The 'Next Great Restaurant' Could Be a Fantasy
This is the second in a three part series on opening a new restaurant.
I'm a fool. For years I developed business plans, designed spaces, created concepts, pitched investors, perfected menus, searched out locations, hired and fired managers, struggled with cash flow, profit, loss and payroll while negotiating with landlords, banks, and partners. All of these tasks are important to opening a new restaurant. Or so I thought. Now I find out all I would have had to do to open a great restaurant was call Bobby Flay.
The newest reality TV show, America's Next Great Restaurant premiered last Sunday night to mixed reviews. I am sure there are millions of viewers and thousands of restaurant owners who watched the show and thought their restaurant idea was much better than any of the ten culinary finalists.
Don't worry, it may be touted as reality, but in real life, it is culinary fantasy.
What may make for enjoyable television has little to do with successful restaurants. In reality, the show may or may not boost NBC's ratings, but it has little to do with the restaurant business. Actually, it may do more harm than good by painting a picture of breeze and ease when it comes to building a restaurant empire.
Creating a show where contestants stand in line, enter a commissary kitchen stage, prepare their meal, present it -- cold -- to a group of potential investors and suddenly have a chance of opening, owning and operating three restaurants, in three cities stretched across the continent, is an unobtainable real-life goal.
Don't believe for a moment developing a concept can be done in one television season. It takes far more work, planning, brainstorming, and market research than the four judges would lead you to believe.
And although the experience may be an exciting, challenging endeavor for pros like Flay and Chipotle founder Steve Ells, funding alone is not the only component needed to open a successful restaurant. Interesting as it would be to know the amount of investment the four restaurateurs are placing in the winner's circle to make a dream come true, everyone is tight-lipped about that subject.
According to NBC spokesperson Meredith Fitzpatrick the investment amount can't be disclosed. Fitzpatrick claimed each of the judges are investing the same amount and that they had as much to lose as the winner.
If Flay, Ells, Lorena Garcia, and Curtis Stone are putting up less than $250,000 each, the project has little chance of skyrocketing to NBC's "Billion Dollar Restaurant" category, whatever that is. That million-dollar amount would barely cover the cost of build-out for three locations, even if everything went according to plan.
What's more perplexing is the three-restaurant concept. Stretched across three different cities, separated by thousands of miles, opening a trio of locations is borderline culinary suicide even for the most experienced restaurant professional. The best restaurateurs face daily dilemmas while managing restaurants within the same zip code.
But as the show's season unfolds, listen for the words passion, endurance, stress management, stamina, cash flow, customer service, anxiety, depression, satisfaction, hiring, firing, and location selection. And, let's not forget profit.
These are just some of the components the show's judges need to bring out in the winner.
