How to Open a Burger Restaurant? Starting a Cafe Business in Ukraine

The fast-food market annually increases share by 5-8% and continues to become a more colorful meeting place. In this article, we would like to share the information a new entrepreneur needs to be aware of along with steps that might be helpful for a startup phase.

The hospitality industry in the global market is developing dynamically: the number of restaurants and new food and beverage offerings keeps evolves. People nowadays are willing to dine out more often. Even during the economic slowdown, they are still want to visit the places they like to have their favorite drinks or dishes several times a week. Casual cafés are in a winning position here because of its affordable and pleasant atmosphere.

In the wake of such popularity, the segment as burger houses appeared. Becoming as restaurants, these “natives” of fast-food quickly found their clients and are now experiencing their best times. In many big cities, you can see lots of venues serving only burgers and every place have high guests’ turnover.

Burgers overcome sushi in popularity and became a leader in the gastronomic market. Minimum cooking time, simple but tasty food in combination with a democratic price won the heart of clienteles and restaurateurs. Therefore, many businessmen are interested in how to open a burger. For a long time, burgers were associated only with McDonald’s and their franchise model. Today, its delicious food with a steak and a variety of sauces, hundreds of new global brands with thousands of owners all over the world are involved in this business. In the fight for the consumer, burger turned a banal “quick bites” into something that people are daily talking about. If you are thinking about opening a restaurant, but you don’t much experience in the hospitality industry, we advise that you first consider the burger restaurant format.

What are the advantages and disadvantages in owning and operating a burger restaurant?

Pros

• Margin is up to 60%
• Solid ROI
• Minimum number of staff
• Definite niche
• High demand
  
• Low entry threshold
  
• Promising restaurant concept
  
• Production simplicity

Cons

• Competition
• Rental expenses
• Business risks

Opening a fast-food is much easier than a full-fledged restaurant. It does not require to include many varieties of dishes on the menu and having an expansive kitchen with well-trained chefs. All it needs It is fresh ingredients such as meat, cheese, baked buns, vegetables, and minimum kitchen space. Burgers can be cooked fast and within a couple of minutes, even a student can make it after several days of practice.

What you need to open a burger restaurant

Study the market. The HoReCa industry is quite saturated, and the competition among the burger restaurants is high. Therefore, before start working on a new project, analyze the location and its competition. Find out the main players in the market, evaluate the demand for burgers in your area. Also, check out the venues of your potential competitors to understand the business more from inside t. Browse the overseas market to find out its trends, new ideas, and concepts. Traveling abroad you can peek at fresh concepts and business models. In general, collect as much information as possible to draw accurate conclusions.

Concept development.

It’s no secret that the design and concept of the restaurant are as important as the food in it. In this phase, determine the format, brand identity, develop a technological plan, engineering, and approving the interior design. By this time, the entrepreneur should have an understanding of how the project will work and how much financial resources it will require. The concept is needed to distinguish your venue from many other places. You need to clearly have an answer to the question — Why should people come to you, and not to the café at the corner of the same building?
Maybe it will be a burger for people who profess good nutrition and vegetarians, or a family restaurant where each burger is a work of culinary art; it can be a burger, combined with a bar/hookah/karaoke, etc

Remember that one concept alone will not go far. Therefore, special attention should be paid to the quality and speed of service, product quality, and taste, so that the guests want to return to you again and again..

Business plan.

This is the most important phase of the project. To avoid unnecessary waste and problems at the start, carefully think over the project. What will be on the menu? How much money will have to spend? What equipment do you need to purchase? How many employees will need to be hired? How to promote your restaurant in the market? How much can you earn on burgers? The result of your work should be the derivation of a peculiar formula of success, in which you understand what the revenue the restaurant should have, customer turnover, rent expenses, and cost of goods sold. When you have these numbers, it will be easier for you to make decisions when choosing a property, suppliers of products, hiring staff, etc.

Restaurant registration phase

The initial step in opening a burger restaurant is to register a business with government agencies and obtain permits for catering establishments. You could consult with a local lawyer to receive all the necessary information.

Basic commercial property requirements:

• Preferably a minimum 100 square meters
  
• Proximity to shopping malls and office buildings
  
• Parking lot.

According to years of study of Kyryll Ushakov – CEO at Proriat Hospitality Partners, most restaurants’ kitchen and warehouse need 40% of the total area of the area, and the remaining 60% is can be used to plan tables areas. You will be very lucky if you can find a property where a restaurant had previously operated. The rent price depends on various factors: the city, the region, pedestrian traffic, a favorable neighborhood with other public places are important.

Another issue regarding the premises is repairing process. It is recommended to choose a location that does not require major repairs, redevelopments, etc. Any repair means a certain duration of the preparatory phase. The longer you solve the problems with the preparation of the premises of the institution, the more losses you will suffer. But if you look at the modern interior of a fashionable restaurant, you will notice a minimum of decoration on the walls and ceiling. It is no longer a wonder to see bundles of wires and ventilation pipes on the high ceiling, but on the walls — coarse brickwork, organically beaten by the interior. Today, the design of establishments is beaten by decor, furniture — what can be quickly brought in and, if necessary, taken back.

What equipment do you need to purchase? 

Investing in the right commercial kitchen equipment is one of the main steps in opening any types of restaurant. The quality of kitchen equipment and tools will determine its production capacity, workflow, and it even might affect the taste of food. Therefore, you should responsibly approach the choice. To do this, it is recommended to study in advance various commercial offers and the experience of other entrepreneurs. Below is a list of the main types of equipment that may be needed in the kitchen:

• Electric meat grinder
• Burger press
• Pan-fried hamburger
• Vegetable cutter
• French fries’ cutter
• Deep fryer
• Electric grill
• Baking equipment
• Oven
• Refrigerators, freezers and vacuum packers for food storage.
• Dishwasher
• Bar tools
• Kitchen utensils and other tools

Additionally, it is necessary to purchase furniture and other equipment, including a bar, tables and chairs, a cash register and a cashless terminal, decor items.

How to create a menu.

To develop the burger menu, use a lot of good meat (beef, pork, chicken, rabbit, etc.), sauces, seasonings, vegetables. Experiment with the feed form, add unusual combinations of products. But dwell on some burgers, too, is not worth it. Diversify the menu with salads, french fries, hot and cold appetizers. From time to time it is recommended to add new dishes or make special offers on the menu — this will help to maintain the accumulated customer base. It is important to provide that for each dish a process chart is drawn up indicating the consumption of products per portion and the volume of this portion.

How to organize the supply of products

Before opening a burger restaurant, it is necessary to determine suppliers and establish supply channels for raw products. The main requirement for suppliers is the delivery of high-quality and fresh products on time according to an agreed schedule. It is important that all ingredients are compiling with HACCP requirements.
It is worth noting that burgers’ ingredients are used very sparingly. There are almost no write-offs, since the same products are used to prepare all items from the menu.

A big problem for restaurateurs is the buns. At first glance, it seems that this is an ordinary round roll, but it should have certain characteristics. For example, it should be soft, but not too much – otherwise, it will soften from meat juice and sauces. Therefore, suitable suppliers should be found for each ingredient.

For certain categories of deliveries that provide the main menu, it is recommended to conclude exclusive contracts with one trusted and reliable supplier. Before deciding on suppliers, conduct a thorough analysis of the proposals. When purchasing a batch of products for the first time, break the order into small batches to order several types of each type of products from different suppliers. This will allow you to compare the quality and choose the most economically and qualitatively acceptable option.

Marketing Strategy

The target audience of burger restaurants is quite wide. The main category of consumers is young people aged 18-35, regardless of the level of income. One of the important moments when opening a restaurant is the preparation and implementation of an effective marketing strategy, which includes name, its logo and corporate identity, as well as the organization of an advertising campaign.

Advertising on social networks focused on youth will be effective in this case. Within the framework of social networks, one can hold a “happy repost” campaign, “feedback contest”, etc. This tool aims to attract an additional audience. Therefore, the restaurant must acquire a personal account on social networks. There you can upload photos of dishes and the interior, inform about promotions, hold contests, quickly answer all user questions. You can also provide for the “happy hours” promotion — the time during which the institution offers discounts, a special menu.

Recruitment

Since your restaurant is likely to work 7 days a week, you will need to organize two shifts. It will be enough to hire two cooks, two cashier waiters, a manager, and a cleaner in a new and not yet promoted establishment. With an increase in clientele, there will be a need to expand the staff to 4 cooks and 4 waiters.

When selecting employees, focus on is not so much on work experience as on personal qualities: desire to work, friendliness, responsibility, politeness, initiative. Usually, young people work in burger restaurants – it’s easier for them to withstand the fast pace of a fast-food environment. To train employees in all the intricacies of the kitchen is not difficult.

How to forecast income and create a budget

Catering is a specific type of business in which it is not so easy to predict the level of income.
Assessment is usually subjective and is based on indicators of other restaurants. But these numbers can be very different from what you will have. For you, they are purely informative in nature, showing how many restaurants earn and can earn. In order to calculate the net profit, it is also necessary to plan the expense costs, which include utilities, labor, taxes, f&b costs. Practice shows: it is possible to recoup the invested funds in 1.5 years. And this is a normal indicator of the food service market.

What are the risks when opening a burger restaurant
Like any business, opening a restaurant is associated with many risks. If you predict them in advance and apply countermeasures in a timely manner, adverse consequences can be avoided. Among the main risks are:

• Poor location
• Increase in prices for raw products and rent
• High competition
• Decrease in effective demand
• Staff problems – low qualifications, staff turnover, lack of employee motivation.
• Equipment breakdown and production downtime
• The decrease in the reputation among the target audience in case of non-effective in management or a decrease in the quality of services

Some tips for opening a burger

You can open a profitable restaurant in a metropolis or in a small town. The burger will fit perfectly into the frantic rhythm of a large city and will become a successful project in a small city, the inhabitants of which are not yet full of food services, and the level of competition and clients’ requests are lower there. But success can be achieved in a highly competitive environment. The main thing is to offer a quality product, promote an original idea and make tasty burgers.

Remember!

Chicago restaurateur Rich Melman who said 80% of restaurant success is determined before it opens. This is so true the seeds of a successful restaurant are planted in the early planning stages so the more you are aware of potential problem areas and are able to avoid them the better. So many people open restaurants and get blindsided by things that they never saw coming and that just compounds the effects of the problem as they say being forewarned gives you the advantage of being forearmed.

Proriat Hospitality Partners is looking dwforward to assisting you in opening a new restaurant. Our team will search for the best solutions and offer 360-degree concept development and project management services to meet corporate achieve corporate targets and making sure the restaurant is being operated at a reasonable cost while generating maximum revenue.

Our managers are looking forward to assisting you with your new project

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