If you must close your doors,plan
ahead to avoid unnecessary pain
BY SALLY GOOD
Closing your restaurant is not something you plan before your grand opening. Before opening, you plan a budget, you plan a menu, you plan
on cornering the market, and you plan how you’re
going to spend all that money. After opening, during the honeymoon phase, you plan and re-plan
production schedules, more marketing strategies
and expansion.
But rarely do you plan on how to close the doors.
To do so could be a self-fulfilling prophecy —
dangerous thinking.
But it happens. Friday nights aren’t what you
expected. Lunch business falls off. You think about
shortening your hours of operation to cut labor.
Nothing seems to help sales. Maybe floods have
killed tourism for two years straight. Perhaps a
new highway is being constructed 100 yards away.
Or three local factories that supply the base of your
clientele recently closed their doors. We can’t predict the future or control the weather. But we do
have to face reality.
Like most things in life, there is a right way and
a wrong way to close a restaurant, and it does
involve planning. Before locking the doors one last
time, follow the steps below.
But first: Look at all other possibilities, for sanity’s sake. If you don’t, the “what ifs” will haunt you
later. Have you had offers to sell? If so, contact the
interested parties. Do you have potential investors?
If your financial situation is temporary — for example, unusual adverse weather patterns that couldn’t possibly last have affected business — perhaps
all you need is a little time that investors can help
you buy. Have you hired a consultant? If you were
new at the business, investing your last few
precious dollars in a professional could save you.
Once you have eliminated all other options, you
must:
Get out of denial. Numbers don’t lie. Talk to
your accountant. Compare your projected sales
with actual sales. Review all your adjustments in
labor, ordering, inventory and marketing. If you
made mistakes, accept it now. If outside factors
have played a role, accept that. Go ahead, be bitter
for a few moments. Then shake it off. Don’t hold
onto the dream for pride’s sake. Doing so could be
the difference between financial disappointment
and financial ruin. Don’t wait until you are forced
to close.
After you’ve worked through these two things
and made the decision, it’s time to move on.
1. Tell no one — other than your lawyer.
This is perhaps the hardest step. Your restaurant
is your baby, your life’s dream, and it’s dying. That
hurts. You’re depressed, angry, confused, worried,
nervous, disappointed, stressed to the max, and at
moments still wildly, irrationally hopeful — and
you need emotional support. You really need to talk
to someone. Let that someone be your significant
other only and no one else. Not your mom, your
best friend or your assistant manager. Telling the
wrong person, no matter how much you trust him
or her, is tantamount to taking out a full-page ad
in the local paper. Once the word leaks out, it will
spread like spilled mop water. Staff will quit showing up. (They’re out job-hunting.) Theft will skyrocket. (“They’ll never miss this!”) Your vendors
will demand cash — the green kind, not checks.
Creditors will start coming around in person. With
bats. Just kidding.
2. Choose a date. Make it as soon as possible.
This too is difficult: You see inventory being wasted, and that goes against every fiber of your restaurant manager being. Resist the urge to deplete your
supplies. An empty walk-in and a long “86” list
sends up a big red flag, and it probably won’t save
you that much money in the long run. Select a final
day that falls at the end of a work week. And who
do you tell? That’s right, no one.
3. Update employee files. Make sure you
have current phone numbers and addresses.
4. Make lists. (Breathe a little. It’s getting easier. Most stress is caused by procrastinating on
making important decisions, and you just cleared
that hurdle.)
• Who to contact immediately once the doors
are closed: employees and vendors, future large-party reservations, a food bank, payroll or book-keeping service, landlord, banker, and movers.
• Who to contact later, after you’ve vacated the
building: utility companies, Internet/cable
providers, the post office and realtor.
• What to take with you: signs, office files,
licenses, and personal items.
• What to leave behind, sell or put in storage:
furnishings, equipment, and smallwares.
• What to do with your spare time — once
you’ve closed. Now you can actually go to your son’s
Friday night basketball game.
5. Close the doors. Timing this can be a bit
tricky. For the rare restaurant that stays open 24
hours, you will have to actually send employees
home and tell them they’ve been laid off.
Otherwise:
a. Contact employees. It’s important that you
do this first. Your employees’ devastation at losing
their jobs will be as painful for them as it is for you
to close. Let them hear it from you. Offer letters of
recommendation. Call them in order of seniority.
Leave voice mail messages if necessary.
b. Put a message on your restaurant answering
machine that you have closed. Be pleasant, and
thank your customers and vendors.
c. Post “closed signs.” Also, cover the windows
with paper. Lock all the doors.
d. Call your vendors. Cancel impending orders
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