In terms of success or failure, it's probably worthwhile to make a distinction between a large chain restaurant and a one off place or small local chain.

Two different animals.

That's simple - a huge advertising budget and a large number of people with no taste buds.

(At first I used to think it was mostly people who smoked and couldn;t really taste their food - but now I've come to realize there are a lot of people who have probably NEVER tasted good food - and just eat the bad stuff because they don;t know any better.)

nytraveler, there are many many people out there that like the reliability and the sameness of Olive Garden.

Chain restaurants of today are not the chain restaurants of yesterday. Casual dining has to serve very fresh ingredients to stay in business. No longer are restaurant kitchens cooking frozen food.

Now they prepackage the food themselves in their own test kitchens.

Some people simply will not stray from what they know and consider places like Olive Garden to be exotic.

Most restaurants that are successful will eventually franchise themselves if enough money is on the table.

I agree with whomever made the comments about that idiot Rocco Dispirito. He is an excellent example of what NOT to do in the biz.

Great post!!

There's one other item that I believe good restaurants have and that's "good suppliers". You ned fresh vegetables, excellent meats, and fresh top-of-the line seafood otherwise your diners will notice the difference.

I agree with GT evaluation of it and would also add that it pretty much covers all successful businesses. You have to pay very close attention, cannot cut corners, and you should be timely too. I'm also not as certain that location is quite as high a goal as the others.

A place can look fantastic but can it maintain the excellence, quality, and service each hour of every day.

Go Travel -

We're not disagreeing. These people have simply never tasted really good food - so they stick with safe food that they know isn;t "bad".

(But if you're suggesting that Olive Garden and similar is serving anything even close to good food - sorry I strenuously disagree - it's a half a step up from the better frozen dinners.)

no, I'm agreeing with you nytraveler. But do keep in mind that all Olive Gardens aren't as horrible as the restaurant mafia Riese brothers run in Times Square:-D

(yes, that really is their nickname in the industry, the restaurant mafia)

Sometimes a very good restaurant will locate in a neighborhood with not much traffic from those who could afford it and maybe off the tourist route. I have seen this often in Boston/Cambridge area.
Price, ambiance can come into play.
We went to a new place in the North End. a seafood rstaurant. The prices were very high. Legal's oysters are less expensive. Fish dishes are not as simple as Legal's some work, other's don't.

What makes a restaurant fail (from direct experience) is lousy food, lousy location, or lousy service. That's it.

What makes a restaurant succeed is good food, good location, and good service. Note that I didn't mention prices. It turns out that price is secondary when the food, service, and location are good.

A bit of good marketing is important when starting out as well. If people don't know a restaurant exists (especially if it doesn't have a good location), the food can be great and it might still fail.

I think an identity is important as well. Too many new restaurants try to do everything with ridiculous pages of menu items. Do a limited number of items really well - that's what counts. There is a new restaurant near us called "The Restaurant" - could you have a more generic boring name? Suprisingly it is owned by an established local chef, but several restaurants have failed in it's current location so I'm guessing it's only a matter of time.

All in all, I don't think it is one thing but a combo of things that you need to make a restaurant work. Obviously the capital is key. Other than that, sometimes great food can overcome bad location and bad service; sometimes not. Other times restaurants with bad food (Don Pablos!!) can thrive with the right location and marketing.

Chapel Hill seems to see a lot of good restaurants AND bad restaurants come and go. Some reasons for going:

1. failure to promote or advertise. Word-of-mouth doesn't work so well, esp. in an area with a lot of turnover in population.

2. attitude: snotty may work in large cities but a little too much of the more-knowing-than-thou waitstaff and chef, and you're gone in smaller cities, towns. We really do want the very best in cuisine, and even if we have a Southern accent, some of us really do know what is good and what is not -- but we don't appreciate your assumption that we are there to be educated by you.

3. Over-reaching what you can do: fresh, good, ripe ingredients will always succeed; elaborate, exotic sauces on poor ingredients probably won't. And putting odd ingredients together just because it hasn't been done before is high-risk: if it works, good for you; if it doesn't, I won't be back.

4. poor access for cars if not in an area with excellent public transportation: If I can't park and walk to your place easily, I won't make the effort. Valet parking will only be justified for a special occasion when I'm not going somewhere else afterward -- it's not a good substitute for picking a location whene we can park.

One possibility that I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned: theft.

I saw for myself in one place how every cash receipt was skimmed by the help. Maybe that goes under the category of "bad management."

I heard a story about that once:
A restaurant owner hires a private detective to figure out how the help is stealing.

After a week, the detective reports back to the owner, "Sorry, I couldn't find anything wrong. All receipt are being rung up accurately at all three registers."

Owner: "Three registers? We only have two."

I read that 80% of all new restaurants fail within the first year (non-franchise). Terrible odds.

I know of a restaurant which is in the middle of nowhere and looks like a dump. A tacky building with a gravel parking lot. On weekends the line stretches outside the front door into the parking lot. Its all about the fantastic melt-in-your-mouth ribs. Its all about the food!

GoTravel, I didn't see you on FFR&R this week! Please come back.

nytraveler, as someone who eats at the Olive Garden occasionally, I can assure you that many of "these people" eat often at some of the best restaurants and know good food. The service at my local Olive Garden is very good. I've also eaten pretentious food at "best restaurants" which is not necessarily very good, but is usually expensive.

There's room for everything and you really don't need to insult a pretty large segment of the population just because you don't personally like a restaurant. This thread is about success or failure and clearly the Olive Garden is a huge success.

Nothing like hepatitis or food poisoning to make a restaurant fail and in a hurry.

Cassandra, I think I know what restaurant you were referring to with valet parking. Maybe athletes should stay in sports, and not restaurants?

For high end restaurants, location probably isn't that big of a deal, but for a neighborhood pizza joint, it's a must.

jorr, you sweetie, I've been out of town for the past two or three and started a new job recently. I'd never abandon you!

As a small businessman in a much different field than the restaurant business (printing), let me add a few thoughts. First, I am in great agreement with snowrooster and Cassandra on the need of a new business to advertise and market. People have to know that you exist and where you are located or you will die. Second, new businesses should be barebones in hiring of staff. Remember Rocco's restaurant on TV last year. He had too much salaried overhead. You need your early money to promote your business and not to be suctioned off to paying salaries of people who may not be productive. Accept working long hours at first. Third, your food has to grab the customers. You have to leave them thinking- "That was good food. I can't wait to go back."

A Mexican restaurant in my semi-rural Maryland eastern shore county failed a few months back. It was the only Mexican restaurant in the county, a county which has become exurbanized to a great degree and has plenty of affluent people. It should have made it. So why didn't it? The location was bad, in a strip mall location in which every other restaurant has failed within two years. The owner had too much staff, even when it first opened and crowded with patrons who wanted good Mexican food. He had twice the staff he needed. The restaurant did almost no advertising or marketing. And the food was mediocre. After eating there once, my wife and I didn't really want to go back.

Shane, this is where you would go out of business in a hurry.

The restaurant business, unlike most other businesses has a very high turnover rate. The average yearly turnover rate in the restaurant business is around 300%. Yes, 300%.

If you underhire, you are screwed. My husband will generally overhire to the tune of about 25% more people than he needs.

As for his turnover rate, I can proudly say when he sold his restaurants, his average employee was with him around six years. That is unheard of.

See, you can't apply regular business rules to the restaurant business.

Everyone wants to be a rock star and if they can't be a rock star, they want to open a restaurant.

It's basic Marketing 101 - you need the "Four P's" - Product, Price, Place and Promotion for any business (including restaurants) to be successful. If you are missing or guess wrong on one of those P's your business is doomed to fail.

As a customer, I have to say service and food in that order.

If the service is so bad then we won’t try a restaurant more than twice (we like to allow for a bad night or server) no matter how good the food is.

Location, well here in the ‘burbs’ (30 miles outside Boston) we’re used to traveling for good food, so I don’t find location too much of an issue.

We tried a new local restaurant last weekend that was recommended by the Boston Globe that we could never have found without the address and a map, It's very off the beaten track but the service was good and the food was wonderful, we will go back.

Also I think restaurants – even some of the smallest are catching on to the fact that a good website helps business

GoTravel, ROTFLMAO. My husband wanted to be a rock star...before we bought the restaurant.:-D