“What is your Speciality?”
To begin, restaurants are classified into three primary categories: quick-service, midscale and upscale. When starting a restaurant business, your restaurant specialty establishes a certain atmosphere. This leads to an overall concept that appeals to customers then eventually opens avenues to financing. Your menu engineering capability informs much of your restaurant’s concept and the type of restaurant service you want to focus on. Talking about tips to run a successful restaurant, one thing ideal is: You should work in a restaurant similar to the type of restaurant you want to open. You either find that you don’t actually like it or discover that you’re more suited to a different type of restaurant operation than you originally thought.
Here are the common restaurant types that are helpful to clearly define what restaurant type you are most interested in.
Target Market
It is important to remember that no single restaurant type has universal appeal. If your targeting to get the attention of everybody, you will end up pleasing no one. This is an important fact that aspiring restaurant owners should learn to accept: You will never capture 100 percent of your target customers. Depending on which restaurant type, defining target customer should be segmented into market categories. For example: generation Y, according to studies are more into fast food and quick service restaurants while baby-boomers are said to love family style restaurants.
Location
Choosing a restaurant location is interrelated to many factors, some can be changed and some cannot. Not everyone likes the same food or restaurant type, hence, a demographic analysis is a helpful predictor what your customers’ preferences will be. In every restaurant location, it has different demographic makeup. Demographics will tell you about customers’ dining habits. The good news is that, much of the data on demographic makeup is available in the national government office.
Types of Restaurants
Restaurants are most commonly classified by the type of restaurant concept, restaurant theme and restaurant cuisines that they offer to the customers. Each will be different so here’s a list of restaurant types, what each service type is and what you can expect:
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Ethnic Restaurant
Ethnic restaurants offer menus that usually include American versions of ethnic dishes and/or authentic ethnic food explorations. Dubbed as one of the simplest restaurant concepts, that could range from quick-service to upscale. This builds around specific type of food: Mexican, Chinese, Indian or Italian, to name a few. The menu, and the overall concept of your restaurant should reflect the ethnic cuisine.
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Fast Food Restaurant
If there’s one restaurant type that is is very familiar to everyone, it is the fast food chains. McDonalds and Burger King became popular in the 1950s, and these chains helped spawn countless fast food concepts like Taco Bell, KFC, and In & Out Burger. Undeniably, what attracts customers to fast food is the speed and convenience. If you are considering a fast food franchise, you have to keep in mind that the initial costs of franchise are way expensive than opening an independently-built restaurant.
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Fast Casual Restaurant
The fast casual restaurant concept is of course a mash-up of fast food and casual dining. Over the years, it is considered to be one of the strongest segments in the restaurant industry. A fast-casual restaurant offers customers the ease and convenience of fast food, but with more inviting casual or sit-down atmosphere. In terms of menu, fast casual dishes have better quality ingredients that can be found in most fast food establishments. Fast casual restaurants give you a unique selling proposition that attracts loyal fans and generate attention through the social media platforms.
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Casual Dining Restaurant
Casual dining restaurants offers a relaxed and casual atmosphere with a lot of seating and moderately priced menu. They offer a full table service dining with non-disposable dishes. In terms of portion sizes, they are usually large without an adequate portion size control. One main reason why casual dining attracts so many customers is because they have wider meal and beverage selections. Noticeably, casual dining restaurants have better prepared meals with ingredients of higher quality. Their food is far better than the ones offered in fast food restaurants.
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Family Style Restaurant
Food is not an exception to the adage: “Everything old becomes new again”. Family-style dining or English service started long ago as far back as Ancient Rome. In community-oriented culture, with the hustle and bustle of our daily multitasking, we now value more the time we reconnect with friends and family. But what better way to achieve this than a shared delicious meal? The importance of shared food and good conversations have always been a consideration for restaurant owners to venture into this type of concept.
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Fine Dining Restaurant
Being a much more upscale restaurant, fine dining style offers diners elegant atmosphere with high-quality service. Chefs are professionally trained and expect the food to be worth the fairly expensive price. Fine dining is usually preferred during special occasions so the selection and quality of the food must not disappoint. Modern day fine dining offers prix fixe menus or limited menus that change either on a daily or weekly basis. This is to take advantage of the locally sourced foods when seasonal ingredients are at their peak of freshness. Chefs are good at exercising their creativity in coming up with the dishes fit for a certain season. Fine dining offers wine and liquor selections too that are high end.
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Pop Up Restaurant
A pop up restaurant is quite similar to traditional brick and mortar restaurant, without the high cost of opening. There are many different reasons for opening a pop up restaurant. Some professional chefs open their own pop ups as a way to build their culinary careers, since the short-term nature of a pop up restaurant allows chefs freedom and creativity in the kitchen. Others open a pop up restaurant to test a specific restaurant concept. There are also others who use it as an avenue to entice investors and to let the public try it. Pop up restaurants could also be a way to offer gourmet dining at reduced prices. This could also be a vehicle for fundraising.
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Barbecue Restaurant
Putting up a barbecue restaurant requires a combination of general restaurant business planning that will require more in-depth research on your part. You may compete with similar barbecue restaurants in your area, or go head-to-head with a unique concept. You may start by evaluating different regional types of barbecue concept, like the ones found in Kansas City, St. Louis, Memphis, Texas, Georgia and Carolina. You have to take into consideration the proteins that you will offer. That could be a variety of meat, pork, beef and poultry included. You also need to be specific with the cuts such as brisket, shoulder, hams, and baby back, spare or country style ribs. Often, you will see barbecue themed restaurants use indirect heat while others use a combination of barbecuing, smoking, roasting and grilling.
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Destination Restaurant
There are customers who head out to a restaurant not for the food. Customers could go all out, visit their favorite celebrity chef or a destination for scenesters to see, a radically new restaurant concept, right? A restaurant can also be about experiencing a novelty like probably having robots as servers. Just as long as there’s a special “something” that could draw customers’ curiosity, or a feeling like they’ve been transported into a divine bubble of bliss, they are willing to pay a visit.
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Quick-Service Restaurant
Is a quick service restaurant (QSR) the same to what customers call fast food? After all, Quick-service is the term for restaurants that capitalize on speed of service and convenience. But isn’t that what fast food is all about? Well yes, fast-food restaurants are under the umbrella of quick-service restaurants. However, not all quick-service restaurants serve fast-food. This restaurant is often characterized by simple decor and ambiance, inexpensive food choices and speedy service.
Before you even begin planning your restaurant business planning, you should first finalize the specific segment of the restaurant type you want to enter. Hiring a restaurant consultant to help you with this is a wise decision to make. Although, there are many commonalities among the various restaurant types, there are also many differences. There is even an overlap in terms of knowledge and skills necessary to be successful in this area, but your own personality and preferences will make up for it. And once you’re finally decided, next thing to do is figure out the niche you will carve in the marketplace. Find restaurant templates and documents here.