Distilling Your Concept
In This Chapter
- Refining your restaurant’s concept
- Condensing your concept into a mission statement
- Testing your concept’s relevancy
- Choosing your restaurant’s elements
- Building and presenting your concept statement
In this chapter, you’ll learn how to develop your concept. We’ll lead you through a brainstorming session that will help you gather and then parse your thoughts into two paragraphs to create your draft mission statement. You’ll refine it further as you test your concept against the contemporary local market. How relevant is your concept? You’ll refine your mission statement further.
Next, you’ll create a storyboard with all the supporting elements. This is a visual task, so you’ll use photos to create either an online bulletin on Pinterest or a PowerPoint presentation. Start collecting images by category, menu graphics, music, uniforms, tableware, signage, and décor. As you do this, your concept will come more clearly into view.
From there, you’ll build your restaurant concept statement, which is a visual-heavy presentation that expands on your mission statement with information on the food, décor, and target market, and why this concept will appeal to your market.
The Concept
What is a restaurant concept? Your restaurant concept is the core idea of the business. It’s the story behind the experience you’re going to give your customers. The concept encompasses the food/cuisine; how it’s served; and whether your restaurant is quick, casual, family style, ethnic, hip, urban, or elegant. It’s expressed through your design, menu, and name.
Your concept is vital. It’s the soul of the restaurant and its message—your core belief about what your restaurant is going to be. Before you take any action to open a restaurant, you need to think about and take time to distill your concept.
Finalizing your concept is hard work. Most people just want to skip ahead to the fun stuff. “We’ll have our artist friend paint a mural!” Forget it. The gorgeous mural, the perfect neighborhood, the amazing young new chef you’ve discovered—they’re all great ideas, but they must support your concept. If you force together a bunch of good ideas that have no cohesion, the guest will likely have a hard time defining exactly who and what you are.
POTENTIAL PITFALL
There’s no surefire way to create a fail-safe concept. Even restaurants with great concepts can fail if they don’t stack up enough positives—which are all the things we’ll talk about in this book, such as watching food costs, keeping an eye on financials, running weekly inventories, and setting up systems to thwart theft.
Your concept touches your customer’s senses. It’s what the customer sees, hears, and smells, and how they’re welcomed, treated, and fed. Today dining out is treated as a form of entertainment, and restaurants make it a theatrical experience. No, we’re not talking tired mystery dinner theatre.
New York City’s Times Square has restaurants designed to transport guests to a medieval Japanese ninja village. It has restaurants designed to look like spaceships. A beginning restaurateur doesn’t have the resources to create that type of extravagance. Someone who hasn’t gotten their feet wet in the industry should never dive headfirst into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. No matter how humble your restaurant, you should always think about the experience you’ll create, the show you’ll put on, and the place you’ll take your guests.
Creating Your Mission Statement
You need to figure out your restaurant’s story and its message. Stating “This is my passion” isn’t enough. Your belief that you make the best burger ever isn’t enough, either. It’s a funny thing about being the best. It’s not as important as some people think it is.
You’re going to play with your restaurant’s mission statement. It’s a clear, concise, and specific description of your business strategy. It states your restaurant’s raison d’être—its reason for being. Note that word “strategy.” A mission statement shows how your idea is going to succeed in business. It’s not, however, an in-depth business plan, which we’ll discuss in Chapter 5. Right now, you’re simply working on the concept.
Start by sitting down with pen and paper. The goal is to create a two-paragraph description. In the beginning, start by jotting down words and phrases instead of full sentences. If you’re a visual person, you might brainstorm by sketching. The first step is to scribble down words or sketch images that come to mind as you walk through a series of questions to help you form your ideas.
We’ll begin with a “what?” question. Remember, this is a process. You don’t have to get it right out of the gate.
Food
What is your restaurant going to serve? What experience will your customers have?
Possible answers could be New England seafood; Southern comfort food; vegetarian, raw or vegan; Brazilian steakhouse; Cajun; Turkish takeout; breakfast and lunch deli; Israeli street food; kosher; Italian American; Northern Italian; New American; Japanese ramen; or Irish pub.
These answers fall into genres. It’s pretty simple, but somehow when people start thinking about the kind of restaurant they want to open, they complicate it. One man told Jody, “I want to start an eclectic Mediterranean restaurant.” Jody asked him, “Have you ever said, ‘I feel like having eclectic Mediterranean tonight’?”
A chef wanted to start a restaurant that would serve his “inventive cuisine.” He was going to serve dishes like “a sous-vide, biodynamic egg nestled in an emulsion mushroom foam.” Jody told the chef it didn’t matter how amazing that egg might be, from what free-range hen it was laid at what farm, how bright orange the yolk, how firm the white, and what 12-hour sous-vide technique the chef discovered to produce the perfect consistency of yolk that would ooze at the pressure of a fork. No matter what far-out chemicals the chef discovered that would suspend his foraged woodland mushrooms into a foam that would dissipate on the tongue—leaving a trace of woodland essence—only 1/10 of 1 percent of potential customers would want that.
However, is there a way that the chef’s idea can be profitable? Is there a foodie culture in his location that will support a restaurant based on his gastro-molecular cuisine? How often are people going to want to eat it? These questions might not seem as delectable as the chef’s special Egg in the Woods dish, but they’re the type of questions his concept must stand up to.
SMART MOVE
Create a storyboard of images that expresses the experience of dining at your restaurant. Online design sites abound. Pinterest is a great resource for creating an online bulletin board for gathering and sorting images. Then thin out your images and create a storyboard in PowerPoint or other presentation program.
Service Style
There are a number of service styles, such as buffet, self-serve, counter order, and sit-down. There are four primary types of service: fine dining, casual dining, fast casual, and fast food.
Fine-dining restaurants are the highest priced. The cuisine is complex, with numerous steps and processes taking place over several days. The cooks may have received culinary training and the servers have worked in a fine-dining establishment. Service may be more formal and a dress code and reservations may be required.
Casual restaurants offer less complex food with table service. Reservations may or may not be required and a dress code rarely is enforced. Casual restaurants are more family-friendly. Menus include more items than fine-dining restaurants. The menu might include many types of pasta and several chicken or seafood preparations. A buffet of cooked items, held warm over steam trays, may be a part of this type of restaurant as well (though they’re seen less frequently in contemporary restaurants).
Fast casual restaurants offer menu items similar to fast food but with higher-quality or healthier ingredients. A fast-food place may offer a hamburger, but a fast casual restaurant might offer a hamburger of grass-fed beef on a fresh-baked bun with hand-cut sweet potato fries. There’s no table service at these restaurants.
Fast-food restaurants offer the fastest service and lowest price. The décor is simple and there’s takeout and/or drive-through service. Many fast-food restaurants are franchises of a larger brand. There’s no table service and the servers (cashiers) and cooks usually have little experience.
Your Special Approach
The next question is “What is your restaurant’s unique take on preparing your type of food?” How are you going to make this genre contemporary?
Say your concept is New England seafood. How will you prepare and serve it in a way that distinguishes your restaurant from others?
As you brainstorm about this, jot down some words and sketch a few pictures of what you think about it.
Your notepad might reveal a drawing of a fish, crabs, and a boat. The words you write could be: locally caught, sustainable, lively, ginger, hot pepper, Thai basil, today’s food, fresh, healthy, New American, touch of Asian and Latin, crudo, salsa, ceviche, sea-to-table, local fishermen, and local oyster beds.
Now, let’s put those words into a sentence: “My restaurant’s approach to New England seafood is sea-to-table, local and sustainably caught seafood, cooked in a fresh, healthy New American style, with Asian and Latin flavors, including a raw bar.”
Your Customers
Your next question is “Who?” The answer to “Who?” isn’t you. It’s your customers. Who are they? Brainstorm and jot down some words again: Seaport tourists; businessmen; families; locals; people who want healthy, fresh, locally caught fish; foodies; and local food people.
Now, put those words into a sentence: “My customers will be drawn from the tourists who come to the aquarium and locals. The downtown business brings a lot of workers and travelers downtown and will draw an after-work and dinner crowd. It will also draw locals.”
POTENTIAL PITFALL
A sign you haven’t defined your target market is when you have too many target markets. A beginning restaurateur’s enthusiasm may make her think everyone will want to come to her restaurant. The happy hour crowd and family dinner hour are two different markets with different needs altogether.
When you review the sentence about the restaurant’s target market, you discover you need to examine this a little more closely. Tourists, families, locals, and business people are separate markets, with different needs. Aquarium tourists are mostly families with children. Convenience and proximity are important to them. They visit for lunch and dinner. The business crowd normally eats lunch during the week and congregates during happy hours after work. The happy-hour crowd and families dining with children don’t mix. Families with school-age children come on weekends, when you will do your busiest lunches. You will want to do more marketing research on the dining habits of the business people and locals, who visit your restaurant market more frequently.
The next questions are, “What are you going to bring to your customers? What will you do for them? What value will you offer them? How will you make their lives better?”
Once again, write down the words (or sketch images) that come to mind: fresh, healthy, now, great quality, seasonal, wake them up, exhilarating flavors, good feeling, friendly, clean, happy, and homemade pie.
Now, put these thoughts into a sentence, “I will provide my customers with a bright and friendly environment where they can eat healthy, freshly caught sustainable seafood made with seasonal local fruits and vegetables.”
Tonight, Let’s Have …
There are only so many customers. What makes you think you’re going to be able to steal a customer from an existing restaurant? What will draw the customer to your place?
This question tests your idea against the local restaurant market. Start by writing down the names of the restaurants in your local market that serve seafood: Cecil’s Fish ’n’ Chips, The Clam Shack, Asia Sushi Bistro, Captain Morehouse’s Lobster house, The Sandpiper, and so on.
What words come to mind when you think of these places? Fast food, frozen fish, fried food, grease, broiled dinner, old, tired, great view, boring food, sushi, fresh, quiet, old-fashioned seafood restaurant, and worn carpeting.
From these words, a sentence starts to evolve: “Most of the seafood restaurants in the area are old and tired fast-food fish ’n’ chips or standard seafood restaurants known for fried sandwiches made from frozen fish. Our sit-down restaurant will appeal to the contemporary customer’s desire for fresh and healthy food. Our fish will be fried in olive oil and breaded in crisp carb-free almond flour. We’ll freshen the old standards like the lobster rolls by transforming them into lobster tacos. Raw fish and sushi is a growing market, and we’ll offer crudo, ceviche, and sushi appetizers of sustainably caught or raised fish.”
DEFINITION
Crudo is Italian raw fish. Traditionally served like tartare, which is chopped and seasoned, today crudo takes a leaf from Japanese sashimi, with thin slices of raw fish. Contemporary Italian restaurants top crudo with sea salt, fresh spices, and olive oil.
Notice how your core menu is starting to develop. Composing a menu is a process, too. We’ll delve into the details of creating a balanced, tested, and profit-yielding menu in Chapter 9.
What will the guests’ experience of your restaurant be like? How will you contemporize the look and experience of eating New England seafood? How will you transport your guests through this experience?
Dining out is entertainment these days. It’s not what you do, but the way you do it. The way you do it depends on your target audience and the service style of your restaurant. No matter the level, imagine that you’re creating a movie set design.
Close your eyes and imagine walking into your restaurant. What’s the first thing you see, smell, and hear when you come through the door? Who are the first people you meet? Who are the other customers? Design your picture.
Making Money
How is your restaurant concept going to make a profit? Remember, this process you’re working through is about creating a product you will bring to the market.
Think about the hours you’ll be open, meals you’ll serve, your price range, and what prices other restaurants are charging. Lunch isn’t usually a big money maker. However, depending on the number of seats and concept of your restaurant, your takeout business could be a huge contribution to your daily sales. Be sure the items on your takeout menu travel well, and will deliver a minimally diluted takeout dining experience consistent with your concept. In addition, make sure your takeout business doesn’t interrupt the experience of your dining-in customers. Guests waiting for takeout should be blocked from the view of the dining room or have a separate entrance.
Common Good
Some mission statements talk about what they’ll do for the community, the environment, or the world. If social or environmental wellbeing is central to your concept, put it in your mission statement and be faithful to your promises. Keep your credibility, because word spreads when you don’t. If you say you support local agriculture and you use Farmer Sally’s kale but you don’t, you can bet she’s going to hear about it, tell her friends, and it’ll end up all over Facebook.
As you start to write about your restaurant’s philosophy, you might find yourself so steeped in the process you’ve been working through that the sentences will seem to flow smoothly.
“My sea-to-table restaurant will promote local fishermen and serve sustainably farmed fish. It will educate the consumer about extinction, overfishing, and what fish they shouldn’t eat.”
Whoa, that sentence is a bit of a bummer. “Educate”? “Shouldn’t”? Those words don’t inspire. This sentence needs to be rephrased in a more positive way.
“My sea-to-table restaurant will support the work of local fishermen and sustainably caught or raised fish. We’ll promote the best, freshest, seasonal seafood and re-introduce forgotten local favorite fish.”
Now that sounds more positive and interesting.
Your Mission Statement, Draft 1
Now string together all the sentences you’ve written and see what you’ve got, then edit it. Cut out any extra words. Read your draft mission statement aloud, and edit out more unnecessary words.
Next comes the hard part: read it aloud to a few trusted friends, family, or colleagues. Listen to what they say. Don’t explain your concept. If there’s a common denominator in their comments or something that’s not working for them, be open-minded and try to figure out a solution in your mind. Put it down on paper. You need to smooth your mission statement’s rough edges so your concept is concise and clear.
POTENTIAL PITFALL
Don’t argue with your advisors. People usually get defensive when their ideas are criticized. Try to separate useful comments from useless comments. Separate business from emotion.
Eventually, you’ll hone your mission statement into something simple, such as:
“Bring to market a family-friendly, high-quality New England seafood experience using local, sustainably caught and raised seafood and a contemporary eco-friendly American service culture and design aesthetic.”
Creating a Storyboard
Restaurants are visual mediums as well as mood-inducing spaces. To help you brainstorm the look of and guest experience in your future restaurant, create an online bulletin board using sites such as Pinterest or search online restaurant design sites and copy pictures into a PowerPoint presentation. Once you know what your concept is, all the elements should fall into place.
Find pictures that express what coming to your restaurant will be like. Only you know the type of food you’ll serve. How will it be served?
Don’t put pressure on yourself to come up with the perfect name right away. Finding a name that fits your restaurant concept is a process. You don’t need to know your restaurant’s name when you set up your LLC. Your LLC can be named anything. It needn’t be the same as your restaurant name.
The right name for a restaurant has a way of suddenly appearing and being just right. It can be a word or words that capture your concept and your spirit. Brainstorm with your clever friends. Make lists, do a play on words, and create word associations (but don’t be too cute). The connotation should be positive and related to your concept.
Great Names
Dinosaur is the name of a beloved BBQ restaurant chain that started in Syracuse, New York. What do you associate with dinosaurs? Big bones. It’s a good name. Contemporary barbecue restaurants have great names such as Blue Smoke in New York City. A place named Mesquite promises a different experience than Al’s Barbecue Pit.
Eponymous names work when the name has been used so long it’s a revered brand, like the 90-year-old Pepe’s Pizza in New Haven, Connecticut. The pizza was so famous that the family decided to open outlets throughout the state and into New York.
Eponymous restaurants work for the famous, such as Jean-Georges in New York City. Eponymous names signal the serious intentions of the chef-owner. When a classically trained chef puts his name on his restaurant, it signals he’s proud of what he’s doing.
Names don’t work when they relate to a personal event in your life—an event or place that has nothing to do with your restaurant’s concept. If you’re opening an Asian Bistro, don’t name it after the Scottish highlands where you honeymooned. Don’t name your restaurant after your dog. (Though of course it didn’t hurt a dockside restaurant in Martha’s Vineyard, whose Black Dog logo became a summer status statement.)
Signage
You need to examine your name in terms of signage. How big is the size of the sign your town zoning department will allow? How well will your name fit on that sign? The letters need to be big enough to be read clearly from cars passing on the street. A long name will require smaller letters and will be less legible. One- and two-word names (one to three syllables total) have a contemporary feel.
Run a check on your name to make sure it’s not trademarked. We know a guy who figured he got off easy when a company came after him saying his restaurant’s name was infringing on their trademark. Why did he feel like he got off easy? Because he was able to change the last letter of his restaurant’s name from an “a” to an “o.” His restaurant’s name is now grammatically incorrect in his native Italian, but at least he didn’t get sued—and changing the name was inexpensive and easy for his customers to absorb.
The lesson of this story is to do research first so you don’t end up dealing with threatening letters from lawyers. That kind of stress pulls your attention and energy from the daily management of your restaurant.
With the advent of Google, all restaurant names are likely to appear as trademark infringement since you’re now listed with every other joint in the world instead of within your local county. You can’t easily protect a name or brand in a market where you don’t do business. The goal is to be mindful of local places, brands, and names and to be sure you haven’t borrowed an identity along with a similar name.
Keep in mind that your trademarked name, logo, and/or tagline are your intellectual property. Your restaurant’s name is an asset. There’s always the chance you could sell your restaurant or expand the concept, but that’s years down the road after you’ve made this new restaurant a success.
Concept Statement
You now have all the material you need to put together your concept statement. The concept statement brings together all of the aspects of your restaurant. You can create it in PowerPoint, using plenty of images to illustrate the mood and feeling (cozy? sexy? vintage? authentic? eccentric?) of your future restaurant.
The components of a concept statement include:
- The type of restaurant
- Food theme
- Design theme
- How it’s unique
- The target market
- Why customers will visit your restaurant
- The restaurant’s name
Looking at your storyboard, you can start to sort through images to find images that best illustrate the following restaurant elements:
- Décor
- Lighting
- Menu
- Service
- Location
- Size
- Seating
- Bar
- Hours
Remember, your concept must work in a specific location in a specific space. When you find that place, you’re going to have to be very careful with money, because you’re not likely to get your hands on enough for construction, design, and start-up. In Chapter 6, we’ll talk more about figuring out how many tables you can fit into a space, how you can estimate average check per seats to determine if your restaurant concept can succeed on or off Main Street, and whether your customers will go out of their way to find you.
The Least You Need to Know
- Do brainstorming exercises to define your concept.
- Condense your concept to a one- to two-paragraph mission statement.
- Collect images that express the look and mood of the experience you want your guests to have.
- Your restaurant name should evoke your concept—or at the very least, convey to the guest a sense of what to expect.