Virgil Evetts

I grew up in restaurants. I won’t you bore you with the details again, but suffice to say the industry holds no glamour for me.

Although it’s well known that more restaurants fail than flourish- by a very large margin- I still meet people who talk excitedly about their dreadful “next-chapter-of-my-life” dreams  of opening up a ‘nice little’ cafe or restaurant. Oh I know we’re all supposed to ‘follow our dreams’, but the trouble is a lot of us have very dumb dreams. Dreams that are harmless enough in the David Lynch-esque reality of our resting brains, but very dangerous in the real world .

The reality is that many people who blunder into the food business are simply not equipped for the job. They confuse the pleasures of dining out with the realities of running a business, or their idea of the industry has been shaped by television. Take Friends  for example,  (the bad comedy we watched whether we admitted it or not) central character Monica was a chef in a popular restaurant, yet she was almost never at work. Instead she spent her days lolling about with her friends, spouting endless self indulgent twaddle.  When real chefs hang out with their friends it’s usually at about 3am and their friends are usually other chefs. They still talk utter rot, but mostly because of the vast quantities of vodka ^[1] they’ve thrown back since the whistle blew.

Almost without exception, opening a restaurant or café is a terrible idea. Anybody who thinks it will be ‘fun’ from the outset has already flunked the entrance exam. Certainly, if you have your wits about you, then you may experience something resembling fun, from time to time. But mostly you’ll just be tired. And poor.

Successful restaurants are not run by people out for a laugh, they’re run by shrewd business types (often with investors) who know how to make money against all odds, and understand the importance of offering a precisely targeted, streamlined and consistent product. They probably run their places like battleships and barely take a wage themselves  because they know they’ll make their money when they sell.  The goal for many a successful restaurateur is to build it up and sell it high- not hold on to it until they’re homeless. There are certainly exceptions to this rule, but this is the most level-headed approach to what is an extremely tough industry.

But for most people, it’s just a complicated way of disposing of large sums of money and assets. Just as a successful restaurant can reap substantial rewards- eventually- an unsuccessful one can consume money, property and relationships like a hippo with portion-control issues.

So am I sympathetic towards people who’ve lost out large on some hare-brained cafe scheme? Frankly, no. One of my personal mottos in life is ‘Caveat Emptor’. Anyone who has ever eaten in a food establishment only needs to look around the dining room to get a feel for the costs and pressures. They are myriad, and they don’t stop, ever.

I wouldn’t do it. Not in a million years. I know my limits and they fall well short of what’s required to run a restaurant, café or even a cake stand. I am however very good at eating out and I have every intention of doing a great deal more of that. Play to your strengths, I say.

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