Do you live in a small town and have aspirations to own a restaurant? Are you afraid that the smaller population might make it difficult to make money? Running a restaurant in a larger area can mean tight margins, too. There are ways that you can be a successful restaurant owner. Read on to learn how to make a small town restaurant successful:
Add Outdoor Seating
There’s something about being able to sit outside while eating and observing the world going on around you. It’s especially great on those sun-kissed days when the temperatures hover around 70 or a bit higher and the breeze just makes the air even more pleasant. If you can offer that to your patrons, especially with patio covers, you can unlock one of the ways how to make a small town restaurant successful.
The best way to do this, besides clearing out an area and having tables and chairs, is to hire a patio cover company. They can craft ones in all kinds of colors and styles. These patio covers can also have your restaurant name on them so that any people who are passing by can see them, and have their interest piqued. This could lead to a spur-of-the-moment walk-in for them. Appearances can play a big part in being a profitable restaurant. This is just one of the methods of how to make a small town restaurant successful.
Find Your Fuel Source
You need to make sure that your restaurant has enough fuel to be able to run things like stoves and ovens. You can use commercial oil tank removal services to get rid of the ones that you don’t need. This way, your customers will know that you’re serious about being able to provide the right energy for your restaurant. While this might not seem as obvious as some of the others, it’s still how to make a small town restaurant successful.
It’s important that you find the fuel source that works best for your budget. You might find that your choices aren’t as plentiful since you’re in a small town, but you can still find the one that works for you. See if you can negotiate something that will lower your costs. This isn’t something that you should ignore, though, since it’s going to be hard to cook without fuel.
Install New Flooring
While people might not look at the ground when they are walking around in a restaurant, they will notice if it’s in bad shape. If there are parts of the floor that look like someone could trip on something and hurt themselves, you want to install new flooring. One such example is vinyl plank flooring. It might seem like something small, but you want to give as good a first impression as you can. This is one of those unsung things that can play a part in how to make a small town restaurant successful.
You want to get flooring that evokes the feeling that you’re aiming for. You could get tiles, vinyl planks, laminates, or other types. One thing that you want to keep in mind is how easy it will be to clean up if something should spill. An expensive carpet might look really nice the first day that you open the restaurant, but not so much after numerous things spill on it. Take that into consideration when you’re deciding on the flooring. There might not be that many carpet cleaners in the area.
Make Exterior Updates
People might not notice the floors of restaurants, but they sure do notice the outside. You want your place to look fantastic. Yes, you want your roof to be in excellent shape with new shingles, and you could have the exterior freshly painted. But what about using a gutter cleaning service? Your customers will definitely notice things like cluttered gutters making water drip where it shouldn’t or even the unsightly image of the gutter hanging off the side of your restaurant. That’s why you also need to hire that service to keep the gutters clean. You can write this down as another way of how to make a small town restaurant successful.
Besides cleaning the gutters, you want to ensure that the gutter installation itself is done properly, especially if it turns out that you’d be better off getting a new one instead of any repair work done. That way, you can be sure that the gutters won’t have any initial issues. Still, it’s a good idea to have them cleaned regularly. One way of how to make a small town restaurant successful is to not have to close it any time that you normally wouldn’t have to — people like being able to keep their eating routines, and if that gets disrupted, then they will likely look elsewhere, and it can be hard to lure them back.
Renovate Your Dining Area
Did the people that owned the restaurant have a completely different idea of what a restaurant should look like? Perhaps they were intent on serving a type of cuisine that didn’t mesh with how the people who live there. Now it’s your turn, and you have a vision of how the dining area should look. Perhaps you might want to evoke memories of days past. Whatever the case, you want to get a dumpster rental so that you can safely dispose of the old items and not raise the ire of the people who live there by making a mess while the renovation is happening.
Think about what you want to convey in the dining area. Is it a place for people to sit and relax? You might have a lot of cushioned booths. If you want to make it a romantic date spot, you could have lower mood lighting. This is a very important thing, since renovation takes time and keeps you from being able to be open and serve people. Do some research, look online and see what other places are doing. This is one of the best ways how to make a small town restaurant successful, since the people in the town will talk about how they like what they saw when they went into the restaurant. .
Keep Pests Away
If there’s anything that can be a threat to ways of how to make a small town restaurant successful, it’s pests. Do you want your patrons to see a line of ants roaming from the door to the kitchen? What about mice or rats? All of these things are a great way to get your restaurant closed. At the sign of the first ant, you want to get ant extermination services over. You want the pests to stay where they belong — outside your restaurant. This way, you’ll get a good health grade and won’t have people looking over their shoulders worried that pests might be coming for their food.
It’s not just the sight of them that can be a turn off. They can leave droppings which can be dangerous for people to even inhale, let alone touch. That’s why you need to keep these pests away. Of course, you need to do your part. You can store food in containers that keep pests from smelling it and then make their way to your kitchen or pantry.
Create a Comfortable Environment
Not only do you want your customers to like what they are seeing when they sit in your restaurant, you want them to be comfortable. They shouldn’t be too hot or too cold, which is why you want to invest in appliances that provide climate control. You could raise or lower the temperature with the press of a button. Of course, you’re going to have some people who are more susceptible to the cold than others, so you will need to work with them. But being willing to fix these things can be a major way how to make a small town restaurant successful, since previous customers can pass along word of mouth that you care about their comfort level while they eat in your restaurant.
You can also do this by opening windows on really pleasant days and even running fans on those scorching days. On the other hand, you want to create a toasty atmosphere on those days that the temperatures are in the teens even before factoring in the wind chill. Have extra heaters around for that — though make sure they are installed properly and located in safe spaces where no one can trip on them or knock them over. You and your staff should look over them diligently and be sure to turn them off when you close the restaurant each night.
Repair Your Parking Lot
You don’t want people to be afraid to park in your lot. If your concrete looks like it has potholes deep enough to hit the core of the Earth, you need to contact a concrete pumping service. They will be able to come and make your parking lot look smooth and invite people to come park again. That can help you get people through the door, since street parking might not be available. Don’t forget that a small thing like that can be one of the best ways of how to make a small town restaurant successful.
You can do all of these things to entice people to come to your place, but you’ve got to consistently deliver the goods to get them to come back. The people that you hire to work in the kitchen are going to have to be able to consistently be able to replicate delicious food time and time again. That can also mean that you have a smaller selection of food compared to a bigger city restaurant. Small town folk like simple things for the most part. They aren’t going to want to have to spend forever picking through a menu.
When you interview potential cooks, see how they feel about making a lot of the same things over again. Perhaps it will be a comfortable thing for them, too. Once you’ve got a good number of repeat customers, then you might want to explore adding some things to the menu, but maybe one item every six months. That will let people decide if they want to make it a staple of their diets.
But the service that you provide is the biggest thing about how to make a small town restaurant successful. You want to have happy people come in each day and make each person feel welcome. This is especially true in a place where everybody tends to know each other. It can make you feel like you’re in an extended family, and you all like to spend time around the table. You can even make your presence known and go around talking to the customers while they eat.
You also need to take part in the community. People go to places where they know they will see familiar faces. If you become known for being a place where you can gather after a local religious ceremony, then people will go there each time. You just need to be prepared for those rushes so that they won’t get discouraged and not come back again.
Honestly, though, you also have to count on one more thing – luck. Yes, you can do all of the above, make your place look perfect, but you’re also going to be propelled along by the waters of the economy. If things are going really well, you’re going to have your regulars come in and spend a good amount of money each time. If the economy takes a turn, then they might be more inclined to make their own food to make their money go further.
Ultimately, it takes both passion and good business sense to be able to run a restaurant in a small town. While there might be less competition, people can be more particular, and they might find it hard to try new places, since they might be set in their ways. But if you can break through, then you can become the new local hot spot, and that will make it all worth it.
