Starting, Owning and Marketing A Restaurant Blog|Starting and Owning a Restaurant - Construction, Planning, Marketing, Opening and Managing a New Restaurant

The opening of Maggie Mae’s on the Bluffs in Belleair Bluffs, Florida has been a six month rocky road. The many posts on this blog have detailed the problems, hurdles and emotions of trying to open a new restaurant. The last thirty days have been intense in terms of time committed and concentration of resources to accomplish flipping on the ”OPEN” sign.

The new facility officially opened on Friday, January 9, 2009, more than six weeks beyond our projected opening date when the project was started.

Below is a day by day recap of the first four days of operations.

• Day One —  We turned on the open sign at 6:30 AM on a Friday. Our first customer didn’t come through the door until about 7:30 AM. It was a long hour with the entire staff waiting and wondering if we were ready and if anyone would come in at all. By the end of the day we had managed $550 in sales. However, it was clear the new servers had to do more training on the menu and the kitchen needed some procedural changes. The breakfast and lunch business parts were about equal in the number of customers.
• Day Two — Saturdays are the second biggest day of the week for breakfast guests. We had spent the overnight hours adding some enhancements to the kitchen such as shelves, moving the order printer and getting some utensils that escaped our initial inventory. The photo in this post is the kitchen line. Barely shown is a double oven followed bt the stove and salamander combination, the griddle and fryer. You can see a portion of the server window in the middle right of the photo. Second day sales were a respectful $850. The procedural and kitchen modifications clearly helped food delivery. However, the servers were still not trained well enough on the menu despite our request to study it closely overnight.
• Day Three — As usual, Sundays start lowly. People get up later and eat breakfast as a treat they may not enjoy during the week. Overnight we had compiled a new server menu test to force familiarity with the menu. The questions were based on what had been experienced in the last couple of days. The servers each took the open menu test before starting their shift. By the time customers finally showed up, the apprehension about the day was shown by servers, staff and management. I had been confident that we would have a good day, but the minutes between orders were starting to wear on me. Watch what you wish for! When guests started coming in after 8:30 they didn’t stop. At one point we filled every seat and ended the day with good sales of $1650. The kitchen, servers and procedures went extremely well. Ticket times were good with only minor anticipated problems.
• Day Four — A Monday. This day would tell the story. If our word of mouth opening had been successful, we would have a decent day. Of course, we didn’t expect a repeat of Sunday, but customers did respond and we ended the day with $900 in sales. A a business day as opposed to a weekend, we had a good business lunch crowd that exceeded breakfast.

Overall, we are extremely pleased with the results of our very “soft” opening. Part Two of this post will recap how we got this far from a marketing perspective. Marketing for a new restaurant is always a challenge, but our plan was in place and working so far.

The demolition permits were posted on Friday and on Saturday one of my employees began some demolition and salvage. Things like good doors, ceiling tiles and a couple of counters were removed and saved to be used in the renovated restaurant.

The landlord’s HVAC contractor was in to give certification that the HVAC system was in working order and there was sufficient cooling for a restaurant. The equipment appears fine, but is borderline on the cooling for our capacity. May need to negotiate with the landlord about future.

One of the key activities this weekend was to layout the floor seating and front of the house, walls and fixtures. By using masking tape on the floor we disovered:

• The seating plan was too agressive. Changes were necessary to make sure the aisles were wide enough.
• The office/sorage area was way to small.
• The entrance needed a few more inches for comfort.

As a result of the changes, our seating went from 77 to 70 people inside. No changes outside.

The new restaurant seating plan will make customers more comfortable and give aisles a little more room. Server traffic pattern was a key factor in the changes.

This week the plans are:

• Contractor to begin demolition on Tuesday.
• Get new seating plan to architect.
• Begin fireproofing ceiling by end of the week.
• Start getting quotes for grease trap.
• Get final booth totals and get ordered, since they have a 6 week production lead time.
• Get quote on moving HVAC.
• Get electrician started to move electrical conduits to allow for fireproofing.

One pleasant surprise was a two door stand up refrigerator, that was presumed to be junk turned out to be in working order. That is about a $4000 savings if it continues to hold temperature.