Recap: First Month at the Restaurant

On Thursday we will have been open a full month. It's been tough, but we are headed in the right direction.

• Our sales are slowly improving, but are way lower than I anticipated. This is my biggest concern. It's hard to do anything without enough customers.
• Labor costs are steadily declining. Today we are operating on a skeleton crew: one regular hourly employee, two waitresses working staggered shifts, me and my business partner. Our total labor cost will be about $65 today - I can live with that.
• Food costs are also headed in the right direction but are still too high. Yesterday I completed an inventory and our food cost was 45% of sales. We need this to be under 28%. It is high because of overcooking and mistakes being made.

I am about to invest in some advertising. I can place a coupon in Val-Pak for the 20,000 homes nearest the restaurant for $489 per month. We are also posting fliers with our menu in various places and I send out a weekly email. The weather is also improving and that has to help sales as well.

We are still not out of danger of failing - that remains a high probability. But we've made huge improvements in the last 4 weeks.