There are lots of perks to doing what I do but probably one of the nicest is hearing from people who have been successful in their restaurant businesses.
After all, the point of doing all this is to help people get a real restaurant open and running and making money.
Otherwise, it’s a lot of work for nothing or it’s just daydreaming, which is cheaper but a lot less satisfying in the end!
Of course I certainly don’t take the credit for his success or anyone else’s. What I am able to help people do is proper planning and working on getting funding to open a restaurant like they’ve always wanted.
The effort comes from them but I like to think we help them put their effort into the right things at the right time.
A couple of days ago, I got an email from Anthony Doumitt which said, in part:
Hi,
I had purchased your Restaurant Success Kit, ver. 3.04, back probably in 2004 or 2005 on cd. Since then I’ve opened a small cafe in northern California which is slowly growing business. Just today I went to dig out the cd from a drawer in my office and discovered that it had been cracked and is unusable.
My question to you is there anyway possible I could get a replacement disc? I am wanting to possibly expand the cafe even further and would love to use the tools that I remember that were quite helpful on the cd.
It would be greatly appreciated if you could oblige my request. I’m not sure if you have a record of my purchase, but if you are able to look it up, it was originally sent to Anthony Doumitt (me) in Daly City, CA 94015. Again, I’m not exactly sure of the month or year of purchase, but I believe it was either 2004 or 2005. I understand that it’s been quite a few years since this purchase, but I recall being impressed with the detail of help the program gave. So whatever you can do to help, I’d be thankful.
I emailed him back and let him know we don’t send out CDROMs anymore (I remember it was kind of fun stuffing envelopes way back in 2002-2007 and counting how many we shipped each day- on the other hand, downloads are a lot easier, faster and cheaper so I don’t miss the old days that much!) but I would be happy to send him a new version.
I also asked him a little about his business and this is what he wrote back:
I originally purchased the cd because I was considering opening a counter service, “Baja Fresh” style restaurant. I used the Restaurant Success kit to write my business plan to submit to prospective landlords and to do my food costing to see if the couple of locations I was considering would be cost effective.
Well as we got closer to signing a letter of intent at this particular location my wife unfortunately was not “on board” with this idea and I backed out. This was 2004 or 2005. We also run a family owned shoe business which is our bread and butter to support the family. Well in 2007 I opened a small gelato/candy shop in the same building as our shoe store in Alameda, CA. In 2009 we expanded the gelateria into a cafe, specializing in made to order paninis, sandwiches, salads, espresso drinks and more. Since then we’ve been slowly, but steadily growing the business and I feel it is time to expand once again into a full fledged restaurant.
This is where the Restaurant Success Kit is going to be utilized once again, although this time I am a little more experienced in running a foodservice establishment. We are planning on converting the shoe store into this idea. So again with the help of your program I feel confident it will help me with the tools I need to accomplish my goals.
Based on his success so far, and the fact that he is savvy enough to remember that a great restaurant business is best started with a great restaurant business plan I have no doubt I will hear from him again down the road with more success stories and even bigger plans for the future.
