The highly successful restaurateurs whose advice is collected in Restaurant Owners Uncorked: Twenty Owners Share Their Recipes for Success (Create Space; $14.99) were a diverse group. What they had in common was a willingness to sit still for lengthy interviews with author Wil Brawley during which they freely dispensed hard-earned lessons about the inner workings of the restaurant business.
Brawley is a principal with Schedulefly, a company which provides scheduling software to restaurants. His insider knowledge of how the industry works helped him know the right questions to ask. No wonder he was so adept at picking the brains of his subjects.
All the hot buttons are hit in this one: Defining the concept, raising capital, buying a site, hiring employees, day-to-day running of the business and setting yourself up for expansion. If you want candid opinions from smart people who have done all these things with excellence, here's your book.
You won't find any culinary advice in this one, despite the “recipe” in the title. To these operators, chefs are people you hire and change out if the food is off. They're much more focused on the big picture, of which good food is just one part of the formula.
RH readers couldn't ask for a book more aligned with their specific problems and needs. We imagine most of you will read this one through several times, then continue to refer to it for years.
