Anyone who has ever owned or worked in a restaurant will tell you that the deciding factor behind the success or failure isn’t the food, the customers or the location: its the equipment. Equipment can mean many things. Kitchen equipment, bar equipment, furniture and many more. This article will go over the different types of restaurant equipment and how they affect the overall ambiance of your bar or restaurant.
First off, let’s get one thing clear: You’re in this restaurant thing to make money. Sure, you can tell yourself that you want to bring a positive dining experience or that you’ve always wanted to own a restaurant ever since you ate paint chips as a kid. But the fact remains, that if you want to be successful enough that you don’t have to go back to work for your uncle’s travel agency, you’re going to have to think about the money first, everything else second.
First off, you’re going to need some bar equipment if you’ve got a fancy restaurant. Bar equipment doesn’t just mean the little hose thing that squirts out coke. No, we’re talking about shelves, alcohol cabinets, and yeah, that little hose thing that squirts out coke. This type of equipment can cost you quite a bit, so make sure you go with a supplier who offers you a warranty or service repair option in the contract.
If you plan on baking anything, pizza included, then you’re going to need to install an oven. While most restaurants don’t go too crazy on the baking equipment, if you plan on making any pizza, you’re going to have to at least pick up a pizza oven. Because pizza is such a pain in the butt to make, especially if you’ve got to make regular restaurant food as well, you don’t need to go nuts and buy the best Japanese pizza oven that does your laundry and picks up your kids from school. Just a normal pizza oven will do.
Then, you have your grills. This is where most of the cooking will be done in your restaurant. Things like salads aside, your hot food is going to be the main attraction to customers. Good food can make a bad restaurant better, and bad food can make a good restaurant worse. After all, while you could cater to the limp wristed ninnies who like to order salads when they go out, you’ll be better served in the long run by investing in making your hot food as delicious as possible. That means buying a nice grill!
Now let’s talk about your refrigerator. Most restaurants have what’s called a “walk in” fridge that you can walk into, duh! Seriously, the walk in fridge is a big fridge used to store extra food that won’t fit in the line used by line cooks. This is one piece of commercial equipment that you don’t want to scrimp on, as if it fails you’ll have a major problem on your hands: no food!
Finally, you need to think of how you’re going to pay for all this crap! Why did you have all those kids, anyway? Stupid college education is breaking my poor little piggy bank! Seriously though, unless you’re smart enough to get some investors for your idea, chances are you’re going to be stuck with the bill for all this equipment. In other words, it means you’re going to have to take out a loan. Fortunately, there are a lot of agencies out there who are willing to give small business owners loans.
Unfortunately, with the high failure rate of new restaurants, good luck finding one who’s going to give you a loan! My advice would be to set up a grill in a public area and sell hamburgers all day. Save money until you can afford a cardboard box. Then grow from there!