Restaurant Life Cycle Strategies

For the past 10 years, Atlantic Restaurant Group has been working with chef and first time owners in the process of buying restaurants and with owners who wish to sell their restaurants.  It wasn't until this past week that I realized that our company has been focused on the beginning and end of the restaurant life cycle but we have not provided support and guidance throughout the other stages of the life of restaurants.

A restaurant is a living, breathing object that has a predictable life cycle.  Like the life cycle of the restaurateur, it is born and eventually dies.  The birth of the restaurant is when a buyer makes a commitment to buy.  They invest time and money in the process of purchasing their dream.  The death of a restaurant is the day that it is closed or sold to another owner.

The Restaurant Life Cycle-

• Birth
• Infancy
• Toddler
• Teenager
• Young Adult
• Prime-Zone of Maturity/Maximization
• Mid-Life
• Aging
• Institutionalization
• Death

The majority of independent restaurant owners have no idea where they are in there restaurants life cycle. Knowing what to expect next and having some strategies in place to assist them in navigating the life cycle would save many from the financial destruction that so many restaurateurs experience in the death of their restaurant.  

Unfortunately, the Atlantic Restaurant Group's primary role over the past 10 years has been to assist restauranteurs exit from an industry that got the best of them.  By not understanding where they were in the restaurant life cycle, they go down in financial flames.  Imagine trying to fly from Boston to Hawaii without a map or a GPS.

There is a smarter way to conduct business!  As we re-engineer Atlantic Restaurant Group, our primary focus is to educate and offer solutions that will help guide restaurant owners through the business aspects of starting, growing, operating and exiting the restaurant business.  

Plans for 2012-Happy New Year!

My primary project for 2012:

To become a more effective communicator so that I can deliver more value and assist more people.

At the suggestion of a close personal friend, Michael Bernoff, I have decided to forgo creating a "list" of all of the things that I dream about getting and instead focus my efforts on mastering a skill that will effect everything in my life.  You see, the way my brain works, I feel that I am not being successful unless I make something monumental happen, when in fact, if I am making progress in the right areas, then everything in my life and business will benefit and grow.

My focus this year will be to improve and make progress on 5 key areas in the way I communicate:  becoming a better networker, sharing my knowledge to create value, improved written communication, mastering presentation skills, and saying "Thank You" more often.

What has been most interesting is that prior to sitting down and writing the blog posts and creating my first video presentation, I had no idea what I was going to speak about.  I have not used my creative abilities consistently for a very long time.  Often times I'll create a new business idea or a strategy that we implement in the business, but I don't think that I have ever just written something for the sake of writing.  Interestingly enough, once I started to put it together, it began to flow.

My video speaks to my plan for 2012 and highlights some of the areas that I will be working on.  I apologize in advance for the video quality as I have no idea what I am doing!  I'll figure it out soon enough.

To all of the people that I have met and know...and to the people I don't know yet, but plan on meeting in 2012, Happy New Year!

Getting Ready for 2012

The week between Christmas and New Year's are for many people a busy week of travel, family get togethers and parties.  For me growing up, it was always a busy week at my family's restaurant.  We couldn't travel, but we did find time to party.  I can not begin to tell you how many New Year's mornings that I was dropped off at the restaurant at 7am and changing into my work clothes while tipping over in the changing room.  These days, I use this week to clean up some business, take some time to plan and re-calibrate my personal and business lives.  It is one of my favorite times of the year!

I find it a great time to look back on all of the things that were accomplished throughout the past year.  I know that I don't take the time to appreciate just how much progress we make and how many lives we changed throughout the year.  Many of our clients are now free of the 24/7 restaurant lives that they were married to for many years.  There are also more than 25 new restaurant owners that we assisted in fulfilling a dream that they had of getting into the business.  I want to thank each and everyone of our clients and customers who trusted us to walk them through the process. 

In addition to all of the restuarant deals I was involved in, I bought and sold a residentail real estate company, moved and renovated our offices, started a new company-Atlantic License Brokers, hired new staff and grew our business.  My wife Courtney started her own business-ArrangeBoston.com, and my daughter Mackenzie, a freshman at Suffolk, started her own business-glassslipperstyling.com.

Take the time to reflect on all of the things that you accomplished during the year, then, begin designing your life for 2012.  Your businesses, staff, clients, customers and my family will all benefit from some thought, focus and planning.