How We Became Profitable in 3 Years | Hacker News Reader

How We Became Profitable in 3 Years

plivo.com

32 pointsbevenky9 comments

Per Lesson 3. Opening a Restaurant. I've spent 4 years in the restaurant business. I did not own a restaurant but I did pretty much everything else. I would highly caution anyone going into the restaurant business. The profit margins are very low and requires a lot of manual labor (even if you are a manager).

If you want to be successful in food I would offer this advice 1) Understand your food niche so that you can market it effectively. There is so much competition. Know what your customers will want. 2) Minimize labor impact. I really like the family-owned model as all your labor is family members. They will have the best interest of the restaurant at heart too. 3) Have a sound business plan. Estimate costs, revenues, and food inventories. Plan for short term and long term. Setup goals and when you don't reach those goals make changes. Always continuously improve your brand.

Would you suggest doing a brewery or food truck instead? Food truck seems like much less capital at risk, and a brewery has much, much higher margins.

I would suggest reading through these articles. Brewing and Food trucks each have their pros and cons, but there's a lot more to both of them than you may think.

Brewery: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7375043 Food Truck: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5376402

Food truck is interesting because you can move to your customers. Yet costs still apply. So I would say its the same thing.

I don't have experience with a brewery. I would treat a brewery the same way I would treat developing a retail product.

After working in F&B I think my greatest fear is my parents opening a restaurant. Why? Because they will build a restaurant/bar THEY want, not what the market wants.

For this reason, when the writer asks if you are selling something that actually helps a business, that strikes home to me.

The three key lessons all seem to come down to chest-bumping with one's fellow bros after another raging all-nighter.

Not really seeing where you got this from. So far, what I got out of this is mostly inline with many other start-up/business advise: - Passion is very important and helps you succeed by not letting you give up too soon. - Team cohesion is extremely important, doubly so in remote teams. - If you provide value to customers, customers will pay

None of these are new and groundbreaking, but they are sound insights and sharing ones story about it helps others relate to them.

The story of dumplings and potatoes is intriguing.

I've always been curious, what happens to waste vegetable oil in India?

Is it simply thrown down the drain?

Inspiring read Venky! Good that your Momo store didn't took off :-)

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