What is the Worst (hardest?/most unpleasant?) part of Opening a Restaurant?

Three years in my opinion is that the hardest part is building the right staff/culture. This has sucked up so much of my time, and it took a long time for me to learn how to do it well. Workers in low paying (and yes I pay a lot higher than the going rates) service jobs are very difficult to motivate these days. Every single employee I have now is engaged and is trying to do good work, but it took years to get here. I dont remember this being this much of a problem when I started out in the 70's and 80's, a large number of young people were happy to have the opportunity, happy to be making money in a place that was fun to work were the management did not treat them like ****. There is this huge gap now between the expectation of young people (my oldest employee is 34) and how the world is.

At the three year mark I can say this: all of the work that I have put in to hire and keep the right people, on standards, and on developing the culture that I want in my place has been worth it. Now my people are even more advocating for the business (the baby we call it) than I am. New people find out fast that not putting up full effort will not fly here, meet standards or get the **** out they are told. Not by me only.

For those who have only seen the hard ass asshole side of me, I am rapidly getting the rep as the best guy to work for in town, which is exactly what I was going for. I almost always get what I want.

Almost................That's not good enough, try harder!

What?

As you have certainly heard me tell people over the years.....WE ARE NOT GODS!

And as Clint told us

I think that should read , "we are not perfect"

So the baby died some time ago, mostly because I did not have the money to put it where it needed to be but also because Olympia is getting flooded with chains now, so many restaurants, few are making money.

Looking back the worst thing was all of the lairs/cheats generally crap people...I never hired any illegals I instead tried to do everything right and tried to treat everyone well, and while I am still in contact with some of my ex-employees and while I did have a crew with a good number of exceptional people dealing with employees and bad customers really got to be draining.

Sorry to hear it man. I too discovered the realities of business when I found that there are many clients who just try their best to stiff anyone to whom they owe honest money.

Still have cooking in your blood ??

Just an observation but Ive seen , even in really small towns, ethnic restaurants seem to do great (except Chinese and Pizza places cause theres just waaay to many of them).

Well I enjoy it, it has always been art for me, I cook for myself and my wife and I am eating the best food of my life, even if we are in bankruptcy. I also do some catering, but mostly small time, for fun money.

"Realities of business" as in picking out the drug users and cheats..I turned out not so good at that.

I hope you are well, I always liked you.

I think we usually only agree on the law of gravity, but you were missed.I actually like to see an exchange that is not a "hidey hole" where we go to only because everyone agrees with us. Theres a substantial Conservative contingent here and most of them (though not all) make cogent arguments .

In my business, before I hired my accounts guy and he made some changes that were reminiscent of the type made by chef Ramsey

Hope your difficulties are soon resolved and your back on the path to recovery.

Talk later, I gotta shear sheep and Im waiting for the coffee to come down. Goddam filters