Before you can even begin to think about opening a new restaurant, you have to decide on a location. This is because the location of a restaurant greatly affects many factors that you must decide upon before you write your business plan. For instance, a fast food restaurant with sit down capabilities would work much better if you were in the middle of the business district where most of your traffic is lunchtime employees covering two shifts.

Near Hotels

You would want to open a walk-in, sit down, order, and eat restaurant with a lounge if there are busy hotels within walking distance of your location. If you are going to operate outside of a grocery store and small businesses like it, a fast food restaurant with a drive through makes the most sense.

Location Factors

The best way to go about choosing your location is to look at several areas before you narrow down your options. Once you have decided what type of restaurant you will have and know a site that has available real estate, you might want to spend money on a site study to determine these important factors.

– Is there enough local population to provide plenty of foot traffic?
– Is there enough space for a private parking lot or is there ample local parking?
– Are there enough businesses close by to provide a lunch crowd?
– What are the local zoning laws and how they will affect you?
– Will you have enough room for large truck deliveries?
– Does the area allow for the sale of alcohol?

Walk-in Traffic

While all of these factors are important, the two that are the most important is local population and deliveries. If there are no people living close enough to support your restaurant during off hours, you will be fighting an uphill battle. In this scenario, you have to have the lunch crowd and big weekends to survive. Any restaurant that cannot survive for several months without weekend traffic is in the wrong location.

Delivery Space

You cannot serve food if you do not have food. You have to be able to back a semi truck into your lot in order to have the kind of deliveries that a busy restaurant needs. Your restaurant inventory depends on timely deliveries. You will also need this space for delivery of upgraded equipment as the years pass. You may want to expand your restaurant over the years, especially if it is as successful as all restaurant owners dream their establishments will be.

Alcohol Sales

There are many cities in which the sale of alcohol is prohibited in certain parts of the city. Some states do not allow alcohol with so many miles of a school. Having the ability to sell alcohol is a great draw for business. You cannot have a romantic dinner for two without a nice bottle of wine. What is an anniversary without a bottle of Champaign? Who wants to watch the super bowl in the restaurant lounge without beer? These things are important to the success of a restaurant in the right location.

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Category: Business
Keywords: restaurant employees ,management,Checklists,Management Assessment ,Kitchen staff ,restaurant busines