INTRODUCTION: WHY YOU NEED THIS BOOK

So you want to open a restaurant, and you don't have millions of dollars to spend. This is your dream, your passion, and a goal you want to achieve, but you don't know where to start. Thousands of books can tell you how to start a business, succeed in the food and beverage industry, and achieve your aspirations and purpose. So what makes this one different? The Food & Beverage Magazine Guide to Restaurant Success is all of those books rolled into one.

This book will show you how to

• Determine if you are ready, willing, and able to open a restaurant
• Select the best location, menu, and staff
• Understand step-by-step how to open a restaurant
• Market your new restaurant
• Make smart decisions about where to invest your money to grow your business

"Experts" and naysayers will urge you not to open that business until you have millions of dollars to back you up. Clearly, you're not going to listen to them, because you're reading this book. Good for you.

The Most Important Thing to Remember

To begin, you must read this section over and over to understand this book.

If you are going to open and operate a successful restaurant, you must understand that it is a business, and you are now an entrepreneur. It doesn't matter if you are a mechanic, office worker, chef, sommelier, or foodie. Restaurateur is a nice label, but you must become an entrepreneur as well as use your other skills to open and then operate a successful restaurant.

Period.

What is an entrepreneur?

Do you watch popular television shows where people pitch business ideas, or successful entrepreneurs work with startups? While viewing these programs, do you yell at the screen or tell yourself you could do so much better? These shows are entertaining (or they wouldn't be on the air), but this is not what an entrepreneur does to become successful.

According to Forbes magazine, an entrepreneur is more than someone who owns and operates a business. That person is both a leader and a manager. As a leader, you find the solution to every problem, including hiring the right people to solve a particular issue. As a manager, you handle the day-to-day operations (until the situation changes). You understand the difference between finance and accounting. You recognize how marketing and sales are very different but that both are needed to be successful. You work long hours, get dirty, become frustrated, and would not live any differently. As an entrepreneur, you want autonomy, purpose, and flexibility, while making money and ultimately leaving a legacy. Most importantly, you are willing to pay the price in sacrifice, failure, and hard work with faith in yourself and what you want to accomplish.

My Start as an Entrepreneur

Usually, other "experts" would begin their book by telling you about their many successes in the food and beverage industry, hospitality industry, and business in general.

I am very successful, but more importantly, I want you to understand me as a person and entrepreneur. Using my guidance, you can open a restaurant without having millions of dollars to spend. I can open one today for as little as $25,000.

How? The steps will be explained throughout the book. For now, let's start at the beginning.

I was 8 years old, and I found a way to sell greeting and holiday cards. If I sold enough cards, I got points to pick a prize. Something inside of me said that I could move these cards by lugging boxes and selling them door-to-door. Making money this way, I would get to pick whatever prize I wanted.

I selected a shiny, new, brass-plated trumpet-and I have no idea why I picked that trumpet or what happened to it. My eye was on the prize, and while I remember the feeling of the importance of selling enough cards to select a reward, I can barely remember the prize itself.

As an entrepreneur, even at such a young age, that feeling kept me going. I realized that if I could sell those cards, I'd get that prize and much more. That was a defining moment that influences my life to this day.

However, my parents urged me to pursue a career as a professional. I do wonder where I would be today if I had become a lawyer or doctor. My dad (and everyone else) told me to do a lot of soul searching when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do as a career. I was a little envious of others at the time; many people in my world already knew what they wanted to do and where their paths were going to take them.

I love and respect my family, especially my father, so I decided to attend college and obtain a degree. I had no plans or goals professionally; I was focused on getting an education. My personal plan was to attend college, learn everything I could, and hang out with my friends. What's more important than friends, fast cars, motorcycles, and good times?

Then a funny thing happened. I graduated from high school and planned to attend college, but I needed to make money, and I didn't want a job. Now I am going to show my age, but before the internet, there were classified advertisements in newspapers. They were like apps for buying and selling, except printed on paper. I always read the classifieds, especially businesses for sale. I can't explain why, but I loved reading that section daily. One day, I discovered an ad looking for people to rent an ice cream truck.

"Wow, that would be fun," I thought. "I can drive around all day." Gas prices at the time ranged from 89 cents to 99 cents per gallon. I wanted to do this, so I managed to get my best friend and cousin, Mark Mandel, involved (even though at the time he was not as inspired as I was by the idea and just wanted to sleep the summer away).

I had to go to an area that was not desirable to rent the truck, but I could keep the truck at my place. I was on my way.

Then I realized I had to buy the product wholesale to sell it retail. I called my friends and discovered that Alex Mates, my friend Paula Kaufman's boyfriend (now husband), operated a frozen foods business that supplied ice cream products to big grocery store chains. I knew I had to meet him.

I got my products from him wholesale, and I thought my ice cream truck was the greatest business ever. We loaded up the truck and used a loudspeaker to get people's attention by playing music. I even had friends who would breakdance on the roof. I offered raffles, so when you bought something, you got a raffle ticket. One of the prizes I offered was a doll from the movie Gremlins. Boxer Sugar Ray Leonard lived in one of the neighborhoods where I drove the ice cream truck, and his son Ray Jr. won the toy. Ray and I are still close friends, and he swears he doesn't remember any of this. We just laugh about it now.

That is the fun part of the story.

On the other hand, people would break into the truck and steal food and other items late at night. I soon realized that it was my responsibility if the truck broke down, I didn't get the right product, or people didn't feel like working that day. At the end of the summer, we had made enough to cover our product costs and pay for gas.

I loved it. I learned about commerce, people, food, licensing, and being my own boss. Since that experience gave me access to other frozen food products at wholesale prices, I offered other products to customers for retail prices. Operating this business taught me a lot about that aspect of the food and beverage industry.

Then I attended the University of Maryland as a hotshot freshman at the age of 18, and somehow I ended up in the t-shirt business. I sold t-shirts across the campus from a backpack. Once I transferred to the American University Kogod School of Business in Washington, D.C., I started a flower business. I sold roses for $9.99, walking around with the same backpack, this time full of flyers that I stapled to the bulletin boards around school, and made sales. I even enlisted two of my fraternity brothers, Eric Simkin and Lee Perlman, to help facilitate sales in the business.

I knew then that I was going to become an entrepreneur. I planned to build vast wealth on my own by selling products, coming up with ideas, and creating and developing new ways to earn money. I didn't know the specifics yet. I just knew that I didn't want to become a lawyer or doctor when I could be an entrepreneur instead.

I went to school, graduated, and got my bachelor of science degree in business administration from the Kogod School of Business at American University.

Once I moved on from the floral industry, I realized that I understood the concept of marketing for the restaurant and hospitality industries. I decided at that point to publish a magazine for the food and beverage industry. It was the perfect target audience for a target advertiser such as myself.

Fast-forward to 30 years later.

I consulted with many people about opening restaurants. But after reading and learning about the successes (and failures) of many restaurants in my magazine, blogs, and marketing and consulting businesses, I wanted to delve into owning and operating a restaurant.

Growing up back east, my dad had a friend, Chuck Rossler, who owned and operated a restaurant called Celebrity Deli. Chuck was the greatest guy ever. We would go to this small hole-in-the-wall in a strip center, and Chuck was bigger than life. His kids, Julie and Jon, and I were friends, and I loved going there. After my...