Restaurant/takeaway

[Decca]

I would love to take a big gamble and set up my own fast food takeaway business,
I know there's a food expo on in September but is there anywhere else i can get some info and contacts regarding training on running a takeaway.
Its all about the numbers so i need costing and lots and lots of contacts. equipment suppliers, bulk food suppliers, carton and packaging, menu's leaflets and display boards. recipe development. eek scaring myself just talking about it all.

I know its going to take a good 6 moths to a year to get all the info i need just to decide if its for me, then there's checking there's a market for the food i want to sell etc.... massive undertaking but i love a challenge and really feel i can do something a bit different.
Any help will be welcome, links and contacts would be great. along with lots of ideas to chew over. thanks in advance.

 

[Decca]

Ps. i will do a search of the forum to see what i can find. Thanks again.

 

[Scalloway]

What experience do you have in the catering business?

 

[Decca]

Absolutely non what so ever apart from i'm a good cook and run a successful (successful as in it provides a good wage for our family) cleaning business, which is now 8 years old and i knew nothing about floor cleaning when i decided to go into this sector, i planned for 18 months and then went for it, learnt a lot in 8 years, some serious marketing and customer service learnt that is transferable and the rest i aim to learn before (and if i do) i take the plunge. i have some funds 40k (yes not enough for an all singing and dancing gaff) to help out if i decide the figures (once sort) are realistic. just researching at the moment.

 

[b_lyne]

remain consistent. remain competitive. remain visible

 

[Shopclicks]

Hi. Would you consider re-vamping an existing business? It might be a safer bet than starting from scratch and possibly cheaper.

 

[The Byre]

Running a commercial kitchen is about as different to home cooking, as driving a truck is to riding a bicycle. For that reason, I always recommend that people work in the business before they start investing money.

For starters, the laws for commercial kitchens include such things as allergy sheets, first aid, cleaning rotas, cooling and holding records, identifying food poisoning risks when holding and storing cooked/ raw high risk items, separate storage for cooked and raw food and on and on!

Then there is the cost of equipment. Nearly all that cheap catering stuff you see on ebay and elsewhere is nearly all end-of-life rubbish. If you are opening a pizza place for example, you will need enough pizza ovens to cover an order for, say, six pizzas, without making the rest of the queue wait 20 minutes while you try to heat and reheat six pizzas in two or three little ovens! So a modest equipment and fitting (plumbing, three-phase electricity, floors and walls, sinks and salad bars, ovens and refrigerators comes to about £50,000 for a very small take-away.

Then you have to add the cost a van for home delivery and the cost of being able to hold your breath for a few months, until trade starts to wander in through the front door. Rent (or mortgage) rates, water and electricity, staff, marketing, various types of insurance - all that has to be covered.

I mean, good luck and all that, but running a take-away ain’t the walk-in-the-park that some people think it is!

 

[Decca]

Never once thought it a walk in the park, serious hard work and then some, planning for this with training before i even think about starting will be 1 to 2 years, from business plans to full health and safety training. Not looking at this lightly just like i didnt look at my cleaning company business, that was planned for a year before i made the jump. So all though i thank you for the big list, and yes, theres a few things in there that i didnt think about but pretty sure they will be covered on the numerous courses i will have to attend.
Planning has to start somewhere so asking questions on here is a start.
Seen a few courses i can attend that will help me understand hygiene, health and safety etc.... Is there any specific courses i should be looking at?
Gutted that the food expo is on when i'm away cos i would of loved to go there to make some contacts but there is always next year, like i said this will be meticulously planned before i start spending serious money, if at all.

Yes i've been looking at other places that i could revamp and considerably change the menu.

The food i want to do is not the normal stuff and cooks relatively cheaply so all though i envisage spending around £50k, most of that wont be on equipment and more towards the look and feel of the place.
need contacts first so i can start on my business plan, so if anyone knows good suppliers of anything takeaway, food, packaging, signage, websites, marketing, health and safety, hygeine, the list goes on, that would be most useful.

 

[The Byre]

I like the sound of the way you are going about things - deep preparation reduces costs! (I too am starting a new business and we have been working on this for a year and it will take another year to get going!)

Brakes is one of the usual suppliers of dead normal food stuffs, but the type of food will decide which suppliers you use. Good used equipment is usually a matter of keeping your eyes and ears open for events like forced sales when someone has bitten off more than they could chew. Obviously you can buy things like sinks and tables used and save a bob or two.

Getting good and fresh food always depends on the type.

 

[Decca]

Thanks for the "brakes" contact, had a quick look, massive variety in there.

Are you planning the same type of business? i like to plan before i jump in.unless its something i'm familiar with then its gungho all the way, but i've never been involved with fast food so i need to take my time, especially as there is a lot of money at stake.
Going to organise some food tasting parties to see if my type of food is desirable, i'll do this with facebook strangers rather than friends and family, nothing worse than favoured feedback. strangers will get a free meal then tell it to you straight , and if i can find people that dont like me even better, if you can convince them that your food is nice then your definitely onto a winner

just checking these out, "thesaferfoodgroup" (I cant post links yet) anygood? or should i be looking at the government for safety standard training?

 

[The Byre]

The cheap stuff at Brakes is really nasty (according to a ‘star chef’ friend of mine!) Pasta that turns to glue, that sort of thing!

I think that there could be real business opportunities for quality take-away food. Gunk is sold on every street corner, but fresh lobster or scallops, or just beautiful and unusual salads. Finding that specialist supplier can be a challenge, but there are some excellent suppliers in the UK such as http://www.kelticseafare.com/Restaurant ( and many others).

Of course an up-market take away has to have the right location and lots of appropriate marketing. Little touches, like making your own sour dough bread (which is cheap and easy to do!) can give you a USP that sets you apart from the hoi-polloi! Or just chips made in an air-fryer with beef dripping -mmm, yum, yum!

There seem to be more catering equipment sales outlets than we have Labour leadership candidates! With all the daft people wanting to set up restaurants (after watching too much Gordon Ramsey!) and then failing, it must be a roaring business! I bet some of that stuff has been through several kitchens before it’s a year old.

Nope, I have no ambitions in the catering trade! Not even slightly! I did do some cooking courses when at tech college (I was supposed to be studying electrical engineering, but there were no girls in electrical engineering back in the 60s, so I went to the cooking classes instead! Fat lot of good it did me - the only ‘action’ I got was a gay boy hitting on me! But at least I can make a killer mayonnaise!)

But we do get the occasional VIP customer and we have a business kitchen that allows me to stretch my cooking legs, without having to work in a kitchen until 10pm!

 

[Decca]

Thanks for all that, certainly some things to think about, (was going to say food for thought but the sigh would be deafening )
Not sure on scallops and lobster but something different (even though only slightly) is what i have in mind.
i like the idea of making most of the stuff from scratch, i'm a massive DD&D fan so making most of your menu from scratch is a given in my eyes, all be it a lot harder but customers would appreciate the freshness it brings, and the uniqueness from the usual crap. the only reason dominoes and pizza hut can charge so much more for there pizzas than the local indie is because the local indies buy the same sauce as each other, every pizza the same as the next shop, all they have to do to stand out is make there own sauce and straight away people would notice, not rocket science is it.
Just ploughing my way through all the exhibitors at the food expo to see if there are any that can help me out, seeing as i cant make the show, truly gutted about that. thanks again for the chat and ideas, appreciate them.

 

[Sacha]

the only reason dominoes and pizza hut can charge so much more for there pizzas than the local indie is because the local indies buy the same sauce as each other, every pizza the same as the next shop, all they have to do to stand out is make there own sauce and straight away people would notice, not rocket science is it.

If only it were that simple!

 

[Decca]

For the 10 indie pizza places near us who use the same suppliers i would say it is that simple to stand out.

 

[The Byre]

But it is that simple! If 10 pizza places all just buy cans of gunk from Brakes, then that is 10 pizza places that are going to be all alike - therefore, they are all going to be grubbing about at the bottom of the low-margin pile.

It costs nothing but effort to grow your own fresh herbs and buy fresh ingredients. There is definitely nothing wrong with watching a few episodes of DD&D (ignoring the episodes featuring sticky-lump joints) and seeing why some places are run-away successes because they do things differently - and above all, serve fresh food.

The UK does have some of the worst food on Planet Earth (and a few places that are world-class!) and many people think it is normal to use canned and frozen ingredients and even serve that rubbish in restaurants. In most cases, it is pretty simple to stand out from a take-away that thinks mayonnaise comes out of a can, pasta is just a click away on Brakes and bread comes from a factory.

 

[Sacha]

Well if that were true we'd be busier than we are. Trust me, it isn't that simple.

 

[The Byre]

You are quite right - the whole business of running a take-away is far from simple, but then, very few businesses are simple. I certainly can't think of one! I have outlind some of the complications above (and left out air extraction!) And then you have to add all the other complications of running any business on top of all that. But more or less the same can be said for anything and everything from auto repair shops to film studios.

For the fast food retailer, he not only has to serve good food, but has to TELL people that he is serving good food. That means leafleting and a killer website and food professionally photographed. Every fast food outlet should look at McDonalds or Dominos pictures and ask themselves "Does my food look that good?"

 

[Chris34]

the only reason dominoes and pizza hut can charge so much more for there pizzas than the local indie is because the local indies buy the same sauce as each other, every pizza the same as the next shop, all they have to do to stand out is make there own sauce and straight away people would notice, not rocket science is it.

It's the same with the indie pizza places near us, all taste the same, all look like a pizza but taste like you are eating synthetic food.

20 years ago there was a new pizza shop open at the top of our road, they made the nicest pizza's I have ever tasted. The pizzas were either thin crust or deep pan and if you had a deep pan it was a proper deep pan, I mean it was about three quarters of an inch thick and absolutely stuffed with toppings. The taste was like a sickly nice taste and the cheese was really stringy, it didn't just snap off like the cheap pizza's you get now. A deep pan was that filling that you would struggle to finish a 9" pizza.

At that time a Hawaiian thin crust 9" was £3.60 and a deep pan was £4.10.

Unfortunately although the takeaway still exists it has been taken over by a few different people since then and all the pizzas are now just the cheap crap that you get everywhere. They charge about £8 for a pizza and it's buy one get one free. All the pizza shops around here offer the same deal. Bearing in mind this is 20 years on since the place last made 'great' pizza's.

I have never since tasted a pizza like them. I have been to Italian restaurants and they make terrible pizza's. Often cheese on toast would have been better. Put it this way, recently I have thought about trying to trace down the original owner before he dies (if he hasn't already) to ask him to pass on the knowledge of how he made the pizza's because quite frankly, I don't think anybody else knows how to make them.

I am sure if a pizza shop made pizza's like that, that it would be a roaring success.


Chris.

 

[The Byre]

Double post - no I don't know how or why either!

 

[Sacha]

Come try our pizzas, 30% of our customers are Italian. One who is a truck driver living in Germany comes every week and says it's better than the Neapolitan pizza he had on a recent visit to Napoli. A couple of our Italian regulars work in an Italian restaurant and actually take our food there to eat before service, everyday. My business partner is Neapolitan, and I'm Italian. Real deal, fresh dough, homemade sauce, stone baked. We could sell this in Italy and be busier. In the UK we aren't rammed, and the shit pizza shops all around us are doing well by comparison. And we're the only 6 star rated takeaway on JustEat in the area yet they still get more sales than us according to JustEat. We're 21st best place to eat in the whole West Mids on Trip Advisor, 2nd best in West Brom and we aren't even a restaurant, yet a ship frozen chicken burger across the road has higher sales than us....

Yes people do recognise the difference and we're doing OK but I honestly thought like you guys: homemade fresh high quality takeaway would be rammed and destroy the competition. But it isn't. Still you need a good location, parking in front, leafletting, good website, and time.

Lots of people know how to make real pizza but there's more money in restaurants so they tend to open a restaurant instead. Same goes for any food really, why open a takeaway when you can make more money with a small restaurant working less hours, plus get tips. That's the reason all takeaways are the same because to do real food is a lifestyle business and people with a real passion in food want restaurants.

20 years ago there wasn't pizza in this country like there is today and comparing price then and now doesn't give much info when you consider inflation. Nowadays pizza is a very saturated market and everyone says they are 'real Italian pizza', so when someone actually authentic come along and say they do real Italian pizza no one believes it.

Very, very few places serve real pizza, none of the chains do and that includes PizzaExpress, Prezzo, Bella Italian, etc. etc. (frozen). Why do you think that place stopped doing real pizza @ Chris? Because it's not easy unless you have real experience and if you have that experience you'd make way more money with a 20 seat restaurant in fewer hours! And even with that experience no real pizzaiola makes 3 different size pizzas and thin crust and deep pan, you go to real pizza place and there's 1 size pizza and that's it. Good luck trying to get customers buying 1 size pizza when there's 4 pizza shops around the corner doing 16", 12", 9" 'thin base' and 'deep pan'. If you think you or anyone can do all those different types of pizza and it actually be fresh well I seriously doubt it.

I do still believe that there is a gap for proper takeaway food but I no longer believe it's as simple as doing good food and then you'd be rammed. Especially not in pizza because it's such a saturated market. You still need to aggressively advertise to be noticed and it takes time. Which costs money.

Personally I wouldn't do pizzas anyway. Homemade burgers I think would be better. That's my next business anyway, freshly baked burger bread, homemade chips and homemade burgers.

 

[The Byre]

For Chris -

The secret to a good deep-pan pizza is to make killer sour dough base. In fact the key to any savoury baking is to make the best sour dough and from UNBLEACHED cold-ground flour.

There's no need to kneed! You don't need special machines, just mix well with a spoon, shape it and leave it somewhere warm to rise.

I add loads of crushed fresh garlic and crushed fresh basil leaves and very finely chopped onions into the dough and then let it rise. If you want it slightly crisp, use a pre-heated pizza stone and pre-bake the base for five to ten minutes before taking it out and putting whatever you want on top.

If you want to create a magnificent pizza, liquify some fresh tomatoes and chuck a red pepperoni in there with them and put that under your topping.

Hmmm, makes me hungry - I think I'll make a pizza tonight!

 

[The Byre]

For Sacha -

May I suggest some improvements -

1. Get a photographer to take really good pictures of your food. The ones you have got are dire!

2. Put some of those fantastic reviews you get on your website.

3. Put up pictures of yourselves. People like to know who they are buying from - make it personal!

I would love to taste your food, but unfortunately I'm too far away!

 

[Decca]

sacha, lets have a look at your facebook page.

 

[Sacha]

Thanks for the suggestions.

1. Yes I'm working on that, we have better pictures in store already, nice estate agent folders on our windows with much better pictures than on the website. I've recently purchased lighting equipment to take more pictures myself. I'll update the website later with some.

2. I'm working on a new website where people can place the order through us and leave reviews and stuff. That one was just to have a presence for google searches when we opened 6 months ago. Most of our competitors don't even have a website. That will be done soon I hope, but first I need to get lots of good pictures so you can see what you're ordering.

3. Good idea, although I do want to extricate myself from the day to day operations of the business soon! Which is tough because when you make fresh dough 3 times a day you can't just get anyone to take over!

 

[Sacha]

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restau...t_Bromwich_West_Midlands_England.html#REVIEWS

https://www.facebook.com/DantesItalianKitchen

http://www.just-eat.co.uk/restaurants-dantes-b70

 

[Decca]

Okay, i need to be a bit more clear on what i was trying to get across.

The different sauce is to stand out, but the marketing is still needed to be successful.

A great quote is, "its not your customers job to remember you, its your job to make sure they don't forget" and thats not just about giving them an amazing experience, i.e... great food, but its about consistantly reminding them how good that food was, videos, facebook comps, emails, a great website that is so easy to order from even a child of 5 could do it, pictures that show the taste of your food, etc etc, you could say the marketing bit is the rocket science.
so in a nutshell
you cant have great food and terrible marketing. Its your marketing that is seriously missing sacha.

 

[Decca]

Just seen your facebook page. my advice is pay a pro to take a shed load of pictures of your food and then use those to promote your business, i'm sure your food tastes great but your pictures don't show it. just my opinion, and your website is really dull, the first thing i see is opening hours, when i should be hit by a beautifully made, welcoming video showing a busy restaurant with great looking food and a fun ambience. and like i said, an ordering system that a child of 5 could order from. Good luck, if your food is great then spend money on telling and showing people just what they are missing..................................... AND KEEP TELLING THEM!!!

 

[The Byre]

we have better pictures in store already, nice estate agent folders on our windows with much better pictures than on the website. I've recently purchased lighting equipment to take more pictures myself.

As E.T. said, "Ouch!"

Not too long ago, a young professional photographer from Germany was doing some work for us and when I discovered that the poor lad and his girlfriend were sleeping in his car, I told him not to be so silly and that we can put them up.

We fed and watered the couple for a week and he then said he would like to thank us and that we really needed better pictures for our website and other materials.

He spent several hours rigging lights. Remote flashes were hidden in things, huge flash guns were mounted all over the place and I had to wear a clean shirt! The pictures were simply the best and we use them for fair stands, posters, flyers and the website. They were sharp, they were clear and he removed unwanted shadows and reflections to give us perfect images.

Everybody thinks they can take photographs - until you meet the real thing! It takes thousands of pounds worth of equipment and years of experience to take a good product picture.

Having worked as a TV and film cameraman in my distant past, I thought I could take still pictures - but it is a completely different skill and one I do not really have.

Put it this way - perhaps there is a cameraman out there who likes good pizza!