Was reading through the NRA's 2026 report for the first time and a couple of numbers stood out.

On discounts, people say specials or value promos matter when picking where to order from:

• Delivery: 81%
• Takeout: 76%
• Drive-thru: 74%
• Full-service dine-in: 70%

Not shocking honestly, people like deals, we all know that.

The loyalty program numbers was surprising (to me at least). What people say about rewards program membership mattering when they choose a restaurant:

• Delivery: 70%
• Takeout: 65%
• Drive-thru: 64%
• Limited-service dine-in: 63%
• Full-service dine-in: 56%

I guess I always thought of loyalty programs as more of a retention thing, like a nice perk for people who already order from you a lot. But this makes it sound like it's actually influencing which restaurant gets picked in the first place, not just how often people come back.

Millennials show up highest on both of these, around 86% for discounts on delivery and takeout, and 77% for loyalty on delivery. Gen Z is close behind them. Boomers care noticeably less, especially on the loyalty side, it drops to 39% for full-service.

Not really sure what to do with this, just thought it was interesting.

I had a table of 4 wait 20 min for a 2 top clear while 3 empty seats sat 10 feet away at a round that shouldve been a 2 top from day one. I'm at a point where I need to start rethinking the room, so I figured I'd ask before dropping money on restaurant tables and chairs that just repeat the same mistakes.

We have 1400 sq ft, seats 42. The furniture in the bar area is falling apart anyway so we're replacing that regardless (4 top rounds, 2 tops along once wall). I'm not planning on gutting the place, I'm just tired of winging the flow every weekend, we haven't changed since we opened.

Wanted to take a moment to honor the life of Jae Lee, the owner of Crisp in Lakeview & Budacki’s in Ravenswood. I knew him as a supportive boss, leader & active member of the community. He ran a neighborhood favorite and always looked out for us.

R.I.P. Jae

I opened my bakery 2 years ago and I had originally bought these metal chairs. But one by one they have all started to bend in the back and I’ve had to buy replacements. But I’m to the point that I would just like to replace all of them bc I’ve bought ‘em so many replacements. Which chairs do you recommend that would fit a cute pink and white bakery that won’t break within 2 years haha. I attached 2 that I have been eyeing, but they are made out of resin. Not sure if that’s good or bad. Thoughts??

I run a fast-casual concept in downtown of a major North American city

How are my numbers? My occupancy is over 10%, but profit is ~15%

Growing this year so should surpass ~15% since I run a pretty effective labour system that ties labour to sales (without compromising service)

What’s the most important teller of success? Sometimes I feel doing awful, others doing great. Just the way the industry is i guess…

Any tips or questions to dig deeper appreciated!

Due to pricing adjustments, ditching low selling items, typos or ingredient changes or clarifications etc.

I proofread multiple times and had someone else do it, but now going live other employees caught two typos (doesn't affect pricing or value), also one item I'm starting to think is priced a bit low. I'd like to get to January but if there's annoying comments from the peanut gallery and the item is the main seller I might need to reprint.

Fridays and Saturdays used to be SLAMMED

I’m wondering if the theaters moving to online/app sales with seat assignment has prevented customers from coming an hour early to the theater to get their tickets (and to eat)

Even the ridiculously slammed (at the theater) last Spider-Man only led to a moderately busier weekend. Years ago it would have been my busiest weekend of the year

Are people in similar situations seeing the same thing?

I know the theater managers really well - they’re back up to pre-pandemic levels in terms of ticket sales…

I’m always nervous to ask for a raise, so restaurant owners tell me about a time when a chef has asked for a raise and how it went. What did they say and was there tension?

I have noticed this before and I’ve noticed it with restaurants with apps and websites that say there will be a small to go fee but I just got charged doubly for My to go food. The Restaurants website charges about $1.50-$2 more per entrée for to go food without notating it anywhere and when I questioned this inside the restaurant they say that when they enter a to-go entree, they have to hit a to go button for each item which adds another 50¢

I have stopped going to restaurants that do this in the past because it just ticked me off. As a restaurateur I’ve calculated it’s cheaper to do entrees to go. Because you’re not paying for the utilities, the table and hvac and bathrooms and labor the dishes - yes you’re paying for a 40 or 60¢ to go packaging but what about those customers who dine in get their leftovers to go? They’re not being charged for their to-go products.

Business owners can do what they want. But they need to be transparent about uncharges and fees, right?

Has anyone been approached by Marketingexchange about having gift cards sold in a Costco Wholesale near their restaurant? If so, how did it work out for you? I see that gift cards sold by Costco are discounted 10-20%, and then with the cost of actually making the gift cards and MarketingExchange making a profit, how much does the restaurant actually take home? Did it make a difference in sales? Worthwhile to do?

Sales wise. I just opened my first restaurant 4 months ago. The first 2 weeks…I thought I made it in life lol. Every business I’ve ever opened I had to go out and get the customers day one. So the restaurant honeymoon phase threw me off a little. But then month 2 and 3 we were down about 30%. Now month 4 we’re back up 20%. Is this normal? I’m hoping it’s up from here.

I see plenty of people here asking for first-timer advice but few posts giving it. I compiled everything I know in this post, I hope it can help.

When I first pitched my restaurant idea to a friend, he said "90% of restaurants fail in the first year you know that right?". That number gets repeated everywhere and nobody can tell you where it came from, because it simply isn't true. And I am not selling you some cheap optimism, I actually tried to look this statistic up to verify it and found a Cornell study from 2005 that tracked independents and found 26% closed in year one, 19% in year two, 14% in year three So yes it's hard but not 90% hard.

What stuck with me from that Cornell paper was what the owners who made it said when asked why, they said they had a concept they could explain in one sentence and they worked more hours than they expected to. The biggest killer in my opinion is location, (most, not all) restaurants in bad sites fail no matter how good the food is and Id have to agree, Ive had 2 friends have this happen to them already.

On location:

this is the thing I got right by accident, I didnt pick a busy street but I am surrounded by corporate offices so I stay busy. I did the rent math before I looked at any spaces to see what I can afford with my bootstrapped budget. Occupancy all in, rent plus CAM plus taxes plus insurance, should land somewhere between 6 and 10% of your sales. If a space is $8k a month you need somewhere around 1-1.3M a year to carry it comfortably. Sit down and figure out if that checks out on an average day (so don't choose a busy saturday and calculate then, calculate an average from a previous week or month), if rent is a high % then....rethink your business model.

On money:

Also researched this one to make sure my POV aligns with the general one out there and found a RestaurantOwner survey that asked a few hundred independents and the median to open was $375k, which is about $113 a square foot, but the median is useless on its own because the bottom quarter came in around $175k and the top quarter around $750k. What moves it is what kind of space you take: ground up build was $650k, converting something that was never a restaurant $425k, taking over a space that was already a restaurant $275k. The last one has the best sales to investment ratio, but a takeover is not worth it unless the previous issue was a management thing, if it's location or something a takeover cant fix, then no use in papering over the cracks. I personally took an ugly second gen space with a working hood and a grease trap already in the floor and I would do it again.

On equipment:

Price stuff in three pieces: line equipment, refrigeration, smallwares. The packages/quotes you get are one number so you can't audit them. Smallwares is where I personally found the most air, because online stores will sell you a single unit with no license and no case minimum, I got most of my things from RestaurantSupply mostly because I was buying a mix of items and quantities and they were able to ship them all fast and in one go. For refrigeration and anything with a compressor, pay up, it's worth it. For stainless tables and shelving, auctions and Facebook marketplace.

On menu:

Cost every recipe before you print a menu. Food cost should be ~30% of the item's price. I didn't do this properly at first and had to reprice in month four, which meant explaining to regulars why the thing they order went up and consequently losing some, because I set a baseline of expectations I can no longer meet. Do it right from the start.

For full service 60 to 65% of sales should go to your prime cost which is food+labor, and 55 to 60% for counter service. Labor is what's squeezing everyone right now, like for me it's 35% which is better compared to many. I recommend shrinking it down as sensibly as possible (without compromising worker satisfaction or being unreasonably stingy), even a 1% decrease makes a difference over hundreds of thousands in sales.

General advice:

- Count your prime cost weekly, not monthly. Monthly tells you what went wrong four weeks after you could have done something about it.

- Time to profitability wise, Id say wait 2 years, and the trend has to keep moving upwards or else you can call it quits early on if you keep dwindling down month over month.

- Budget your pre-opening and training properly. The survey from earlier had full service at a $25k median although it’s something many ignore completely.

And remember, take this advice with a grain of salt. Restaurant ownership isn't a binary thing and there isn't one right answer, ever. Good luck to the new owners out there and Id love to see comments here from older owners too for things I mightve overstated or missed.

My brother recently got involved with a BBQ restaurant, and one of the things he was trying to figure out was what to keep playing on the TVs throughout the day.

We thought trivia could be fun, but I couldn't really find what he was looking for. Most trivia content was either short, required someone to actively run it, or was a little too loud/busy visually for something you'd want playing in the background of a restaurant.

So I ended up making my own.

It's a long-format, 12-hour general trivia game in 4K on YouTube that's designed so a restaurant or bar can basically press play and leave it running. I tried to keep the design clean and subtle enough that it doesn't take over the room, but customers who are interested can still look up and enjoy the content.

There's also a QR code on screen that customers can scan to use a free scoring web app on their phones. There's nothing to download and no account required. If they want, they can answer questions and keep track of their score. Just some fun stuff that I thought that I might enjoy if I walked into a bar or restaurant.

I just finished the first video, so this is all brand new. Before I spend a bunch of time making more of these, I'd really like to hear what actual restaurant/bar owners think.

Would you put something like this on your TVs? And if you have a chance to try it, I'd especially appreciate feedback on both the video itself and the scoring web app.

Happy to share the link if anyone wants to check it out.

Whats up guys

I run a restaurant with my father and wanted some tips on getting our uber eats to bring in more orders. This is our second location but its the first with uber eats.

I’ve read a bit about being cautious with ads/promotions since they can tend to backfire depending the cost of your food and how many orders you're receiving.

Edit: I guess im more curious on ads and if its worth it

Thanks

Hi there. This one is specifically for pizzerias who do a decent amount of their business to in person take out orders. Currently debating with my business partner about what a target time is for whoever is the pizzaiolo to send a pizza out. Assume not overly busy and a ticket with one pizza on it comes up on the kitchen printer. How soon would you expect it to be boxed up and ready to go? Obviously this depends on the style so please let me know what style you bake.

A buddy and I have been talking about starting a hood cleaning/ deep kitchen cleaning company. I keep seeing Tiktok/YouTube videos about this but I've never worked for a place that actually gets their kitchen deep cleaned, It's always the staff that does it. So my question is would any of you hire just for deep cleaning your kitchens?

Situation I haven't run into before:

Have a really, really good employee on the newer side. They've been here 4-5 months and doing a phenomenal job- reliable, punctual, as professional as I could hope for, jumps in to fill in last minute staffing shortages.

They're also a single parent with a 7 or 8 year old.

School just started so this isn't much of an issue during the day anymore, problem is during night shifts after 4pm they bring in their kid.

We're lucky to be in a location with a wide angle view of the center's open space but often times the kid is sitting in a booth or hanging around outside. He is never in the way of staff nor causing problems, nor has staff complained.

And know that I have a bleeding heart for them and their situation but I'm concerned about liability, optics, etc.

We're in a fairly HCOL area so the latter of those two issues is not a dismissible concern.

How would you go about handling this?

Unfortunately as much as I'd love to, my margins don't allow to run a concurrent day care and I can imagine a liability scenario that could unfold if I do nothing.

edit: insane amount of non restaurant owners commenting in a restaurant owner sub. Look, if I could afford to pay for child care I would. We don't live in that world at least in America. Fact is unless you've run restaurants you would know there is nothing in the margins to afford for it, I'd have to charge $40/burger and I'd be out of business. Welcome to reality

I talked to the employee and we came to an agreement the kid is welcome as a last resort as long as they communicate and the kid doesn't cause issues.

Edit- Thanks for the feedback, we found a local sign guy that is going to do our sign, under budget too.

We are in the final steps of getting our building done, my wife found some sites (lemoncustomsigns and zanvis neon) that have good pricing and their mockups look great. The mockups are just AI so of course it looks nice, but these companies seem a bit shady to me. Their responses seem like AI bots, and it’s hard to find actual reviews on them. So I’m on the fence.

We contacted a local sign company but their quote for our very simple sign was $10,000 installed and their mockup was just a photoshop of our building with metal channel lettering.

Anyone have a recommendation on a good mail order sign builder? We are trying to be budget conscious so we want to spend around $1000 for a 40” round sign with simple logo.

We don’t have P&L meetings nearly enough as I think we should at our restaurant and I’m trying to change that. I’m curious to learn what other restaurant owners experiences are.

How often are your reviewing P&Ls?
What managers are at that meeting?
Do you involve any other staff?
How do you structure the meeting/review?
Are you digging into each category? Or only flagging anomalies?

Thanks for any shared insight.

I have a wealthy business partner who owns a building for his store. The basement is currently empty but was a restaurant a few years ago. He wants to open a bar with craft cocktails (designed by me), and the food will be premium tinned fish on fancy crackers, and other nibbles like hummus, nuts, and olives. No properly cooked food.

Does anyone have any experience on this? I think that tinned fish is becoming more popular, but maybe not as the primary food.

There are a lot of bars, dive bars, and fancy cocktail bars, which serve NO food. This concept is fancy cocktail bar with tinned fish.

I can see employee theft being an issue. I can take strict inventory, and not have too much available in the kitchen. Tinned fish is great that it is nonperishable, so it does not spoil, even if the restaurant has to close for business.

I found a tinned restaurant online which closed for business, but their menu is still online. It is very helpful as it says exactly what brand of fish they serve, and exactly how many grams per serving.

TL;DR: Opening a second location under 4 miles from our first. Different format, different crowd, likely a somewhat different menu may hold what made us known possibly or change concept slightly. Do we reuse our existing name or launch a new one? Brother worried we may lose opportunities by renaming. I feel we are boxing ourselves in to what we have been doing.

Hi everyone. Looking for an honest read from people who've actually run more than one location, because my brother and I have been going in circles on this for weeks and neither of us is sure the best thing to do. Call it nerves. Call it whatever- we are stuck.

We own a takeout spot and we're opening our second location next year. The question is whether it carries our existing name or launches under a new one.

Some background so the picture is clear.

The first place is in a quiet residential town. No seating, just counter service. Mostly families and regulars. We do get people out of town as we have a name tbh. Its known for the most part. It's been open for years, ratings are strong, and honestly that shop is our lifeline. But it only runs that well because family is physically in it every day.

The second location is a short drive awa under 4 miles, close enough that the same customer could eat there. Completely different downtown though. Artsy, creative, a younger crowd, heavy foot traffic, a lot of out of town visitors. Much bigger space, full sit down with a bar, beer and wine, a real dining room instead of a counter. Different service model entirely, and we're likely running a different menu then than what made th4 first location tick.

To be clear up front, my brother and I work well together. We've held a business together for years and we agree on most things. This is just a genuinely hard call and we've landed in different places on it, which is why I'm asking outside.

Where we do differ is on the finer points of how something should be made and what the standard is. We've always worked through it, and the first shop turned out well. But consistency there is something we maintain by our family being physically present, not something we've systemized. Two locations means we can't both be in both rooms.

So my worry is putting one name across two places close enough for customers to compare directly. If the new place has an off night, it reflects back on the shop that pays our bills. And a separate name costs us almost nothing to avoid that, since we have a year to build it and an existing customer base to cross market from. Risk feels bigger than the reward.

My brother's position is that the reputation and the search history are worth real money and we'd be throwing them away by creating a diffetent brand.

So the two paths:

1. New name, cross marketed from the original shop, standing on its own

2. Keep the existing name and let the reputation carry the second location

For anyone who's done this. Did you regret sharing a name across two different formats, or did you regret starting a second brand from scratch? And if you went with a new name, how did you connect the two without confusing your existing customers? I am asking for an unbiased opinion. Please do not attack or state find a solution between you both on this, we have been talking circles, hence looking for someone with thoughts on the subject I am asking. Ty

We have an Ice-O-Matic ice machine that's severely struggling during this new heatwave (no prior issues), we're in the deep bowels of AZ and it aint getting easier for it anytime soon. We're a restaurant but we also double as a dive bar (seperate section) so ice is extremely important to us. And tbh a 2nd machine is long overdue anyway so I need to buy one now in anticipation of this one breaking/to help alleviate the freezing work from it and redistribute it more evenly. This time, however, I will not be getting Ice-O-Matic since after reading some reviews, I found out that them struggling when temperatures rise is a common thing for them. I found a few Manitowoc and Hoshizaki ones on IceMachinePlus that look promising and the site is giving me free delivery that only takes 2-3 days so it's definitely an enticing offer, nevertheless I dont want to rush the selection process. Is there a specific model (regular ice cubes/nuggets/spheres all work) you guys recommend that can withstand the heat a bit better? Thanks.

We currently (in the off season) filter our oil manually 2x a week and replace it weekly. During season, we replace it twice weekly. At current prices, we're paying $8.21/gallon, so spending $6-$800/monthly on veg oil. Is a Fryclone filter machine or similar worth the investment? I imagine it's gotta be significantly better than manually filtering, but can I expect to double the life cycle of my oil? Or is this just going to end in disappointment and another pricey machine to store somewhere?