How to Open a Restaurant Business: The Complete Guide

Take the leap. You can do it.

I'm not a teacher. I'm not a speaker. I'm a restaurant owner. I've opened more than 9 restaurants doing a combined $15 million in annual revenue. All of it in about eight years. No loans, no investors.

I built this course because I took a bunch of online restaurant courses before I made my own, and every one of them was vague theory written by people who'd never actually opened a restaurant. This course is the opposite. It's what I did. It's what I'd tell a friend if they came to me asking how to open their first place.

This is for people who've worked in restaurants for years and want to make the jump to ownership. Chefs. Sous chefs. GMs. Line cooks. Front-of-house veterans. You already know food. You already know service. This course is the business side of opening a restaurant that nobody taught you while you were on the line.

It's also for people who don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank. I didn't either. The whole course is built around opening scrappy, not lavish.

Here's what we cover:

The decision to actually do it. How to know if you're ready, what kind of restaurant fits your skills and budget, and how to validate the concept before you spend a dollar on a lease.

How to find the right space. I almost always take over closed restaurants instead of building from scratch. A second generation space can save you tons in build-out costs. I'll show you how I find them and how I evaluate them.

How to read and negotiate a restaurant lease. The personal guarantee trap. Tenant improvement allowances. Free rent during build-out. Exit clauses. The specific lease terms that have ended careers. Most first-time restaurant owners sign things they don't understand. You won't.

Licenses, permits, and the legal side. What you actually need. What order to get them in. How to avoid the delays that have cost other owners months of rent before they could open the doors.

The real math behind restaurant profitability. Food cost percentage. Labor cost percentage. Prime cost. Break-even. How to know whether your concept actually makes money before you sign anything. Most restaurants don't fail because the food was bad. They fail because the math was wrong from day one.

Hiring your first staff. How to find them. How to pay them. How to train them. How to keep them when bigger places try to poach them.

Opening week and the first six months. What to expect. What's going to break. How to survive the part of the process that ends most first-time restaurants.

This is the course I wish existed before I opened my first restaurant. Enroll now and let's get you Open & Successful

- Ryan Speier