Restaurant owners told me what I am doing is useless. Is building a proper foundation bad?
I just need to vent to people who will actually understand how soul-crushing this is.
For the past few months, or maybe more than a year, my wife and I have been working with someone in a restaurant. For the context, my wife is 50% owner of the restaurant.
We also have full time jobs and I am actually working as a senior devops.
ever since we got involve, yes we did all what we can do to save it, and it has been steadily growing and stabilizing in revenue.
Now, fast forward now, we are opening in second location. It means what we are doing is ok. product is good, somehow system is good.
Because I want my wife’s investment to succeed, I poured my soul into building them a digital engine/systems. I’m talking:
proper POS implementation.
proper IT systems like Google Workspace.
Integration with a high-end inventory management SaaS to track granular recipe cost and automate ordering.
A properly structured Notion knowledge base with automated checklists for staff training, prep lists, and operations so the new location could run flawlessly.
I kept on telling them to streamline and systematize everything instead of relying to their heads for everyday operations. Their response?
They looked at the monthly SaaS bill (which was tiny compared to their physical and time overhead) and panicked.
They told me, literally to my face: "We aren't an IT company, we don't need this." They are canceling the inventory software and refusing to use the centralized training databases. They want to run a multi-unit expansion using WhatsApp groups and paper checklists, relying entirely on old-school "gut feeling" restaurant management. They even scrutinize why we pay for Google workspace.
If this was just a normal client, I’d charge my consulting fee, or even don't work for them at all. But because my wife’s capital is tied up in this, I’m caught in it. She is exhausted from fighting with the old-school partners over construction and legalities that she just told me, "If I lose the money, it's my own fault, I won't blame anyone."
I built a system that prevents fires, and because there are no fires yet, they think the system is useless....
I even propose to them to properly clean the books, properly hire people (because we are kinda overworked and I know margin is thin), properly invest on machines, properly document everything and properly protect the brand. (they've just finally approved registering trademark 2 months ago)....
I am literally telling them that we need a proper business foundation if we want to grow and make this company valuable.
Customers like our food, we are consistent, I got to admit I am bad with human resources and decision making so I leave it to them but what I am good at, backend stuff, invisible things that they don't see.
I am just frustrated since I have been working to build everything for free, but they just told me they are overwhelmed with what I am doing.....
Am I wrong? am I too much? all I want is that the business runs by itself instead of us being business operator all the time.