If you’re a good cook and have a passion for pleasing the taste buds of others, why don’t you consider opening a home-based restaurant?
Not only would you get to do what you love, but you’ll also have a chance to make a profit from what you love doing. To make it even better, you won’t have to pay for renting a place to open up your business – after all, your home will serve as a restaurant. You may think that opening up such a is business is complicated, but it doesn’t have to be as long as you follow a few basic steps.
You should start by checking out your local authority regarding requirements for home-based businesses. Then, it’s a matter of deciding on your niche, choosing a name and a logo, creating a menu that you can perfectly replicate, researching your local competition, and developing a business plan.
Read on and learn what it takes to open up a food place in your home!
Research Your Local Authority Requirements
First things first: you should check out your local authorities requirements and regulations for home-based businesses. In most cases, you’ll need to registed with your local authority within 28 days. According to food.gov.uk “Local authority officers will make arrangements to visit your home once registered to conduct a food hygiene inspection. This inspection is to assess whether your food preparation areas and food safety procedures are suitable.”
You may also be required to set up a specially designed kitchen; you can implement the necessary changes, but it might be a good idea to have a kitchen separate from the one you use at home. You can organise space in your garage – with a good ventilation system, sanitary rules, reliable garage door parts supplier and maintenance service, and a proper refrigerator, you should be good to go!
Decide on a Niche
The next step is to decide on your niche. Think about the following questions:
- What kind of food are you going to serve – regional, oriental, Italian, Russian?
- Are you going to offer healthy, fast, or light food?
- Are you going to cook something that people can enjoy, for example, while watching movies or playing boards games?
- Are you going to specialise in authentic ethnic cuisine?
Once you figure out what you’re going to offer, you’ll have to decide on a name and a logo.
Choose a Name for Your Restaurant
With all these things in mind, think about what kind of name you’ll give to your restaurant. It can be your name, surname, or nickname, but make sure that it represents the type of food you plan to serve and that it’s easy to pronounce and remember. For example, if you’re planning to serve Szechuan cuisine, you could choose a name like “Spicy and Hot” or “Oriental Delight.” Once you have a name in mind, create a logo for your restaurant by using this name and your chosen color, ideally consistent with the overall design of your place.
Create a Menu You Can Perfectly Replicate
Your next step is to create a menu that you can perfectly replicate. You shouldn’t have too many items on the menu; keep it simple and limited – people will expect their food to be warm and delicious, not something that looks pretty but tastes horrible. Each dish should be easy to cook and have a low preparation time. It’s also a good idea to stick to what you’re good at – dont’ offer something you’re not confident about cooking, or you risk disappointing your customers.
Research Your Local Competition
After you’ve finalised your menu, it’s time to do some research. Take a look at what other restaurants in your area are doing: see if they have a website or an online presence of any kind, find out what they serve, what their menus look like, and how much they charge for their dishes. Make a list of their strengths and weaknesses, as well as their prices, so that you can draw some conclusions about what you’re going to do and how you’re going to compete with them.
Create a Business Plan
A business plan is one of the most important aspects of any business – home-based or not! It will help you understand the goals you want to achieve, how much money you want to make, when you can expect profit, and how exactly you want to grow your restaurant.
Start by writing down everything about your restaurant: its location, how many seats it has, how much money you need for the initial startup costs, etc. Then, move on to setting goals: what do you plan to achieve within the first year, the second year, and so on? In your plan, include expected sales volume by month, expected profit margin, and financial projections. Make sure that everything is realistic and achievable, given the state of the economy at the moment!
Conclusion
As you can see, starting a home-based restaurant isn’t exactly rocket science: all you have to do is follow these simple steps, and you’ll be ready to get your restaurant business going in no time. Be patient and persistent; keep in mind that given the investments as well as the novelty of your brand, you can’t expect to make a profit from the very beginning.
If the idea of opening a restaurant in your home is appealing to you, but you want to know more about it, we suggest checking out the Internet for others who achieved success this way. Good luck opening up your own home-based restaurant!
