9 Smart Tips for Opening Your Own BBQ Charcoal Restaurant

You did it. You are making your dreams come true by opening your own BBQ Charcoal Restaurant. There is a lot that goes into making your restaurant successful. Besides hard work and dedication, you need to do a lot of preparation to ensure the best results.

Here are 9 smart tips for opening your own BBQ charcoal restaurant:

1. Have a Well-Researched Business Plan

As with opening any business, you always need to do your homework first. Research the BBQ market to make sure there is room for one more restaurant. Without the customers, you know you are not going to be successful.

Also get a good sense of what the initial startup costs will be and if you can truly afford it. You need to make sure that you don’t bite off more than you can chew. Without having enough money in reserve to handle the normal bumps in the road that happen when starting a new business, you might have to face closing your business soon after opening it.

Your initial planning you should also include your overall vision for your restaurant. What is the décor? The atmosphere? How will you present the food? How do you want customer-staff interaction to look like? Allow your overall vision guide your every decision to keep you on the right track.

2. Create a Passionate Team

Besides good food, the other indispensable ingredient for a successful business is a high-performing and passionate staff. Both on the floor, in the kitchen and in the back office, you will want to build a team that believes in your vision and will work hard alongside of you. You need a team you can count on and delegate to. With a BBQ Charcoal restaurant, the work is never done so you need a team that is skilled in their position and hard workers.

In addition, remember that a BBQ Charcoal restaurant has unique needs compared to other restaurants so it is important to hire people that can thrive in this particular environment. Skills can be learned but they need to have the right personality to handle a fast-paced restaurant and working with a BBQ pit.

3. Carve Out Your Own Niche

While BBQ Charcoal restaurants are unique in and of themselves, you still need to somehow differentiate yours from the other BBQ Charcoal restaurants. To do that, see if you can carve out your own niche. If sustainability is really important to you, then make it a platform for your restaurant. If you pride yourself on providing everything farm to table, then emphasize that in your marketing and social outreach. Focus on what makes you unique and you will draw in people who share similar values.

4. Surround Yourself with Experts

Knowledge and experience is power. Even if you are not new to the restaurant game, no one knows everything. Besides being an expert at the food, you need to know how to run a successful business. By surrounding yourself with leading experts in the restaurant industry, you will get the support and advice you need to grow your restaurant. Networking sites are a great place to start. Look for restaurant associations to join, especially any the specialize in barbecue.

5. Make Social Media Work for You

As a business owner, it is so important for you to have a social media presence. If you are not comfortable doing it yourself, then hire a social media strategist to maintain your social media channels for you. If you haven’t done so already set up an account on Facebook, Twitter and at least one other social media channel like Pinterest or Snapchat and use them to post pictures of your dishes and to let your customers know about upcoming events and specials. Encourage your customers to like your page and share it will all your friends. You will be pleasantly surprised by the power of social media and how easy it makes it to connect to your customers and to attract new ones too.

One word about negative social media comments. No matter how much you want to ignore them and hope that they will go away, you need to respond to them promptly to let your customers that you are listening to them and that you will solve any problems that need fixing.

6. Say Thank You to Your Loyal Customers

Returning customers are a sign that you are doing something right and you want them to keep coming back and to bring their friends and families. To reward them, offer special incentives like discount coupons, special happy hours and other special events. Thank them for choosing you.

7. Your Food Should Be Number #1 Priority

While it is a no-brainer that for your restaurant to be successful, you need to have great food, sometimes quality can fly out the window when you are trying to stay within a budget or rushing food out of the kitchen. Always be in the kitchen experimenting with ingredients to get your dishes to as close as perfect as possible. And don’t forget to try new dishes as well. You want to keep tantalizing your customers’ taste buds.

Of course, when it comes to a BBQ Charcoal Restaurant, this is a very unique cuisine that you truly have to master. Before opening your doors, make sure you and your chefs spend a lot of time perfecting the meat so it has the right amount of tenderness, char and flavor.

8. Be Willing to Adapt

The world is constantly changing and if you want your restaurant to succeed you need to be willing to adapt, whether that means adopting new technology, tweaking your menu or changing out you approach customer service. Your goal should always be to give your customers the best experience possible.

9. Give 110% Every Day

The restaurant business is hard work. If you are not willing to give 110%, you might as well stop now. It is a 24 hour/7 day a week job and you need to be prepared for that. Running your own business can seem like a thankless job of long hours, lots of stress and little downtime so it is important to never let go of your vision and to keep on trucking. If you are only half way invested in this business, then it will never grow like you want it too.

For more smart tips for opening your own BBQ charcoal restaurant, contact Chaps Pit Beef today.

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