Month: November 2024

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What It Takes To Start A Restaurant

Owning a business is the dream of many people. An independent streak and the desire to be self-sufficient rather than answering to somebody else often drives people to start their own business, with restaurants being a top choice. While a love of food and great hospitality are a start in this industry, there are other aspects to take into consideration when thinking about opening your first restaurant.

Overview

Starting a restaurant is about more than menu plans. It requires forethought into many areas to establish and run a successful business in the food industry.

  • The first decision that must be made is the type of food and atmosphere you desire for your restaurant. This decision will impact all others. Choosing between casual and fine dining, family and bar, ethnic and home-cooking are examples of narrowing your scope to your specific type of restaurant.
  • You must choose a location that will support the type of restaurant you wish to open. This means evaluating the type of people in the area, the population density, and the restaurant saturation of the area.
  • The size of staff you will need will depend on the type and size of restaurants. Your staff may include several chefs and/or line cooks, pastry chefs, dish workers, bus workers, waitstaff, host staff, management, bartenders and janitorial staff.
  • A realistic budget must include projections for all salaries and wages, product cost, utilities, renovations, decor, equipment cost and legal fees, as well as a portion set aside for incidentals not foreseen in the planning process.

Start-up Costs

Beginning any business has costs associated with the initial start up. These are generally one-time expenditures that prepare the business to actually function.

  • Acquiring a building is the probably the first cost you will encounter. The amount of this expense will cover a large range depending on the location, size and accessibility.
  • Construction costs can accrue when the building you choose is not ready to house a restaurant. These may be for renovation, decoration and safety measures. The average start-up construction cost is between 49 and 280 thousand dollars, depending on the finished size of the restaurant.
  • Besides massive construction, the largest expense of opening a restaurant is the most obvious, the kitchen and bar equipment. This is comprised of ovens, ranges, preparation surfaces, refrigerators, freezers, dry storage, washing areas and numerous other elements needed for the preparation and presentation of food and beverages. Though these costs can vary wildly depending on the type of cooking that will be done in your restaurant, the average cost of establishing your kitchen and bar is between 30 and 115 thousand dollars.
  • Smaller expenses associated with starting a restaurant include legal costs, licensure, inspections, food and beverage costs and initial payments for any professionals you may enlist as advisers or guests to help get your kitchen moving.

Earning Potential

Though you should be realistic, the potential for sustainable income with a successful restaurant is huge. Several factors can contribute to your revenue, but they should be considered carefully as some may not fit in with the overall theme and effect of your future restaurant.

  • Offering catering services provides the opportunity to make money without filling your seats. Providing food for small or large events not only earns you the fee for that event but exposes you to others that may become customers in the future.
  • Just when it seems like everything has been done in the food industry, something new and incredible breaks onto the scene. Being that something can work to your advantage by increasing interest and luring in customers by curiosity alone, then securing their loyalty with high-caliber food and service.
  • For some very trendy restaurants, merchandising has become a secondary source of income. Selling customized clothing, household items and food products produces revenue and spreads awareness of your business.
  • The average annual sales for a profitable restaurant is just under $1,200,000. This obviously varies depending on the size and popularity of the restaurant.

When considering starting up a restaurant business it is important to remember that these endeavors sometimes take months to become profitable. Factoring this into your starting budget, and ensuring that you will have the capital to keep the restaurant going while it moves toward profitability it is crucial to the future success of your restaurant.

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Trip to the Arches

Want a trip to the arches? This might be what you are looking for! A perfect destination for campers, bikers, hikers and rock enthusiasts, the Arches National Park will be a splendid outdoor recreation for you, your family and friends. With over 2,000 natural sandstone arches, the Arches National Park can be found in Utah and is known for its distinctive geological characteristics and rock formations. Its most famous Delicate Arch has become one of the symbols of Utah. Its unique shape continues to attract tourists and drivers to the park.

Aside from the Delicate Arch, the Devil’s Garden, Fiery Furnace, Balanced Rock, and Dark Angel are some of the notable features in the national park. Thick layers of salt bed were deposited under the area of the park when sea water still reached the region millions of years ago, which resulted to the rock formations.

When the arches were first discovered, it was made into a national monument through a presidential proclamation of President Herbert Hoover to protect the rocks, sandstones and other geologic formations for educational and scientific purposes. Tourism was promoted for the Arches under the term of President Franklin Roosevelt. The area of the Arches National Monument then widened through time. However during the term of President Richard Nixon, the monument was made into a national park but while reducing the total area of the geologic attraction.

At present, tourists enjoy the scenic views and the variety of recreational activities which can be done in the park. Climbing on the Arches is regulated though. It is prohibited climbing in some areas of the park but other activities such as camping, touring, hiking, biking and backpacking are allowed on specific areas.

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The Best Solid Foods to Feed Your Baby

Are you getting ready to start your baby on solid foods? Are you excited? Scared? Maybe a bit of both? If you’ve been browsing the internet or perhaps your local bookstore I bet that you’ve found a ton of conflicting information on what to feed your baby during weaning. For the past 7 years I’ve been advising parents, other caregivers, and health professionals on how to feed babies their first foods so that they safely meet babies’ rapidly changing nutrition needs. Here’s the latest scientific-evidence based information that you need to know when choosing baby food.

Choose Iron-Rich Foods

The recommendation to start feeding babies solid foods at about 6 months old comes from the fact that at about 6 months of age, babies start running out of the iron that they stored in their bodies while they were in your womb. Breastmilk is naturally low in iron so you need to provide your baby with iron from another source – solid foods.

Why is iron important? Iron is used in overall growth and development. It’s especially important for little one’s brain development – for babies to reach full their cognitive potential. That’s why it’s recommended to offer your baby iron-rich foods at least twice a day.

The Best Iron-Rich Baby Foods:

  • Meat
  • Poultry (e.g. chicken, turkey)
  • Fish and shellfish
  • Egg yolk
  • Beans and lentils
  • Tofu (it’s made from soybeans afterall)
  • Nut butters
  • Iron-fortified baby cereal

Spinach also contains iron. However, even when cooked, we absorb very little of it into our bodies. That’s why it’s not on this list. Sorry Popeye, you were wrong.

Parents often ask me if they have to give their babies each of the high-iron foods. The short answer is “no“. This is a list of options. For example, if you’re raising your baby vegetarian, choose the vegetarian foods. Or, if you never eat tofu in your house, don’t buy tofu. Or, if you hate the smell of fish cooking, don’t cook fish. Or, if you don’t like the idea of added iron in baby cereal, don’t use iron-fortified baby cereal.

Choose Foods Your Family Eats

Of course, good nutrition goes beyond just feeding your baby iron. Once you’ve introduced a few iron-rich foods, introduce other foods one at a time. Choose foods from all the food groups.

Which foods are best? Healthy foods that your family eats. As one of my favourite quotes says:

“The goal of feeding your baby is to have your baby join you at the family table… not for you to join your baby at their highchair.” ~ Ellyn Satter

Take advantage of your baby’ developmental stage and introduce a wide variety of foods while your baby is interested in trying them. Sooner or later your baby will reach the picky eating stage (usually somewhere between 12 – 24 months old). The wider the variety of foods that you’ve introduced before your little one reaches this stage the better.

Foods to Avoid

While the recommendations regarding delaying introducing foods from a food allergy prevention point of view have been sent to the proverbial recycling bin, there are a few foods to avoid – either from a food safety point of view or a nutrition point of view. Foods and recipes to avoid or delay:

  • Honey (and baked goods containing honey) – wait until after 12 months of age.
  • Cows milk until 9 – 12 months (small amounts of yogurt and cheese are OK after about 6 months).
  • Raw meats, fish, raw/runny egg whites, or unpasteurized dairy foods – wait until 4 years.
  • Foods high in sugar and salt. Having a new baby is a great reason for the whole family to eat fewer of these foods.

Bottom Line

The best first solid foods for your baby are iron rich foods and healthy foods that your family eats. Enjoy watching your baby discover the wide variety of tastes and textures that food comes in!