Any restauranteurs on here?

wez130

wez130

wez130

Soldato
Joined
31 Jan 2004
Posts
11,308
Location
Matakana New Zealand
Hi all, my wife and i are in the process of negotiating a lease on a restaurant in NZ, this will be our first venture into operating our own business, and whilst it's in NZ, most opening / operating costs are similar.
The restaurant comes complete with most chatels, most important, a working kitchen and bar, it's been closed for 6 months and needs some work doing to get up to scratch. We reckon we can get it up to a reasonable standard for around NZ$30k including stock for a smallish menu, and here in lies my question. Does that sound right?
The owner has offered us a 2 month lease free period to get us going, then a further month in the 2nd year - on a 2 year lease with option to extend for as long as we like after that, the lease itself is VERY reasonable for a 150sqm building with a ~ 900 sqm beer garden, another 300sqm area which we have the option to build ~ 8 yurts on (in the future) if we like, with permission in advance to do so.

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The building in the middle was a brewery. The last person who ran it had all three areas and operated a cider brewery, however did a tax bunk and sifted money from the business and fled.

As you can see, the first pic is the restaurant with the garden, it's got huge potential for live events in the summer here which we will look at. There are also a lot of car meets that use this route and stop here, so we will take advantage of that too. It's on the main route between northland and auckland so as you can imagine, plenty of passing traffic.

Anyway, once we have agreed terms on a lease i will create a thread in general, but i'd basically like some general advice from other business owners and especially publicans / restauranteurs on getting up and running. What we should expect, i understand some things will be different here but business is business all over the world so all advice is valid.
We are hoping to have it open for September / October here, just in time for the summer so we don't have to worry about a quiet period to start with.

Thanks for reading and i'll update ass and when we receive news. Exciting times :)
 
Hi, and thanks for that info. I've done quite a lot of research on the area as expected, i've reached out to the local community - who would be my winter trade and asked them about how it used to be, as i said in my OP, the last owner did a tax bunk and a runner, he was also from the UK. There aren't too many restaurants in this area, there are a few vineyards, a couple with restaurants who cater for fine dining options but they are in the towns, our place would be the first place most people would see first on the way into town so good signage is going to be vital, the last owner was also irregular with his opening hours, and sometimes didn't open at all, which would have been frustrating for customers i imagine.
I have had quite a positive response from the local community and they have let me know what they would like to see here, the consensus is a family orientated establishment, which it is well suited for. We don't have the funds to kit it out immediately with all flash playgrounds and gardens, but it will certainly be an ongoing project. The real money would definitely come in when we can offer accommodation though, and again, the area we have decided for that is perfect, away from the main building. We do need to look into bylaws ect for that though.

I wish we could afford to take on the brewery though as i would love to be able to brew my own craft beers, it may be an option for the future though, time will tell. For now, i think the most important thing is to take baby steps to develop our brand and not take on too much too soon.

We are in a lucky position where i am a head chef and my wife is a FOH manager already, we have plenty of experience in our respected roles so we don't need to hire a head chef or a manager, i will be taking control of the kitchen with a commis chef at first, my wife will be running out front with 1 or 2 foh staff, then we'll see how it goes from there. We have already worked out our break even point at about $200k p/a, with forcasted first year sales being estimated at $300k being ultra careful with figures, chances are that sales will be much higher though, i just like to leave lots of room for safety :D
 
AHarvey said:
Local produce? food suppliers and local breweries if there is any?

Don't underestimate the power your own brewery can make, we have a local one that I think started in 2001, he's now got at least 4 pubs over a 30-mile area and doing very well - http://www.joulesbrewery.co.uk/brewery/joules_story.php

If you can't afford it now, consider it down the line. Joules also supply the leftover and waste hops to a local farm as food, who in return, supply them with meat and every Friday is free sausage roll day :D
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Oh yes. i know how much breweries can make, it's a license to literally print money! it's something i'd definitely consider but right now it's not an option, it's an extra $40k for the lease + $150k for the equipment.

There are lots of small breweries local which i will be using, i will have 12 taps to fill :D

Also, there's a craft beer festival on here in Auckland at the end of June, i will definitely be attending and sampling beers, both for pleasure and potential business :D
 
AHarvey said:
Id be tempted to approach the owner, offer X% of profits for you to use the lot for free. They are making nothing while it's empty and with you offering to take it over and maintain it while they are getting a slice of the profits they have nothing to lose.
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Right now that'd be too much for me to take on. I want to concentrate on getting the restaurant side of things perfect, if i had to worry about a brewery too, i couldn't manage it.
 
Update:

Had a meeting yesterday with the realtor and the liquidator from the previous owner, i made an offer of $10k (~£5k) for all chattels , fixture and fittings in the building, this includes all kitchen equipment (Blue seal double fryer, Blue seal 6 burner stove / oven (worth £6k on it's own new), char grill, dishwasher, bar fridges, walk in chiller etc etc, i.e, worth well more than £5k, this offer was accepted and we've sent our lease agreement to be checked by a financial advisor, so hopefully we'll have our business secured in the next few days :D
 
Yea, it's all really exciting now, we've been researching our options and there aren't many family orientated places in this location, and as it's the main artery for holiday makers, we've decided we're going that route, and we're looking at the legalities / licensing for showing movies under the stars in the summer, nice projector, loads of bean bags, bbq's and pizza from the woodfired oven and craft beers - which we can sell what we want as we're not tied to any brewery :D Went to a food show on Tuesday too to meet suppliers of food and beer, swapped business cards with a few suppliers, it's all go at the minute.
 
Oh yeah, i'll be up and running in time for summer here, being seasonal, i'll need to be to take advantage of all the holiday makers.
 
Thanks all, We're just going through all the licensing at the moment, it's a literal maze, we need to get all sorts together, just to apply for a certificate which entitles us to apply for the liquor license. I'm drawing up plans for the food registration too, designing logos, reaching out to the community, securing finance, setting up business accounts etc, all at the same time, i've had one bit of good news though, my residence visa has finally come through, so much going on! We get the keys in about 5 weeks but we're doing lots of work now, as well as our full time jobs! It's all fun and games!
 
We've gone with 'The Red House', it's simple, it does the job. It suits the building and we both like it.
Sorted our food license today, our finance came though today too, i think we may need to secure a further 5k (NZ$) though, we may have a look at crowdfunding for that and offer drinks and meals in return, we've had fantastic support on facebook so far, which will be the main source of our advertising. It seems lots of people are really excited that it's reopening. Everything is so exciting now, 3 weeks and 5 days until we get the keys and can start renovating :D

I've bought the domain www.theredhouse.nz to build a site, and i'm in the process of setting up a wordpress site up, but i really should outsource that as i'm struggling to find time to set that up.
 
randomshenans said:
yes!


I love this place, the warmth and genuine want for people to do well is really great to see.
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This is so true! I'll be keeping a picture diary to show our progress. I'm just uploading some images to flickr of how the place looks now! By the time you all wake up they should be visible lol!
 
As you can see, quite a bit of work needs doing, but the the place has got huge potential, there's a load more land which i haven't shown here too, which we can build yurts on or just have as camping. The possibilities are endless, we just have to make it work :)
 
Wow, as if my thread in GD has been deleted for promoting business! Mods?? WTF? I wasn't promoting business, i'm on the other side of the world for a start! I was merely documenting the start of my business as clearly there was quite an interest in it, pretty pathetic moderating in my opinion :confused::confused:
 
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