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Independent Restaurant Success: It's About Perception and Attitude By Maren L. Hickton
Last year, over 36,000 new restaurants opened in the United States - and
nearly three-fourths of them were independent units, not chain restaurants [1.];
the commonplace restaurant industry "statistic", that nine out of ten new
restaurants will fail within the first year, turned out to be completely false
(according to a study conducted by Ohio State University - which demonstrated that
the restaurant failure rate is closer to one out of four, or 26 percent, in
the first year, with lower failure rates in subsequent years); and among
franchised chains, the cumulative failure rate was 57 percent during the first three
years and 61 percent for independent restaurants [2.] - only a four percent
difference.
Despite this good news, some independent restaurant owners continue to be
discouraged - blaming assorted business struggles on the expansion of chain
restaurants - while others are not. In both cases, it seems that restaurant success
has less to do with whether owners are truly successful and more to do with
their own perceptions and attitudes.
To test this theory, I contacted award-winning restaurants in the Pittsburgh
marketplace and asked owners a series of questions about current independent
restaurant challenges - their own and those of others. Fifteen owners were
contacted and I had discussions with nine of them. While all of the owners'
comments were interesting, I found two owners among the group of whom, while both
successful, had completely different viewpoints - the first, with a rather
gloomy outlook; and the second, very upbeat - about the future of independent
restaurants.
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