Starting a business in the hospitality industry
My New Venture interview questions
What was the key inspiration for you to get up and start your own business?
My partner had been made redundant and we were keen to utilise his skills and see what it would be like to be our own bosses. I was also ready for a new challenge.
We talk in the module about the importance of knowing why people set out on this self employment journey and how remembering why you did it can guide you through the more challenging times. In those early days was this your experience and if so, could you share the details?
In the early days we were just so busy setting things up and getting to grips with the business, we didn’t really have time to think about the reasons why we did it in the first place, but as we achieved various successes, we felt proud and happy to have made the leap.
Could you share one of your early achievements with your business? One of your first wins, or special moment where you really felt you were on the road to success and making progress. How important is stopping to record and measure these kinds of milestones?
Whenever we saw a customer return saying they had enjoyed their meal the first time they visited was always a positive achievement for us. A particular memory I have is on one Saturday night, I looked out the restaurant window and saw customers parking on the road, even though we had a very large car park and it made me feel very proud that we were that busy! Achieving a five star food hygiene rating, with a 100% score was probably Matthew’s proudest moment.
Could you share a few of your key challenges in that first year, how you got through them and if there was something, in retrospect that would have helped you get through the challenge more smoothly.
For myself, both the back of house and front of house presented challenges but possible two key challenges were learning how to run the cellar (ordering beers/wine, learning which beers/wine would sell, cleaning the lines and making sure the ale was on constant supply) and creating a successful restaurant booking system. For Matthew, the challenge would be recruiting staff for the kitchen, which was a huge challenge.
How much market research did you do before starting, and what did the process involve? Did this result in any significant changes to your business model? If you didn’t do any, how do you feel this would have changed some early decision making?
We hardly did any market research! We looked at various other restaurants/pubs in the local area to research their offering and prices and we also visited some establishments to see how busy they were and what their service was like. We bought an already successful and busy business so we felt as long as we did not alienate the customers and did not make too many drastic changes, we would be okay.
What have been the most useful support tools or resources in your journey? A mentor, community, a mindset, online courses, a particular tool, etc?
Possibly a mentor just to have someone to get advice from in our moments of doubt.
How did you incorporate learning and training into your business in the first year? This is often a falling-down point with first-time business owners. What was the most significant skill gap that you had going in, and how did you plug the shortage?
We did not have time to incorporate any training or learning!
What are the three most important things to consider in the early stages of your business? Is this something you focused on from the start or something you’ve learned that you wished you’d concentrated on earlier?
We did not consider this when we started our business but after having ran it for a few years, we should possibly have considered the time we would be spending working and the stresses this led to – perhaps employing senior employees to support us earlier would have been beneficial. We should have considered the time spent sorting out employment and employee issues and perhaps used the services of an external provider for HR issues. And finally we should have considered using an external source for our website management and social media output. None of these things had a huge impact on our business but would perhaps have given me more free time.
What were your tangible goals and objectives for the business when you first started, and how did you achieve them?
Our objective was to make a profit and be successful and we did this through sheer hard work and keeping up our standards throughout!
Setting up a business can be an overwhelming thing to do. What were your biggest fears when you first came up with the idea of running your own business and how did you get over them to take the leap?
Our biggest fear was not being able to pay back the bank loan we took out and also not being able to pay wages, rent, business rates, etc. We made sure that throughout we stuck to our GP (gross profit) calculations and kept our overheads as low as possible and again, keeping our standards throughout so customers would return!
Has the way you managed this fear gone on to enable you to take on bigger challenges? If you hadn’t dealt with the initial fears where do you think you’d be now?
We haven’t taken on a bigger challenge since selling the business! If we hadn’t dealt with the challenges and ignored the possibility of losing money, we would have sold the business for a lot less money and felt our sacrifices had been for nothing.
