Shipping Container Coffee Shops & Bars
Customized shipping containers are excellent choices for new coffee shops and hip bars. A recent study conducted by Ohio State University revealed that 60 percent of restaurants fail in their first year of existence and 80 percent fail within five years. As reported by BusinessInsider.com, Robert Irvine, celebrity chef and star of the hit show, “Restaurant Impossible,” lists the following as the top causes of restaurant failures:
Inexperience
Bad People Management
Lack of Accounting Skills
Spotty Customer Service
Sub-Par Food Quality & Execution
While Carrie Luxem, president and CEO of Restaurant HR Group, agrees with many of the things on Irvine’s list, she considers poor location and overspending to be two of the biggest reasons why restaurants fail. Luxem warns that some of the pitfalls of a bad location include poor visibility, insufficient parking and a lack of foot traffic. When it comes to overspending, Luxem says that some restauranteurs spend too much even before they open their doors on remodeling projects that aren’t always necessary.
Overcoming the reasons Irvine cited as being responsible for failure in the restaurant industry can be done with hands-on training and education. You can get experience by working in someone else’s restaurant before you strike out on your own, for instance, and learn how to prepare food and execute the menu you’re going to offer. You can also learn about the level of service customers expect at the same time, which will help you train your employees to tend to your customers appropriately down the line. You can learn how to manage others by taking a class or consulting with a seasoned mentor. You can also pick up the accounting skills you’ll need to succeed as a business owner by taking a class in a formal setting or online.
Conquering the obstacles to success that Luxem discussed is also within your control. You can research the demographics in a few areas where you’d like to open your restaurant to see which market your establishment will be most likely to succeed in, for example. You can also avoid overspending by identifying the projects that are critical to your success and stay within your budget by not adding unnecessary ones to your to-do list.
Sometimes, no matter how much research you do about the demographics and competition in the area and regardless of how careful you are to stick to your budget, your business may still be literally and figuratively positioned to fail. Often, this is due to a change in the neighborhood, a “jinxed” location that once seemed perfect, or something else. You can avoid pitfalls like these, however, by sidestepping a traditional retail location such as a strip mall and opening your restaurant as a portable pop-up eatery instead.
One of the biggest advantages that pop-up restaurant ideas have over conventional brick-and-mortar commercial locations is that they give you the option of relocating your business if you picked the wrong retail space or the consumer market around
