot of time focusing on the small details and the red tape, like getting the right licenses and permits to operate in your state. One prime example is food handlers licenses. While these permits are generally much easier to…

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant hardship across the United States: millions infected, and record levels of unemployment. While most industries have been affected by this health crisis, the food and beverage sector has been hit particularly hard. Closures of in-person dining, restrictions on operations, and the need to provide personal protective equipment has led to a sharp decrease in profits — while expenses have sharply increased. If you own a restaurant, you are probably considering ways to trim your…

Jump To Your State There are a lot of benefits to serving alcohol at your restaurant. Liquor sales tend to have the largest profit margins over anything else on the menu, ranging from 75 to 80%. Alcohol is particularly profitable due to large markups for prices, low labor costs, and a longer shelf life compared to most other consumables. Having beer, wine, and/or hard liquor on the menu can also attract new customers to your restaurant. For many people, a…

Last Updated: July 14, 2020 from Facebook pages. Lots of new info on re-openings! The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic swept across the US in less than a week, effectively shutting down life as we had known it. The pandemic has impacted businesses of all sizes across a number of different industries. However, the first industry to be impacted was the restaurant industry and it is perhaps the hardest-hit industry to-date.  On March 16th, Governor Gretchen Whitmer issued an executive order to…

For many Americans, bubble tea is a relatively new concept. After being invented in Taiwan in the 1980s, the fun drink with a giant straw has exploded in popularity across Asia — and throughout the world. Bubble tea is in such high demand globally that McDonald’s put it on the menu in Germany. If you are a bubble tea fan, or simply interested in investing in a business with a tremendous potential for growth, you may be thinking about starting…