Walking the Walk

by Howard Graham

It’s almost a year since I took the plunge from being a passive bystander consulting to the restaurant sector to an active investor and operator as part owner of a new restaurant.  Wallace & Co, which opened its doors in January 2010 with what we thought was a great new proposition.

In that time, we have experienced many problems that you simply don’t prepare yourself for and which I am sure affects most restaurants both new operators and existing establishments.

Issues ranging from the wrong chef, theft, food shortages, blocked drains, multiple staffing issues and customer complaints (both reasonable and unreasonable) – in fact the list is endless.

It is testimony to our efforts that we are still trading, and the numbers are improving all the time – not something that could be said by every new start up.

With my background in accountancy, I always new that I would be comfortable with the numbers.  Show me some numbers and I can slice and dice them in every way possible and come up with some form of meaningful interpretation.  Not so with a restaurant!  The truth of the matter is that the complete unpredictability of one day’s takings compared with another make an analysis of the numbers highly challenging.  Sure, Saturdays and Sundays are our prime days and largely follow a similar pattern, but not always.  Similarly, Monday is our worst day of the week, but now and again you get an unexpected spike.

This unpredictability of the numbers, whilst causing me some consternation when I try and analyse the data, must be hell for those at the front line.  Some of the key drivers that determine whether a restaurant makes a profit or a loss can literally be blown out of the water by an unexpected spike.

 Staffing is one of the key issues.  Planning for a slow day, and then being greeted by a rush of customers can cause havoc both in the kitchen and front of house.  Carry too much staff in the first place and you simply end up with horrible numbers.

Similarly, planning your food purchases, particularly fresh and perishable produce, can lead to shortages of certain dishes or conversely, high wastage, neither of which are great for the future prospects of the business.

In all cases, it tends to be a balance and I have to say that our team have done very well, in most cases, in getting that balance right.

There aren’t many sectors that I can think of that are faced with those same day to day challenges and that’s probably one of the reasons why the failure rate in the restaurant sector is so high.

In our case, our guys got it right much more often than not and as each week goes by, their flexibility and judgement improves.

For years, I talked the talk in the sector and now that my hands are finally really getting dirty (I have actually served at table on a number of occasions!), I am finally walking the walk.