Nothing Personal

It’s only business

Not everyone is focused on your best interests. You are a client, a revenue source, an opportunity to enhance someone else’s business and career. This does not have to be a negative. After all, you are planning a restaurant that will promote and draw a strong customer base. You will want to sell them stuff, build check averages and make a profit. Hopefully, you will also be offering value and an opportunity for your customers to enjoy a good meal and your inimitable hospitality.  Those businesses, professionals and trades you will be dealing with during the planning, design and construction of your restaurant will have similar motives. The expectation is that everyone is honest and benefits.

Selecting your General Contractor and suppliers can be time consuming and stressful. The pool of resources is vast, and they all want your business. How do you choose?

References: Word of mouth, referrals from reliable sources, previous experience are all a great start and often the best.  But you still need to do your own research and validate these resources - personnel changes, companies are bought and sold, things happen.

You want a contractor and sub-contractors who understand and have experience building restaurants. No, this isn’t rocket science. But the details, materials, tolerances and coordination needed to effectively construct a restaurant require a level of understanding and expertise that differ from general commercial, retail or residential construction.

Design / Build – This used to be considered a conflict of interest. How could you, said the critics, design a restaurant using the most cost-effective materials and resources when you will benefit from selling these products. The higher the cost, the more you profit.  The flip side is that you can design a very efficient building because you know how to build it smart and save money. From the very start, a design/build professional is thinking about costs, efficiency and expediency.

Bidding versus Negotiated Contracts – Bidding forces companies to study a project carefully, ensure that they have covered all contingencies and confirm that they have not missed, overlooked or misread anything. Bidders look at all costs, resources and time with an eye toward efficient purchasing, time and crew management.  Where possible, they consider alternate and comparable products that will either save cost or time to give them a potential advantage.  This approach obviously works and is a very standard industry practice. But keep in mind that bidding has the potential to create adversarial relationships. Design or specification changes, missing or omitted details, unforeseen field conditions or delays may result in cost increases. How these are calculated should be determined as part of the contract negotiation.

Negotiating with a supplier or contractor from the start must first be based on trust and a thorough knowledge of the company, their reputation and ability to perform. It requires a clear understanding of their approach to pricing, profit, overhead and transparency with billing. Having these resources available during the planning and design phase gives you access to cost and time saving ideas and solutions that your design team may not be aware of. They will also provide budgets as the design progresses, which give you the opportunity to value engineer (VE) as the design progresses, saving time and money.

Responsive Service and Support – This is an often overlooked, yet essential factor in your decision-making process. You will be asked to make decisions about products, finishes and brands/manufacturers.  After your restaurant is open, who can you call when something breaks, leaks or fails in some way? Who will show up on a Friday afternoon or in the evening to take care of equipment failure that could close your restaurant or limit your capacity to serve? Align yourself with product manufacturers and companies that value your business, charge fair prices and show up when needed.

There are countless stories of owners and operators making purchasing decisions based solely on cost. Consider performance, durability, serviceability, and local support as well.

Remember that you are building a business that will have a long life.  The construction process is only a part of your journey. When your contractor completes his work, he and all the trades will move on to their next project. You will have a completed restaurant with yet unrealized potential. You will then begin the next phase of your venture – opening and operating your restaurant.  Spend the necessary time to manage the construction process, evaluate cost versus value and make decisions that will allow you to operate successfully.