Can you elaborate on this? I'm sure there's more to it and it could be great to know what some of the specifics are, but it also seems like someone who likes to cook is going to need to be present for a good restaurant
Professional cooks have a completely different working style to skilled amateurs. They move faster and more precisely, and are able to juggle far more things at a time. It's a massive step up.
Plus the skillset involved in cooking well is orthogonal to what's needed to run a successful restaurant. Your major costs are labor, rent, and raw materials, and you need a certain personality to drive those down. Customers tend to be price-sensitive (again, apart from those high-end places) so you don't have as much power on the revenue side.
I love cooking. I'm never working in the food business.
It sounds like you're describing landlord behavior where they don't simply arrive at a target rent and happily collect it, but attempt to actively monitor revenue of businesses renting from them and then ride the line between capturing that in rent increases below the line where it's worth it to the tenant not to move and unacceptable extortion.
If so, that's both interesting and kinda terrifying. I've never considered that rental prices might be set as much by specific tenant income as market conditions, and now I'm wondering if I should never tell any prospective landlord what my real income is beyond minimum requirements.
Commercial landlords, especially of restaurants, have way more pricing power because the tenants can't just move. Their customers expect them to be there, or there's a ton of existing foot traffic - location, location, location. And usually tenants put their own money into renovating the space for their needs.
But obviously many people do set up and run restaurants.
But... quoted industry failure rates are insanely variable - from 17% to 60% in the first year, depending who you ask. The variability possibly says something interest in itself.
Clearly a restaurant is literally a food production line. It has to run smoothly and efficiently across a wide range of circumstances and load factors. And it has to handle shortages and customers who may be overly demanding, drunk/high/irrational, or actively hostile, while keeping staff morale high.
I'd guess that being able to make something nice at home seems like a good start, but isn't necessarily the most relevant qualification from a business POV.
"I like making video games" would be analogous "I like to cook."
Of course "I like making video games" might not mean "I want to work for an AAA developer", but the reasons why would probably be different than those you wouldn't want to make a commercial indie title / open your own restaurant.
I think the distance between them is about the same, as the GP noted. It's not analogous, but they didn't make that claim.
I have only cooked less than 1% of the time the restaurant has been open. Also "enjoying cooking" has nothing to do with enjoying a commercial kitchen. Pretty sure literally at all.
I feel compelled to put out quality food, but I do not enjoy it at all when I'm not cooking at home.
* How do you train and employ an effective wait staff?
* How do you design a good menu that's practical to cook a lot of?
* Where do you source your ingredients from? How do you get the quantities you need (and no more)? You might need to cook dozens or hundreds of a certain dish in a day.
* You need to buy or lease a building suitable for a kitchen and dining room. The location is extremely important & will cost you a lot of money.
* Do you choose to embrace delivery apps?
* Can you handle lunch & dinner rush?
* How do you price your menu in order to remain financially solvent, given everything above? (and likely many factors I'm not taking into account)
Some of these things change depending on the nature of the food (e.g. pizza to go vs sit-down fine dining), but it comes with all the problems of a small business.