Restaurant Management Consultant Advice – Start with 1 page Bus. Plan

Advice from many a restaurant management consultant would suggest one should write a comprehensive business plan prior to approaching banks, investors and others when trying to raise money. However, sitting down and writing a final draft will require a significant amount of time and effort unless you are hiring a professional to do some or all of it for you. Restaurant Business PlanPrior to writing the entire restaurant business plan, it is important to flesh out the key points of your plan first. This is the same as you do when the “executive summary” portion is completed. In our experience, you should write the summary first and use it as a preliminary one page overall plan to see if those people you are wanting to approach are initially interested. This will also provide you an opportunity to see if the key elements of opening your new restaurant, bar or nightclub make sense. By doing the initial one page planning that summarize your concept, marketing, income and return on investment, it will help you crystallize the what, where, who and when of your future restaurant business and what you need to re-think, re-formulate and re-focus on. It will also provide a good starting point to gain valuable feedback if you are thinking about hiring a restaurant management consultant to assist you or getting certain family and friends to loan you some of the start-up funds. There are several valuable resources available at RestaurantOwner.com for a small monthly subscription that includes examples of executive business plan summaries and other tools in how to open and plan a new restaurant. You can also download an executive summary for a hotel real estate investor we created (with name changed) that serves as a good sample one page plan and is applicable to opening multiple franchised restaurants. Have you used a one page plan to garner initial interest or summarize your first draft? If so, please share your comments with our readers about the pros and cons as if you were their restaurant management consultant.