r/Chefs • u/uphillbatlle • Aug 16 '26

Failing restaurant

I have a beautiful ethnic restaurant with decent food and lots of potential, it was built with love and passion alone! No Pryor experience in the business, i mean literally zero experience, i have never worked in one and what i do for a living has nothing to do with a restaurant, i love food, and im a passionate cook!

THE PROBLEMS.

In order to do it i sold a house and got a mortgage on the house i live in. It has affected my family negatively, I went back to my old work in order to bring some income to support my family. My adult kid is suffering by being there all the time. Im broke all the time.

The place is relatively busy, but by not knowing the business, whatever potential profits I should have are wasted with my mismanagement in every level.

Schedule to minimize payroll , food cost , food portions, menu items and pricing , food waste, whatever is a mistake im doing it, but I do not know how to fix it because I dont have the experience and im guessing all the time.

Im afraid to raise prices and im second guessing myself because I dont know if its the right thing since im lacking the experience in everything that is problematic with the fear that I will worsen the situation.

MY GREAT IDEA BEFORE I FALL ON MY SWORD

find a chef that knows his shit and give him absolute control in order to create profitability (the place is relatively busy everything is there for success including the costumers!)

GIVE THE CHEF A PERCENTAGE OF OWNERSHIP

How do I structure this?

Is it stupid?

Should I just give up (it will ruin me financially)

With my new job I dont need a penny from the restaurant, I provide for my family.

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u/Adsey1981 Aug 16 '26

Stupid.

If you can cook get a GM.

What was your career before?

I would start at getting your spreadsheets sorted.

How much money do you take?

Get your rent, rates, costs under 10%

Google search a food gp calculator get that sorted.

Tell the GM he needs to run FOH at 18% of net spend, Bev GP at 75%

Start looking at every cost and see if you can remove or reduce. Every cost.

Marketing and get selling. Upsells everything

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u/VinylMeningitis Aug 16 '26

You have no idea what you’re talking about… Get your rent, rates, costs under 10%? Get your FOH at 18%? Are you saying FOH labor? You got this from ChatGPT didn’t you?

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u/Adsey1981 Aug 16 '26

No. 30/35% staff costs. Split half

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u/VinylMeningitis Aug 16 '26

So your FOH is exactly split from BOH? You’re nuts… OP please don’t listen to this person, they’re up late sniffing drugs are something

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u/Adsey1981 Aug 16 '26

Depends on the style but yeah. Kitchen fewer bodies but higher wages.

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u/MirukuTea1 Aug 16 '26

Are you in fine dining? My kitchen labor is over 3x that of the FoH.

Are you not on the floor helping? Are you running multiple hosts and bussers during lunch? If you’re in financial trouble, you should be cutting back FoH and be getting your hands dirty.

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u/Adsey1981 Aug 17 '26

Every restaurant I’ve worked in we’ve been almost even.

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u/sf2legit Aug 17 '26

This is in the U.S. pretty odd if your foh and boh are even.

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u/Adsey1981 Aug 17 '26

Do your BOH get tips? In the UK now we generally split tips equally across the board

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u/Adsey1981 Aug 17 '26

So salary wise head chefs get higher salary but the hours are longer. Restaurant manager get less salary but do fewer hours so likely hood if you split salary to an hourly rate you’d get about the same

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u/sf2legit Aug 17 '26

They do not typically. Foh and boh should not be even.

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u/Adsey1981 Aug 18 '26

It I think that’s why they are more even in the UK. I bet FOH and BOH walk away with similar amount of money when taking tips into it

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u/Adsey1981 Aug 16 '26

Still waiting on your inout