Buying a Business

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a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
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I am looking at quitting my government job. I hit 20 years soon and just like McCabe that retirement is there when I turn 60.

Looking at buying a bar or restaurant local to here. Wife and I are discussing it.

Has anyone done this? Buy a running business? How does the process go? How is the brokerage process?
 

lurkingdirk

AssHat Taint
<Medals Crew>
39,965
166,922
Dude, seriously consider getting into the restaurant business before you do so. Once you start, you will literally have no free time for five years. Once you've established the restaurant/bar, have a dependable staff, and feel comfortable running the business, you can count on about a day a month where you don't have to engage. It's an incredibly demanding job to run a business like this. I've done it.

When you buy it, you have to expect at least 70% of the staff to leave within 3 months. That leaves you with a new business you don't really know how to run, and a staff that doesn't know how to do it either. If you're smart, you'll take a smaller profit margin in order to hire an executive chef. They'll be responsible for day to day operations, reporting to you. You'll still have to be omnipresent until a healthy hierarchy develops.

Once you can depend on your kitchen staff to do a successful service every day, you can step back to only worrying about marketing, pricing, payroll, and the like.

I'm not saying don't do it. I plan to have a restaurant again in my "retirement." A small, public house that serves pub grub and good beer, with an outstanding Sunday brunch. But I'm going to build new.
 

pharmakos

soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
<Bronze Donator>
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so with the gov't retirement waiting for you at 60, this is sort of just a pet projectish? make sure you buy a place that you really like, might be more important than any business advice.
 

Julian The Apostate

Vyemm Raider
2,312
2,401
I am looking at quitting my government job. I hit 20 years soon and just like McCabe that retirement is there when I turn 60.

Looking at buying a bar or restaurant local to here. Wife and I are discussing it.

Has anyone done this? Buy a running business? How does the process go? How is the brokerage process?
Do you have any experience in the food service industry? If not I really can’t fathom trying to learn the business while running it and dealing with staff.
 

a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
29,948
29,762
so with the gov't retirement waiting for you at 60, this is sort of just a pet projectish? make sure you buy a place that you really like, might be more important than any business advice.
Yeah and I know it’s probably a bad idea but the wife makes more than enough to support us.

The place I am looking at is a very small family restaurant ran by one family.
 

Sludig

Silver Baronet of the Realm
8,852
9,130
I have no direct experience, just ancedotals I've heard over time. But i would lean away from it. Maybe headache, lots of extra regulations given its food. In some ways franchising might be easier but bigger buy in.

Id think getting a small bar/ 'merican food joint might have the best success though. We have the purposely hole in the wall or yuppy millenial microbreweries popping up everywhere. Most hardly brew at all and is mainly about being a restaurant and selling wide variety of other places beer.

Given how ocd you are what you really should do is get into coral selling. Then again lots of marketing but gets you playing with chemistry, maintaining parameters, using high end photography, etc. Then get pissed when fed ex loses another 1,000$ shipment they won't cover.

I always as a kid wanted a small business but then i get scared away by the volatility/risk and seeing many get jaded when its hobby related and they end up hating everything.
 

Kaige

ReRefugee
<WoW Guild Officer>
5,399
12,160
Ask Corndog how to run a fish store!

You should just make websites for people or something.

You didn't watch that Bar Rescue show and get an itch, did you?
 

a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
29,948
29,762
Ask Corndog how to run a fish store!

You should just make websites for people or something.

I thought about this but I am just the level of skill that just hacks around and doesn't really really know what he is doing.

You didn't watch that Bar Rescue show and get an itch, did you?

I actually have not!
 

Kaige

ReRefugee
<WoW Guild Officer>
5,399
12,160
Watch that show. You'll change your mind. haha

If you don't know how to do the website thing or other outlets, why not learn before you retire? You could always bug the one guy here that makes stuff for Second Life lol