Opening a restaurant ain’t what it looks like on TV, says Bjorn Shen
If only it were half as glam. So I opened my second restaurant, Bird Bird, last month – and 11th-hour time bombs and disasters were the orders du jour. I know a good handful of you folks harbour ideas of one day opening a café or restaurant. If you go in thinking all you've got to do is cook great food, pour great coffee and charm the sh*t out of your guests, then you're gonna be in for a rude shock when reality's big turd hits the fan. A new F&B business is 10 percent about the actual food and beverages, and 90 percent about putting out forest fires before the first guests arrive. Here's what went pear-shaped for me.
1. On opening night, the main air-conditioning unit puffed out its last breath, leaving everyone – three prominent food critics included – in the dining room feeling stuffy, sweaty and pissed off. It took a whole week for a new one to be installed.
2. That same night, our POS system went kaput. Two weeks later, it's still acting like a three-year-old, occasionally hogging a food order and not sending it to the kitchen, or re-firing an old order (that's already been served). We're still trying to bargain with it for mercy.
3. And again on the first night, our deep fryer decided to curl up and die. As the Palace of Fried Chicken, you can imagine how that came down like a sledgehammer to our balls.
4. On the third night, eight Club Street-type hotshots came, ate and drank a storm, chalking up a $600 bill. But they refused to pay a cent because they 'didn't realise it was going to be so expensive'. When we held our ground, we were yelled at, physically intimidated and threatened. They walked away, telling strangers along the street how 'disgusting' and what a 'rip-off' we were. The bill was only settled a week later when I ID'd one person from the group and had a friendly chat with his boss.
5. The ceiling in our dry store started leaking. The plumber came and told us that the water was leaking from the toilet bowl upstairs. We threw all our stock out. Inside, I think I'm still a little dead.
6. A week in, while plunging a clogged drainage pipe in the kitchen, a floor trap a few metres away exploded and flooded our whole floor with black, oily sewage – right in the middle of dinner service. Two hours later, the grease trap guys show up, fix the problem, and tell us that the last tenant never had their grease trap flushed, and that months of old cooking grease was choking the system.
7. 'Til today, we're begging our telephone provider to connect our phone line. It's been two months since we signed the contract, and they still haven't connected us. Our reservations system, credit card terminals and internet access all depend on it. People used to paying by card are upset that they have to detour to the ATM. The person we speak to tells us in a polite way to chill out.
So if you're planning on having a restaurant or bar of your own, here's a helpful tip: build good relationships with your neighbours from day one. They've been there longer than you, they've run into these walls/quicksand pits before, and they've obviously emerged from them equipped with better knowledge than what you have now.
You don't know how many times I've had my ass saved by them. And then when you're finally in the clear, pay it forward with help and support to the new, stressed-out, sleep-deprived owners of the soon-to-open restaurant down the street from you.
Show Bjorn some love at Bird Bird at 18 Ann Siang Rd.