Putting your Best Foot Forward Entering the Organic Restaurant Business

The serving of organic foods was once a mere niche in the restaurant business; today, it makes more than $1 billion every year for the restaurant business. Even with growing demand and an established base, starting and running an organic food restaurant business is hardly a straightforward matter. A restaurateur who deals in the business of serving organic food needs to take into account how his raw materials cost far more than regular raw materials (organic lemons, for instance, cost three times what conventional lemons cost); and you have to find a way to remain competitive against other restaurants that serve regular food. With the right strategy though, success is certainly possible.  As many businesses have demonstrated.

The future appears to be very bright for the organic restaurant business; even through the economic downturn, organic food sales have arisen at four times the rate of conventional food sales. The average restaurant costs about $400,000 to start. Work in the part about your restaurant being organic, and you'll need to count on be prepared for another $100,000. An organic restaurant usually needs expensive equipment that other restaurants don't need - things like materials for takeaway items that can be composted. If yours is a vegetarian organic restaurant, you could face lower insurance costs if you only serve raw foods. When there is no stove on the premises, your insurance costs fall.

An organic restaurant business needs to be completely prepared to keep changing the recipes to help manage costs. Whenever a specific organic ingredient becomes scarce or too expensive, you need chefs who are prepared to experiment with and reshuffle recipes so that they can improvise. You basically need to keep the menu steady, but find new ways to make them without the usual ingredients. When ingredients like tomatoes go out of season, the organic versions become exorbitantly expensive. Flexibility in the chefs one employs is key.

Typically, going vegetarian isn't the route to success in the organic restaurant business. The moment you go vegetarian, you lose half your potential customer base. And while we're on the subject of catering to your customer base, you need to know that the more seriously you take government regulations for the organic label, the more favor you will win with your customer base. You need every recipe to be 95% organic to be considered deserving of the Wholly Organic label. The more fervently you cater to your customer base, the more popular you will be. It might take a little extra work at first, but it'll be well worth it for the success prospects of your restaurant.