Starting a Restaurant – Three Professionals You Need
If you are planning a 300 seat steak house or a 30 seat coffee house, you need some professional help. You also need to know how to use the professionals you hire. The essential advisors are an accountant, an attorney and an architect/restaurant planner. Each expert needs to have the qualifications to pay for themselves as one of your key advisors.
Your Accountant
Your accountant should have the following qualifications:
- Must be experienced with tax laws for small businesses.
- Must have the ability to assist with either setting up your bookkeeping or have a staff to do your bookkeeping.
- Have the personality to be managed by your needs, rather than managing you for their needs.
Having the proper records is essential to managing your restaurant. The principles are the same for a small diner or a theme restaurant with hundreds of seats. You need immediate access to current records, history and details to properly keep financial data from becoming a time consuming chore that takes away from your main function as proprietor or manager.
Projecting your personnel needs, inventory limitations, cash flow and profitability should be at your fingertips daily. Knowing details in each of these areas will bolster your bottom line and help you grow profitably.
Your Attorney
While attorneys have a reputation that is the subject of comics, critics and defendants, they are also your long term survival advisors. Every contract of any sort must be reviewed by a qualified attorney. A good real estate business attorney can save you thousands of dollars on your lease. Even more important may be the protection of assets that aren’t part of your business.
Here are few basic qualifications of a restaurant attorney:
- Must have current small business clients as references.
- Must have real estate and/or lease experience.
- Must have previous experience with forming companies and how to protect personal assets.
- Must be willing to give you the cost of their services for the specific task as opposed to billing you for hours that are easily inflated. In other words, they need to give you a flat fee for reviewing a lease or setting up a corporation. If they are experienced, they know how long it will take them. Don’t pay for them to learn through research they are billing you for.
- If they cannot convey what they need to explain to you in laymen’s terms, find another attorney.
Many times attorneys get a bad rap from people who hire the wrong one for the job. If you need brain surgery, you don’t go to an obstetrician! The same applies to legal counsel; they all have their specialties.
The Architect/Restaurant Planner
The full range of services from an architect may not be needed. For instance, if you are opening a small café with little equipment and only a few seats, you may not need engineered drawings and specifications that a 150 seat operation may need. However, it still may be worth your investment to schedule an hour or two consultation to see if there are ways to redesign your space to make you more efficient or get more seating.
A real life example is a retail space that included huge restrooms. It was the restaurant planner who suggested that one entire restroom be demolished and the other one be split in half. This allowed the restaurateur to have room for two more tables. The revenue from the two extra tables far exceeded the extra construction cost and paid for the work in a year.
Architects can point out regulatory code issues before you enter into a lease or change something without advice. Know what you can or can’t do when altering any location. A mistake could put you out of business or have your business shut down while you meet required building codes.
It is absolutely essential that any architect/restaurant planner have these two qualifications:
- They must be able to show you plans and drawings of previous restaurants they have done.
- They have to be familiar with the building codes in the city, state or county you are located.
Summary
Over the years I tried to circumvent any or all of these professionals, only to regret it later. Leases with clauses that are lopsided in favor of the owner, code violations that cost more to correct than anticipated and tax breaks I couldn’t take advantage of have cost me more than the relatively small investment in the proper advisors.
If you feel strongly that you cannot afford the costs of these professionals, you probably should not be opening a restaurant. There will be more costly surprises. The professional advice will save you money, rather than cost you money in the long term.
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