How to Open a Restaurant With No Money: The Wall Street Journal Gives Some Advice
If you spend your days watching Top Chef or playing Restaurant City online or even actually attending culinary school, you might be thinking about opening your own restaurant. So what do you do if you're young and broke and still think this is a good idea and not, say, getting a degree in urban planning or environmental law or buying stock in Chevy Volt? The Wall Street Journal answers the question.
"Your best option is a cash infusion from friends or family, or a contribution from a wealthy or 'angel' investor," says the WSJ in its Small Business section. In the absence of a rich patron, another route is to find a business partner, being careful to select one of these "similar to the way you choose a husband." Good advice, considering the high failure rate of restaurants within the first year. (Although the figure is often put at 80% or even 90%, some experts say it's actually more like 60%.) Either way, you should be very sure to be frank with your investor about the risks, "use a service that provides documentation for peer-to-peer lending," and "make sure you like being around them." Because if you don't, being stuck on a restaurant construction site, perhaps like the one pictured below, with a disgruntled investor could get dicey. Then again, you could always abandon the restaurant idea and start working on that Malcolm Lowry-inspired screenplay.
disco_satisfaction A bar/restaurant under construction
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