I've created a service where your restaurant gets its own QR code menu that you can add right onto your existing menu cards or place separately on each table. When customers scan it, they see a clean, elegant digital menu with smooth animations made according to your restaurants' flavour — showing your food details, best combos, chef's picks, and today's specials, plus your social media links and location, all in one place. The best part? You can update anything, anytime — change a special, add a new dish, whatever you need. I'm offering VIEWRA free for 7 DAYS so you can try it out with zero pressure, and if you like how it works for your restaurant, you can continue after that.

Do DM me, it will be a pleasure to work with you! 😊

THANKS FOR READING!

not a restaurant owner fyi, just curious from a customer perspective.

obviously rent, labor, insurance, and food costs have all gone up especially in big cities. I don't expect restaurants to charge the same prices they did 10 years ago.

but is there a point where increasing prices actually starts working against you because customers no longer feel like they're getting good value?

for example, if a restaurant sells something that's traditionally considered a simple or inexpensive item, do you worry that pricing it close to the cost of a full meal changes how customers perceive it?

how do you decide where that line is? is it mostly based on food cost and required margins, or do you also think about what customers expect an item to cost, even if those expectations aren't realistic anymore?

i'd be interested to hear how owners approach that tradeoff

My wife asked me if all our needs were met, and we didn't require money at all, would I still operate my pizza shop? I think so...I'm not sure what else I would do, and I genuinely enjoy making pies. So I wanted to find out if I'm weird or if other restaurant owners feel the same. Would you keep operating your place? Or just travel or retire on some beach somewhere?

Has anyone done this before? Context, I'm thinking about opening a cafe (as LLC), and I'm thinking of ways to give equity or some sort of profit sharing to employees tied to store performance.

Looking for thoughts and experiences.

Thank you!

EDIT:

Okay, definitely not going equity route given its complexities. I'm leaning towards going bonus route. For those of you who have a bonus structure, what percentage / what does that kinda look like?

Short of firing managers and employees I'm looking for a way or ways to get my crew to NOT clock in early and NOT stay late

One of my locations the managers say they've told everyone and reminded them and yet (i'm being told) the employees are still showing up 45 minutes-an hour before shifts and clocking in early.

I've got a good crew and good managers in most other regards - i just need to shave the extra 3-4% off the labor that this will allow

What do ya'll do when this happens?

I am a bartender. I have a very wealthy business owner who wants to open new place with me as manager/bartender/pretty much The FOH person, with perhaps one other staff member.

1. He owns the building, so rent is free. He already has a liquor license, furniture, equipment, glasses. We aren't guaranteed to succeed, but our advantages are pretty major, right?

2. He does not want to make our own food. He wants to have QR codes at the tables, for people to order food from a restaurant down the street who will deliver to our place. Does this ever work? This seems to place a lot of pressure on me to have a totally amazing bar program. We definitely save money by not paying cooks and not buying ingredients, but I wonder if we will sell enough food and drinks to stay in business.

3. He went to a foreign nation and found a very well regarded bar there with a very specific theme. He wants to totally replicate that bar in the US. Same name, concept, cocktails. He would like to collaborate with them, but that means paying them, and they are not responding. He wants me to go there, and learn the drinks and then just rip them off.

I do not want to do this. I want to make my own drinks. Also, I think that people are going to ask us what our inspiration is. We either lie, and run the risk of getting exposed as copycats, or straight up admit to being copycats. Neither is a good option.

Surely these companies will be scrambling to pay these fines. But I'm glad to hear they'll be shelling out free eggs to food banks and non profits

Do you have a written policy to follow, have you thought about this, has it happened before?

Building out my new space and it currently has an old electric hot water heater. The old tenet had astronomical electric bills, and I have a feeling this might be the reason.

My current space has a gas tankless, and it’s pretty good but it came with the property so I’ve no idea the original cost or install info. Has anyone that made the switch noticed a marked reduction in utility costs?

I see there are electric and gas versions of tankless, but if I went gas, I’d have to run a gas line to the other side of the building, and I think this might eat up a couple of years of any savings just in gas line install.

Any help or insight is appreciated.

Timeleft is an app where strangers meet. But when they meet, they don’t spend money. They buy a soft drink and maybe an appetizer and take up multiple tables.

We have a policy for larger groups, but they book multiple times with smaller groups. Even if we try to intentionally seat them apart, they end up taking up an entire service.

My question is, has anyone had to deal with this before? Do you just chalk it up to a marketing loss? Do you institute some sort of policy?

I feel like everything shifts daily and it's hard to keep track of everything.for suppliers, often the simplest approach is to request updated quotes. Many companies also set up regular refreshes, automated feeds, or negotiated price update schedules.the hard part for me is not just asking again, it is knowing which price changed, which supplier changed terms, and which quote is still old.Sometimes suppliers send emails at night,and I usually miss them.Damn, accio sourcing toolkit has really helped a lot recently. i use it to keep the supplier replies and updated quotes in one place, so i don't need to open every email and chat again next morning. It negotiates while I sleep, and I just check the results.

I have been in the restaurant industry over 10 years-mainly as a server. My boyfriend has over 20 years of experience and has done nearly all positions in the restaurant but has been a chef the past 10+ now. 6 months ago, we started discussing our plans for the future and how I didn’t want to be a server forever, but I love what I do. We genuinely have so much integrity in what we do, and I think that’s going to be our strongest asset going into opening a restaurant.

After months of searching, we’ve found an existing restaurant to purchase that we will be touring tomorrow. The lease will expire early 2028, so we would be renegotiating the lease for a 5+5 and potentially prorated or free rent during the build out period until we get our business going. We’ll be changing the concept of the restaurant, so we really are only purchasing for the location and existing kitchen, and the restrooms were in a perfect spot in the building. The entire dining room will be renovated.

What are some things we should be looking for while touring or things we should be asking?

Thank you for all of the tips and advice!

Been opening a couple fast-casual spots lately (we’re at 3 now, 4th coming soon) and honestly… the tech side is way harder than I expected. POS setup delays, internet not ready on opening day, printers randomly not talking to tablets… it’s always something.

Feels like every new location turns into this scramble of calling 5 different vendors and hoping everything works by soft opening.

We tried handling it ourselves to save money, but it’s kind of backfiring.

Curious if anyone else is dealing with this? Do you just build an internal team or outsource it?

Genuine question. I know someone who worked a corporate job their entire career (no restaurant background, no family in the business, not really an entrepreneurial background either) and somehow recently just opened a Korean fast-casual restaurant in NYC after operating out of a ghost kitchen for awhile.

It got me wondering: how does that actually happen?

From what I've always heard, restaurants are one of the hardest businesses to run and you always see millions of "never open a restaurant without experience" type comments so I'm curious how someone with no obvious experience gets from "corporate employee" to opening a restaurant.

Would love to hear from owners who either did this themselves or have seen it happen. What am I missing?

Running a small restaurant, 40 seats, and I got out of a cintas contract last year that was honestly traumatic. They had me locked into volume minimums set for a bigger operation, auto renewal language I missed, and getting out cost me almost a month of fighting their corporate office. Now I need a new system for our linens, mostly aprons, kitchen towels, and the cloth napkins we use for dinner service, and I'm being very careful not to repeat that mistake.

Looking into the laundry pickup and delivery business model where it's per pound with no contract. Poplin came up as one of the options that handles small business volume on the same per pound rates as residential, which for me would be roughly $80 to $120 a week depending on how many covers we do. That's significantly less than cintas was charging me and there's literally no commitment, I can scale it up or down by week.

Anyone else in restaurant ownership found a setup that works without locking you into a long term deal? Specifically interested in hearing from people who manage 40 to 80 seat operations because the big linen companies treat us like an inconvenience.

Really not sure what to say. An employee brought his friends in. He used his $500 employee comp tab they paid $500 on top. Friends all left wonderful 5star reviews naming the employee (a cook). I should be super happy right?

For context: I’m friends 😭 cook was with us. He invited us all without telling we won’t pay and it was more than he expected and won’t take money back. We haven’t left the reviews yet because we don’t want to get him in trouble. We thought restaurant would love that! No?

Edits 5 reviews from 5 different people. We genuinely loved it, just didn’t get to pay. Photos would be included along with compliments to our servers by name and drinks and what the persons favorite thing was. No name the cook, and as long as everyone’s honest about what they loved in their own style, should be genuine. Sorry my English and the title !!