DD I could not disagree more. The successful are calculated risk takers who dont side with luck but with know how and unwavering sense of always wanting better. Toss statistics out the window? Sir you must not be a business man...statistics are the lifeblood of any business...and 150% the lifeblood of a restaurant. I dont think there are any real NAYSAYERS in here, just people who really dont think this man can operate a restaurant and no one wants to see somebody lose all their money + put themselves in to massive debt. (even if the guy is a sleezy family abandoning cheater who believes in aliens and the NWO) Honestly its people like you who make people like him jump head first into really terrible life changing decisions like this. Dont feed lines like "if you believe it, do it!" to someone who is young enough to throw away the best years of his life with crippling debt. And DD, there wont be a next time when he loses all his savings and has 5 years of Triple Net real estate leases to be accountable for after his income hits 0 when the restaurant closes. Do you honestly think there is any way out of that kind of debt so that he can have a chance at "next time?" doubtful at best DD.
Thread needs to be locked. If ToyCen can't afford a phone then a restaurant is just a tad out of his reach.
DD hasn't done too bad in his business ventures in the past Dirty Stache. Well, except for Gizmodo or whatever it was.
honestly, how many consumer related threads has OP started where he couldn't choose the right cable company, cell phone plan, or any other random simple task without checking in with his friends at clutchfans first? forget the attention seeking alien shtick. it ain't gonna happen.
Ok just want to give an update with me. So I've moved away from the starting my own restaraunt from scratch thinking and looking more into now franchising. There's this nationwide chain (but small, only one or two in most states) of coffee house called The Coffee Beanery ( http://www.coffeebeanery.com/ ) I looked into my local Coffee Beanery simply just to gather more information on what I should expect if I want to franchise a Coffee Beanery of my own. It'll cost me around $470k to get started. Come to find out, the lady who owns my local Beanery is trying to sell hers. She has a story for wanting to sell it, and it all checks out. She purchased the restaurant for her daughter to run, who ended up marrying a guy in the Navy who then got transfered to CA. So this lady has been running it for over a year now but is 60 years old, has health problems that cause her to only work 2 days a week, 4 hours a day. She's willing to sell it for $180k. Now this Coffee Beanery is one of a kind in my state (Virginia.) Out of all 3 locations, this is the only location that has a cafe as well. The other 2 are just small coffee/danish walk-ins inside the mall. My location sells breakfast, lunch, has a nice dining area. Very nice location. She doesn't make NEARLY as much as she could. For instance, her hours are 6a-6p daily. She turned down getting her alcohol license to sell wine. She is 5 minutes from the college of William and Mary, so lots of ideas for her to improve her cafe to appeal to the college kids. I was going to start a new thread about ideas and improvements to the business, because I'm going to meet with her tonight and want to get her approval as to if I can make these changes I'm thinking of before I decide to go into partnership with her 50/50. (I dont want to go all in and lose everything until I get my feet wet and see that this WILL make money) So, my ideas are as follows: Open from 4am-11pm. The street she is located on leads down to the ferry that crosses over the river to get to the small town of Surry. With the high Williamsburg real estate, alot of people live in Surry, but work in Williamsburg. So they pass by the Coffee Beanery every morning. Open extremely early to get them in. Maybe even offer 1/2 price on coffee from 4am-7am. You really make your money off your food (breakfast) So they'll come for the coffee, stay for the breakfast. Start selling wine. You can do this the responsible way or the other way. Have good selections of cheaper wine to appeal to the college kids. College is a stressful time. There would be NO other coffee shop in town that would offer coffee, food, and wine. Have concerts once a month. I'm thinking of having a BIG name come to town. A group that could sell out a venue or 2,000 or more people at any given time. My thinking is, you don't look to make money off of this. You go in the hole, but the purpose is to BUILD a strong customer base, so they know what your company is, what you offer, and the kind of people who run the place. Give college kids discounts w/ student ID. Offer Free coffee to all uniformed police officers, and 1/2 price on all food. The big question mark in the whole thing, is its located in a shopping center in which a large grocery store just moved out of. So I was thinking, the owner is selling the business at a huge discount before she starts losing money from her customers who I thought came from the grocery store... but get this, the grocery store offered FREE coffee to their shoppers. So why go shopping and then go next door to spend $4 on a cup of coffee when you can get it for free where you stand? I think its a different customer base all together then the customers the grocery store had. So these are all ideas I had... please elaborate on good ideas/bad ideas and feel free to add any more I haven't thought of!
Actually I did great on that deal, I sold my company to Gizmondo, and was able to cash out on the AIM market, now if Gizmondo would have sold to Samsung like we were trying to do, I would have walked with more than 30 million, instead, the CEO recognized the deal was not going to happen and bailed with a bunch of cash.....and screwed the company. The I-phone is basically what we were doing, so at least we were on the right track. DD
Oh, and my bit about ignoring the statistics was not refering to "NOT DOING RESEARCH" it was refering to the stats that show the number of companies that fail versus succeed, of course you try to mitigate your risk by doing the background research etc. Knowledge is king.....but if you NEVER take the risk, you never reap the rewards.... Failure is just a chance to learn more stuff....get up, dust yourself off and try again....that is the fun of it. DD
I co-owned a franchise business for over 5 years. That monthly royalty fee may not seem like much but it can be a killer. Lot of people don't start making good money in a franchise until their business loan is paid off. When you're looking at the financial reports of the business, think about your loan (if you'll have one). The principle of the loan is not included as an expense, only the intrest being paid each month so that can make the "profit" of a small business deceiving.
If you need/want info on ethnicities in your location, you can use this map: http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer
You need to do a lot more financial/statistical analysis. Just having good "ideas" will get you in trouble if you don't have numbers to back them up. For instance, what percentage of customers that order coffee also buy breakfast? What is the average amount spent on breakfast? If you can get these numbers you can see exactly how much you'll make off half-price coffee versus keeping it regular price. That's just an example, but you need to do that kind of thing for the entire business. Come up with a realistic forecast to see when you'll get out of the hole and when you'll start making money, and how much you'll make. With most franchises, you are lucky to pay yourself a decent salary once (if) you get out of the hole. There just isn't a lot of profit potential due to the royalty fees, but it's not impossible to make a living off of it. The question is, do you want to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars on something that will just "make a living"? If that's my money, I want it to be something that has the potential for me to keep more of the profits. That's just my thinking. You should seek some expert advice. At the very minimum, hire a CPA if you're serious about going through with it.
Nah, I did not invent the Iphone, just saying what it does is similar to what we were doing at Gizmondo. Basically building Captain Kirk's communicator - a catch all device that was also a phone, we had some differences, like video out, and our camera was a flip one that flipped up and faced forward when it was up. And we had analog controls that allowed for better gaming etc.... We also had a lot of similarities too....I think there is a saying that says....Pioneers get slaughtered but settlers thrive. We did not have the pockets of Apple to make it actually work in the marketplace, nor was the board capable, so we were never going to make it work in the end. Still, we were on the right track. DD
