Now that you’ve decided to open or operate a restaurant, you need to get a good idea of what it takes to operate a successful establishment. Contrary to what some people may think, the best learning opportunities may not come from someplace that is a part of a large national chain.

One of the disadvantages in working for a chain store is that almost all of the foodstuffs used in day to day operations are ordered and come from corporate sources, rather than taking advantage of local vendors. Another disadvantage is that you can’t get a realistic idea of what costs are incurred for such things as utilities and insurances. Many of these policies are purchased using corporate bulk discounts, and the parent chain can garner utility or other operational discounts through the state or territorial government’s chamber of commerce based on the number of locations the chain may operate in any given area or territory.

These discounts are generally not available to smaller, single location establishments, so you can get a more realistic idea of what expenses in these key areas are likely to be.

Rather than trying to gauge these expenses from a place that is part of a chain, try to see if you can go to work in a locally owned or family owned restaurant. The advantages to this approach are huge. For one thing, if you are the one who will be eventually taking over the establishment, you can take advantage of the expertise of the previous owner before the person retires or leaves, especially if the sale includes recipes used by the business because they are for foods the establishment has already gained a good reputation for.

Learning how to prepare the foods properly, in a tried and true manner, can help to insure retention of a loyal customer base if you plan to keep essentially the same menu as the former owner served.

Working in a restaurant can give the perspective owner experience in such key areas as portion control (how much food is necessary for how many servings), what the profit margin is on the size of the portion served and who some of the local suppliers are for such things as baked goods, produce and meats. Other important lessons include the kind of food preparation that needs to be done in order to serve menu selections especially if you’re working with a cuisine that’s new to you, the kinds of restaurant personnel you would likely need to hire and what kind of work they would have to do in order to make your place a success.

Although no one likes to face adverse situations, another area of expertise that the smaller restaurant owner can impart is what kind of emergencies that owning a restaurant might unearth on a daily basis. Unlike a chain location, the owner can’t rely on corporate resources to come to the rescue if something breaks or malfunctions.

This is a good chance to see how to improvise a solution in the face of adversity if a repair person is not readily available and to find out some of the repair and service providers in your local area. This can also give you a more realistic idea of what you can expect to spend for emergency services and repairs.

For A Complete Guide To Running A Restaurant Visit www.runningarestaurant.net

[tags]restaurant management, restaurant business planning[/tags]

There is more to opening a restaurant than just having a love of cooking. Before you commit your time and resources, there are a few hard questions that you need to ask yourself in order to make your business a success:

- What kind of skills are you bringing with you into ownership? For example, do you have any experience with running a restaurant at all? Or even cooking on more than a hobby basis in the first place? Maybe you’re the one who has the management skills necessary to effectively handle employees, including hiring, firing and workplace issues like employee morale. Perhaps you’re the one who has the necessary capital to start up, but no real experience in any other areas. Now is the time for you to sit down and make a very critical assessment of the skills and strengths that you bring to the table.

- Do you have enough financial resources to keep you going both at home and at work for the first two years that you operate? Experts estimate that over three quarters of all restaurants fail due to lack of adequate and realistic planning, and for two years is how long you can realistically expect to operate until your restaurant will see enough profits before you, as the owner, can begin to draw a salary against them.

Some of the expenses you need to take into consideration include adequate property and liability insurance (including fire, accident and mandated worker’s compensation) to cover your first two years of operation, retainer fees for your lawyer, accountant, etc., wages for any employees you may have to hire, possible utility costs, including phone and cooking/refrigeration fuels. Other expenses would be a small budget for advertising, and a cushion of about 20% over what you have calculated to be your monthly food cost budget to cover any market fluctuations due to shortages, and so on.

- Are you and your loved ones prepared for the large amount of time you’re going to have to devote to making your business a success? As the restaurant’s owner, YOU are going to be the one who has to be the first there and the last to leave, giving you nearly no free time for days off, family time, or vacations during your first two years of operation. You are also going to have to be the one to fill in if you have a staffing crisis, need to handle emergencies like produce that doesn’t arrive, equipment malfunctions, and so on.

The time away from your loved ones can be stressful for you and them if they are not entirely behind your vision or do not have a realistic expectation or understanding of just how much of your time and attention is going to be required of you when you first start out.

These questions are not a way to say that you should abandon any dreams you have, but you need to have a realistic understanding of the kinds of skills you’re going to need to compliment your own strengths and the scope of expenses you might face in order to make your restaurant endeavors a success.

For A Complete Guide To Running A Restaurant Visit www.runningarestaurant.net

[tags]restaurant management, restaurant business planning[/tags]

Getting to be the owner of a restaurant can sometimes be easier than having to start out from scratch. You might want to look into taking over an already existing restaurant. Here are some things to consider before taking that step and investing your time and resources.

Why, exactly, is the current owner looking to sell? Is the property and business being sold because the business is failing, or is the owner just looking to retire? Many times an owner has invested time and resources in a successful restaurant only to discover that he has no heirs or family members interested in continuing after the original owner has gone.

If the business is doing well, it might be more cost effective to take over an already existing restaurant. Some of the advantages and disadvantages to this option include:

- a customer base that is already in place. You would have to do less to attract patrons than if you had to start from the beginning. Some disadvantages might be that the existing customers would have certain expectations as to what kinds of food were offered on the menu and would be more resistant to any possible cuisine changes.

- expenses incurred while running a restaurant could be tracked for at least a year or better. This would give you a more realistic idea of what the actual expenses are involved in running a restaurant on everything from the cost of produce to the monthly expenses needed for things like your insurances, fees, utilities, wages, etc. You would also have a better idea of profits generated by the location. Disadvantages here could be that even though the restaurant looks to be doing well on paper, the owner has little real idea of expenses, and you might find yourself having to raise prices to make sure you break even or earn a profit.

- you can make use of the connections the current owner already has. Chances are that the current owner can introduce you to the greengrocer and butcher who already deliver supplies to the location. The same is true for other services that the owner uses for things like garbage pick-up, restaurant supplies like linens, etc. The disadvantage to this course is that you might not get the same savings and quality of service as if you researched these things and found providers on your own.

- you might be able to make use of some of the licenses and health certificates already in place at the location. If your municipality and state allow it, these licenses might be able to be transferred with the sale of the restaurant. This means that the transition from one owner to the new one could go on with nearly no interruption in the business. If not, the disadvantage is that you would have to reapply for and obtain these before you could open for business.

If the business is not succeeding, is it possible to fix it so that it will? If so, is it more cost effective to make use of the assets the business already has like the equipment, location, etc., as opposed to getting everything new?

The above points are certainly some to seriously ponder as you write out your business plan.

For A Complete Guide To Running A Restaurant Visit www.runningarestaurant.net

[tags]restaurant management, restaurant business planning[/tags]

The benefits of opening an online business are many. Online businesses are the wave that this new technology generation is riding on. There are many online business opportunities available. The world of cyber space is wide open and ready for your new online business site. Starting an online business is a relatively easy process. This process can be done easily through a paid web designer and web master or it can be done your self with a crash course in web design followed by a crash course that teaches you how to be the web master of your own site. These courses are available online on someone else’s online business. There are so many online businesses that we patronize daily.

There are many online businesses that are wide open and ready for you. Online bakery, online typing service, online fishing supplies, online recipe book site, online cleaning tips for the home and office, online weight loss site, online used items sale, etc are just some examples of an online business.

Opening an online business requires very little overhead and start up fees. An online business requires no renting of space like at the mall. Renting a store at the mall could cost thousands of dollars while owning your own online business may cost as little as 15.00 to maintain the site yourself.

Opening an online business requires you to have only a small amount of merchandise on hand. If you have a distributor that you work directly with then you can have the orders shipped directly from the manufacturer or distributor to the purchaser. This saves the need to have a large space for storage and it essentially eliminates the middle man from the shipping process, thus enabling the online business owner to make a few more dollars.

Opening an online business allows you the flexibility in hours that you may need to still maintain a traditional job as you build your online business. This is a great benefit as it often supplements income for persons as they work to establish a strong customer base.

Opening an online business allows you the flexibility to own more than one business at a time. This flexibility can often allow you to work on more than one stream of income at a time and this helps boost the overall economy.

An online business can be a great learning ground for the entrepreneur that needs to gain skills and strengthen there capacity to start a local storefront business. There are many businesses that went nationwide after having started out as an online business that was being run out of the garage. Open your vision to the new way of business. Online businesses are a great way to make money with minimal overhead and financial pressure.

Article by William Gold. He writes about the advantages of starting an online business. If you want to open an electronics website check out TheGoodGuysElectronics.com for Wholesale Cell Phones. The have the best prices on Wholesale Cell Phones on the web.

[tags]Wholesale Cell Phones, Cell Phone Wholesalers, Cell Phones[/tags]

Many Small Business Owners venturing into Internet Marketing for the first time are overwhelmed by technical terms they don’t understand, and the sheer volume of information available (information overload). To compound the problem, they are bombarded with offers from so called “experts” with systems “that will place their new website at the top of the search engine charts in a matter days”.

Are you one of these people? If so, let me start this discussion with a question:

If you are a new business trying to establish a presence on the internet, do you think SEO (search engine optimization) is more important to get you to the top page of the organic search listings? - or, because SEO is a good mirror of the way people search for things on line, and how they expect your website to look and function?

If - as a new business - your goal is to use SEO to drive your website to the top of the organic search listings overnight - Think Again. The algorithms used by search engines to rank your site are so complicated and involve so many factors that it is highly unlikely that you could achieve top rankings until your business has interacted on the internet for quite some time. We will discuss some of the main considerations later in this article

Yes, I know you get offers every day to purchase some SEO guru’s system to “Defeat Google and Drive Hoards of Hungry Visitors to Your Site” (or some such). I get these offers too, and I’ve even bought one or two before I knew what I was doing. Trust me - except for the educational value of learning a little more, they are for the most part a waste of money. Let’s use Google as an example because they are the largest and most widely used. Google has rooms full of very smart programmers designing the spiders that crawl your site looking for the patterns that have been used to boost scores, and as soon as they see these patterns developing, unless it’s what they want, they change the formula.

Is there a way to achieve top ranking overnight? Yes, but not in the organic listings. You can get top rankings in the PAID listings (across the very top of the page and in the right side bar) by using Google AdWords. Join the program - pick keywords you want to use and bid on them - submit the highest (winning) bid - and Google will list your site as high as you’ve paid for. Two problems; most new businesses don’t have anywhere enough advertising budget to play this game - and, many searchers who are looking for information ignore the paid listings where they know they are going to get a sales pitch and look first in the top organic listings (I know I usually do, because if I know the product mfg. or author I’ll punch that in and go direct to the source).

So, back to the original question. The answer to why SEO is important to new businesses is that many of the things that search engines look for are much the same as your potential customer looks for. What are some of those things:

The exact same words (keywords) they searched for in the site and page titles of your website and in the content on the pages of your website. Think about the words users type in for their search and make sure your site actually has those words in titles and content.

A well organized site with a sitemap (or link) between all pages of your site.

Information (and keyword) rich content. You may have heard “content is king”? It is. Make sure your site is not just one big sales pitch. Viewers are looking for information as well as your offer. Each page should have between 300 and 700 words of descriptive content. While good for viewers, images are not good for SEO (the Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images). Having said that, I’d always decide in favor of the viewer.

Links from and to other sites. Caution, the link must be to a relevant site (related to your business). A lot of links to non-related sites are a red flag to Google, and usually spell “Sales Pitch” to viewers.

There are many other considerations for search engine optimization. It would be wise to go to the source - “Google Webmaster/Site Owner Help” - go to “Google Basics”, then to “Search Engine Optimization”. A second step would be to talk to your Webmaster who will explain how they have optimized your site (if they have), or domain host help, if you have a do-it-yourself site.

Last thought - optimize your site for Google and, more important, FOR YOUR VIEWERS.

Dick Bendtzen, author of “Yes You Can Start And Run A Small Business”, has had three small businesses of his own, and served as a volunteer Small Business Counselor for SCORE. Dick provides a newsletter, forum and other resources for small business owners at http://www.smallbusinessyesyoucan.com

[tags]SEO,search engine optimization,keywords,google,internet[/tags]

One question that is paramount in people’s minds right now ( in just about every country in the world ) is, of course, whether it is actually very wise to start an Internet business in the current economic climate. To this query I’m tempted to use an old cliche here and say, ‘Well, yes, actually because there’s no time like the present is there?’ I doubt, however, that that is likely to wash with most potential clients. Rather than going into a detailed explanation/argument about the economy and world events that is likely to send y our prospect to sleep, I would be inclined to keep everything very simple ( as ever ).

Explain that there are either of two things that can happen in the immediate future:
1.The economy can turn around either slowly or rapidly
2. The economy can get worse.
Whichever of the two it happens to be, I really cannot see any disadvantage to starting your own business either from a practical or psychological aspect. Let’s take point one to begin with. Imagine that things start to pick up and you have just set up in business - people will suddenly start to feel buoyant again and the thrill will allow them to feel that the world is their oyster. Psychologically, then, they are likely to be feeling a little elated and keen to get in on something that is growing - before all their friends beat them to it, perhaps? I would anticipate that if this becomes the case, there will be a surge in people wanting to come ‘on board.’ The practical reasons are obvious because people will see the bottom of the recession as the right time to start investing ( in a new businesses, shares or other venture ). From a psychological viewpoint, they are now more likely to go into something a little bit more entrepreneurial than your usual run of the mill stocks and shares and banking alternatives than they may have in the past. This is, of course, due to the fact that trust has been lost within those sectors and we all know that trust is what you build a successful business on, don’t we?

Let’s now assume that the economy gets worse ( as in point 2 ). Well, psychologically, it’s my view that the worse it gets, the more likely people are to jump ship from where ever they are operating and not wait to be pushed - rather take the initiative ( people love to feel they are doing that ) and find a new situation over which they hold more control. From a practical point of view, they are also likely to see ‘the writing on the wall’ for conventional businesses as a whole and so reinforcing the view that getting out is better than being pushed out while they still have some cash to play with!

So, to come back to the old cliches, I’m tempted to use another and say ‘The time is right’ to start your own show. Indeed, one has to ask the question as to whether we can afford not to start our own businesses rather than trust ourselves to a system that has let the majority of the world down so badly. I know which side of the fence I’m on so perhaps I may finish with a slight amendment to the latter cliche above and that is ‘The time is always right to start your own ( Internet ) business.

Using my previous experience of running a business for 15 years, I enjoy helping people set up business in my Internet Marketing Team and have a particular slant towards article marketing, having been paid for publication in the past.
Hilary Hughes

www.hilaryahughes.com

Article Marketer.

[tags]Start an Internet Business in less than a week,Start an Internet Business in Manchester,Start an Int[/tags]

To have a successful restaurant, there are several staff positions you will need to fill. The kind of restaurant you decide to open will have an impact on the number and kinds of restaurant staff you will need to hire.

If you open what is essentially a takeout location that has few, if any tables for the customers to eat on the premises, you may only need to hire one or two employees who handle preparing a limited amount of food choices like pizzas or submarine sandwiches. One or both of them should know how to run your cash register in order to ring up any sales during operating hours. You may want to hire someone who can make deliveries off site, and possibly one or two employees to do nothing but handle dishwashing and kitchen cleanup duties to comply with local health ordinances.

For opening a restaurant that is large enough for some tables for dining in, you will also probably need to hire someone who can aid in the daily preparation of some of the components necessary to construct menu selections (i.e. slicing meat and cheeses or cutting up vegetables). Additional duties during slack times might include restocking a beverage cooler or store displays of items like chips, cookies, or pretzels. They might also need to make sure that drink machines are full and functioning (like keeping the ice dispenser full and insuring the hoses to self-serve drink machines are correctly connected) and policing the dining areas to insure that the tables are wiped clean and the floors are clean of any debris or litter like spills or napkins loose on the floor.

As a general rule, the larger the establishment, the more employees you will have to worry about. A full service formal dining type of location will require personnel that fall generally to one of two categories: “front of the house” and “back of the house” staff.

The front of the house people are generally the ones that the customer would normally interact with. These positions include the host or hostess, responsible for seating the patron, taking reservations, and insuring that the tables are prepared for the client. Some establishments have the host give the patrons a menu so that they can begin looking it over until the assigned wait staff can get there to take preliminary drink orders.

This person can also be the manager and would be responsible for handling any issues that might arise with the patron. Other “front of the house” staff would include the wait staff (responsible for taking food and drink orders and bringing the meal to the table), wine sommelier (responsible for making wine or beer recommendations) and cashiers.

“Back of the house” staff can be classified as those employees the patron might not interact with during the dining experience. These include the chefs and prep cooks, bus persons (responsible for removing dirty dishes and preparing the dining environment for the next patron) and cleanup crew (responsible for cleaning the kitchen, dining area after hours, and sometimes keeping the restrooms sanitary for staff and patrons during the hours of operation).

Of course, it is possible that some of the less busy wait staff can be responsible for a few things like busing and preparing the dining area, cleaning up spills or policing the floors and maintaining the bathrooms.

For A Complete Guide To Running A Restaurant Visit www.runningarestaurant.net

[tags]restaurant management, restaurant business planning[/tags]

E-mail is still one of the most useful ways of communicating with people online. As a small business owner, this is the direct line of your customers to you, the seller. This is how you will be able to establish a good working reputation with your clients and more importantly, keep them coming back to you. While you may not realize it, good service can actually trump a pricing or product strategy used by your competitors. This edge will keep your profits high and delivering good service is an investment of character than that of cash.

The main draw of having a good service oriented website business is that you gain and keep the trust of customers. This means they will feel comfortable and at ease when ordering from you. They will buy from you for the same reason people order a familiar item on a menu when in a strange restaurant, it is better to be safe than to be sorry. This is particularly true when it comes to both really small purchases where price is hardly the matter. It also applies to very large purchases where customers need to know that they are not going to get ripped off or cheated out of their money.

Not only should you make a good website design, you should also design your letterhead in your emails to match your website theme and reflect its ideals. Use the same fonts when possible and use matching colors. Always include your name and contact information and make the messages personal so that your clients know it is not an automated message that they are reading. Once you got that down, you can flaunt it on your site. If people can see that you show it in your site that you have good service, people will want to buy from you.

Finally, always remember that a client with a complaint is simply that. They are not angry at you, but are simply stressed and dissatisfied. Some customers naturally tend to say harsh words but are simply seeking assurance that their complaints will be handled. Give them fast and friendly solutions to establish a relationship wherein they can be assured that they can approach you for any problem and that their concerns are your foremost priority. Once they feel that that is the level of your service on the web, they will be more polite in making complaints.

Need a professional site service in London? Visit www.kaizenet.com for more details about Kaizenet’s design and marketing services.

[tags]email, website, service, internet[/tags]

This project was a car dealership in Lancaster Wisconsin. They had been taking bids on a new lighting system, but had only received one potentially viable proposal, which never materialized. After finding a commercial lighting team on the Internet, they contacted on and requested that they propose a new lightings system for the car dealership based upon their existing pole locations.

The car dealership had existing concrete lighting pole bases on the lot, with heavy gauge wiring running to each location. The challenging thing about this was the distance between the bases. They were atypically far apart, which made it a challenge for us to find the best possible lighting fixture, reflector, and lens assembly to create the necessary lighting levels for nighttime business and security.

Another challenge was limited pole sizing. Existing bolts set in concrete allowed for no more than 25 foot poles in a 90MPH wind zone. In order to balance this limitation of pole height with a narrower range of fixture options, we had to run through several models in our photometric software to develop a sound proposal for this car dealership.

The owner of the car dealership was very helpful in this process. He sent the lighting company diagrams and pictures of the car lot, along with a copy of the previous proposal from our competitor. The lighting company decided that this client would need more than one options to consider due to the challenges inherent in lighting this facility and the clients available budget. Ultimately, lighting company were able to show the owner two proposals and the benefit of one over the other.

The original light system for the car lot had used smaller, horizontal burning, metal halide shoe box fixtures. The owner had assumed that we would simply replace this fixtures with newer, better models. The lighting company did the first proposal based on his requested upgrade, and in the second proposal, suggested something even better for the car dealership.

They proposed a lighting system configured with high-performance vertical burn SVL series lighting fixtures. A larger housing, a better performing reflector, and a sag glass lens, enables these fixtures to consistently and costs effectively generate higher light output.

Using the raw photometric data we assembled, we also created a three dimensional model of both proposed systems.

Both proposals showed the same number of lighting fixtures in use, and the results were overwhelmingly in favor of the SVL series equipment. The lighting levels were more evenly distributed throughout the merchandise area, whereas the shoe-box type fixtures produced too many hot spots directly underneath the poles. There was also insufficient light between the existing pole locations.

The SVL fixtures were clearly the better choice for the car lot considering the fixed location of the existing pole locations. We further enhanced the visibility of the dealership by lighting the front of the lot along the highway wit perimeter fixtures, and we installed two additional poles on the inside of the lot that supported four 1000W fixtures on each pole, each with a special a specific reflector for interior area lighting.

RLLD Commercial Lighting offers energy efficient tennis court lighting and parking lot lighting sales.

[tags]parking lot lighting, parking lot lights[/tags]

If you have a passion in aromatherapy and you enjoy mixing essential oils, or if you are even making your own blends, starting your own small business in aromatherapy can be a possible venture.

What is good about it, is you can do it online or you can also put up a small store specializing on aromatherapy oils. Whatever way you decide in doing your aromatherapy business, you have to keep in mind some important considerations before finally starting your own small business.

- Make a plan. In any business, big or small, you need to put up a basic business plan of how the business will be run. Determine your target and goals, your market, the cost of investment that you need, as well as your suppliers of your raw product. It is important in business to maintain your supply but not too much so you will not be disappointing customers. Here are some details of what you need to do in starting up that business.

- Know what to sell. True, you are in the aromatherapy business but you have to decide on what specific products you have to sell - would it be lotions, soaps, massage oils? Will you make your own aromatherapy recipes? Will you also provide services?

- Know your competitors. One of the basic requirements in starting your own small business is knowing your competitors. Do your research and find out what they are selling. If you are thinking about selling online, there is a greater chance of having many competitors. But don’t worry, there are also many opportunities online and the market is wide. If you can make your own aromatherapy recipe that is not being sold by the competitor, that would be better.

- Conduct an extensive research on the subject. Your passion will not work without knowledge and hard work, and if you want to put up products different from your competitors, you must do your homework - research.

- Establish your accounting system. This will help you keep track of your profits and losses. In any business, the first few months will probably not earn as much profit because you are still working on your fixed investments, so be patient.

- Set up your online store. Starting your own small business online would require you to put up your website, including the mode of payment, as well as generating traffic to your site. You can hire freelance web designers who can do all these jobs for you. You can also designate a place at home as your home office to at least establish the identity of your business.

- Decide on your packaging, advertising and promotion. Decide on a catchy brand and decide on how you present your product that it will appeal to your market. Decide also on how you want to advertise and promote your products. There are cheap online advertising methods that you can take advantage of and you can also give talks about aromatherapy so you can gain customers.

- Find cheap shipping and delivery services for your products. You can allow pick-up of your products or you can also ship and deliver them. If you are into online business you will most likely be into shipping, so find cheaper options in the shipment of your products.

Starting your own small business in aromatherapy could be easy, especially if you already have the passion on the subject. It is important too that you just don’t sell, but also test your products so you can always give satisfaction to your customers.

Carolyn Anderson believes in pursuing your passion to live a fulfilling life. To learn more about starting your own aromatherapy business, check out Handcrafter’s Companion. Also check out Home Staging Success, a guide to start your own home staging business.

[tags]benefits of aromatherapy,benefits of essential oils,starting your own aromatherapy business[/tags]