Hello my dear readers and welcome once again !!!!
I have been very busy this last couple of days looking for a commercial space for lease for a group of clients that want to open .....you’ve guessed it.... a restaurant in Miami !!!
I told them about this blog and about this post in particular, so they will be joining us.
Let’s start this PART 3 by talking about square footage, a very complex matter that will expose many issues that you may or may not know.
Someone comes to me and says “I need to rent a space to open a Restaurant and I need 1,500 to 2,000 Sq.Ft.”!!!
First of all... How did this person came up with that number? Well, turns out that these people are not hypothetical, they are real and as a coincidence we crossed paths right at this time that I’m writing this series, so I will use them as a “case study” and they will be very happy about it since they love being in the spotlight, after all....they want to open a Restaurant.
Def Leppard at the O2
They were working with another real estate agent that did not know much about the subject and who started throwing numbers about amount of $$$ per Sq.Ft. as in “RENT AMOUNT” and that’s all he cared about... the amount of rent which meant the amount of his juicy commission that now he’s not getting because, my now clients, figured this out before they wasted any more time with him.
"YOU ARE FIRED!!!! "
Donald Trump's photo courtesy of The Apprentice and NBC.com
He stuck by their request of square feet needed without asking them why... See? What happens is that in my field you cannot do it all, you cannot know it all, like I do not know jack about let's say.....marinas for instance, it is just not my thing, so I do not attempt to strike a deal related to something I do not have knowledge of, and that is exactly the beauty of Commercial Real Estate... but let’s stick to the subject of this post shall we?
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( ADHD moment )
So, I asked several questions to my new clients and it turns out that 2,000 Sq.Ft. was not going to cut it !!! “What type of food? What’s your business plan like? Is it a high end fine dining concept that you’re thinking about running? What’s your start up capital? Are you going to have delivery service?
All these questions were answered -luckily and in part- because these particular group of people own one restaurant already (but not here in the US....which is important- and I will be discussing this in the last part of this blog) so they have some knowledge necessary, luckily I met them and they fired their real estate agent, and sure as hell they won’t fire me !
As I said, you cannot know it all, or at least you cannot fool yourself that you do (I will blog about this ...”Agent/Rock Star”)
You may be probably asking yourself “What does the type of food has to do with the square footage?” Well, the more complex the menu is, the more efficient the kitchen needs to be.
Venison Mille Feuille w/ mint couscous @ Angie's World Cuisine in Coral Gables, FL
Photo Courtesy of MYSELF, shot with my Nikon and a fixed 50 mm lens that I got from Santa
The menu ultimately determines the size of the kitchen, quality of the food and the amount of “covers” that will be served efficiently with the lowest margin of mistakes, which translates in the quality of service given to the customers. Now....watch this- The Menu dictates the size of your dining room as well, which is the amount of people you are going to fit into your space, according to the concept you will be designing around “The Menu” !!! See how everything is inter related? Do you realize how intricate and complex this thing is?
Courtesy of MYSELF, I took this pic when I bought my mew Nikon. Shot with a 18-200mm Nikkor Lens
Do you still want to pursue this illusion of having a restaurant? Let’s continue since my new clients will, and I will tell you how all this turns out-
If you are going to serve fine dining cuisine most likely you will need several people in your kitchen and each one of them will have a station where they are going to perform their duties - Think of the scene of Remy with Chef Gusteau describing from above each one of the positions in the kitchen.
Courtesy of Disney/Pixar
Now let’s move onto the dining room of Chef Gusteau’s restaurant, which is obviously a fine dining experience, and analyze how separated the tables are from one another, see how it all starts to make sense?
If you think about running a sandwich shop then the mount of space needed everywhere (aside form ADA compliant bathrooms for which you will need aprox. 400 Sq.Ft. standard) is not as in a 5 star high end restaurant-
Rule of thumb is : 27 to 32 Sq.Ft. per person including kitchen, bathrooms, dining room, and server stations are needed to run any restaurant, then you will need to adjust it around building codes in your city, concept (fine dining, cafeteria, mid range trattoria style etc.) and features such as full bar, a stage, maybe you want to put a nice fountain right in the middle of the dining room, etc. All this data needs to be on your business plan’s spreadsheet to see if the math adds up; in the case of this new clients of mine it turns out that they will need between 3,600 to 5,000 Sq.Ft. of space so they have to go back to their drawing board and adjust their initial numbers of their original business plan.
On Part IV of this post I will be discussing the lease and landlord issues which is another big piece of the equation to be considered and will definitely impact your bottom line $$$$ .
See you in a few days!!
Courtesy of Ratatouille/Disney/Pixar
Cheers!!!
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