Recently, many netizens have asked this question: In the early stages of starting a catering business, due to my lack of experience and limited funds, I want to open a restaurant in partnership with a good friend. Is this a good idea? Or bad?
Based on my many years of personal experience in the industry, especially when neither of them has experience in starting a restaurant business, I do not agree with starting a business with good friends. The main reason is that in the early stage of starting a business, you will encounter many problems and unexpected things. It is very likely that two people will have conflicts due to differences in opinions, and it is easy to intensify the conflicts. In the end, not only will you lose the relationship as a friend, but you will also lose your relationship as a friend. will lead to entrepreneurial failure.
At first, I opened a store with a friend, and I deeply realized that sometimes familiar relationships can be a burden in starting a business. Many people think that trust is the most important, but in fact, it is not. It’s not what you think...
Many people make these mistakes when starting a business together
1. When starting a business, choose your friends, classmates, relatives, etc. Opening a store together is mainly based on trust in each other's relationship. We believe that everyone is of the same age and has a fighting spirit, and can encourage each other and make progress together.
But people often overlook whether the partners’ abilities are complementary to their own? Are your values ??the same as yours? Maybe we think that our friends who are of the same age as us must have the same values, but this is not the case. Some people can accept uncertainty and cannot see clearly the future entrepreneurial life, while others yearn for a simple and stable life. . Maybe you will say, my good friend also said that he also wants to work hard and make a career! Everyone has occasional ambitions, but few people can actually achieve them.
To open a store, you need to choose a partner who complements you in terms of ability and has similar values ????to you. Therefore, when looking for a partner, you must consider the other party’s ability (experience and execution) and values. Some people are only suitable for My friend is not suitable to be a business partner at all.
2. Wrong share allocation method. It was the first time I opened a store in partnership with a friend. Since he had almost no savings, I finally decided to provide all the funds to open the store, while he was responsible for running the store full-time, and later left the management to her. This decision resulted in my friend having almost no risk. Whether he did well or not, he basically didn’t suffer much loss. After all, his position is that of a store manager, and he directly pays dividends to his basic salary, and the pressure of the risk is basically on me alone.
Some people may say, if your friend doesn’t do well, why won’t you lose much? After all, he works full-time to start a business and spends a lot of time and energy! From a friend's perspective, he certainly felt that the time he sacrificed was valuable, and he felt that the money I paid was not worth the energy he spent. This idea is actually unreasonable in entrepreneurship, because entrepreneurship is not a combination of "funds and time", but a combination of "funds and experience methods". In other words, when considering the allocation of interest shares and risks, pure time is actually a condition of no value, because time that is useless is not valuable. What is really valuable is experience. If my friend has rich experience in opening a store, then I really need her management experience, and her time is valuable.
The combination of "financial experience method" can also be used as the basis for allocating shares with partners when opening a store. The experience method is equivalent to a kind of technical stock investment. People with rich experience in opening stores are very important because of their risks. Your sense of smell will be sharper and you can control it in time. In addition, you will be familiar with managing employees and daily management of stores. Therefore, if you want to invest money to start a business and open a store, you must find someone with experience in opening a store to partner, otherwise you will lose money.
Another important point is that in a partnership business, both parties must pay financial costs, so as to ensure that both parties can value cooperation. If one party does not have any financial costs, once it encounters a problem, the other party will be very vulnerable. You may be asked to break up the partnership.
3. I found that my partners had many problems, and they were constantly accommodated due to their friendship.
When I was preparing to open a store for the first time, I discovered that my partners had many problems. For example, they liked to procrastinate, and the progress was slow and they were not in a hurry (the beverage project at that time was very seasonal, and they could make money by putting it on the shelves early). The correctness of the direction, but he always struggled with me too much in small details. For example, his communication method was not very good, and he often talked about the employees I recruited for interviews through various methods. At that time, I was thinking, Probably it will be fine with more running-in and running-in, but many problems are not clearly raised at the beginning, and there will be more and more problems later.
It is very important to find partners when opening a store, because this in itself is a very stressful matter. If you have no experience in opening a store, you can learn together slowly, but you can’t make it more complicated than you can help. However, my partners at the time were causing more trouble than helping. The hundreds of thousands I invested seemed to have gone down the drain, with no future in sight. The pressure was extremely high, but I still maintained an optimistic and positive attitude, and my friends often talked with me. I grumbled, complained, and did things with emotion all day long, and he pushed more stress and worries onto me.
Two weeks after the trial opening and two weeks after the official opening, my partner and I told him not to participate in the management of the store for the time being and to let him relax for a period of time while I fully manage all affairs. This was also a helpless move. After all, the situation in the store was really bad at that time, and I had to do it myself.
Facts have proved that after I personally took over the management, the store's performance increased from an average of several hundred yuan a day to more than 2,000 yuan a day within a week. So sometimes you still need to make up your mind to do something right, even if it hurts face and feelings, but people must admit their mistakes and do their best when they can, and don't wait until it can't be undone before regretting and resenting it.
It is not easy to start a business and open a store. Finding the right partner to start a business together is a matter of luck. You must not choose casually, otherwise it will make it harder for you.
If you are a novice who is starting a business or an entrepreneur who has crossed over into the catering industry and does not want to take detours or step into pitfalls on the road to entrepreneurship, remember to follow me! More practical catering experience will continue to be shared with everyone. Friends who love food and beverages are welcome to leave messages in the comment area and express their opinions!