What happened when I opened a restaurant in Portland
Okay it&#x27;s time for me to chip in properly, forgive any typos I&#x27;m on a phone.<p>Preamble: I&#x27;m rated as an executive chef(my last 3 positions before leaving the industry), and I had worked for over 17 years in hospitality (from apprentice chef, to manager and executive chef - I also spent 4 years traveling to different restaurants to try and save them from foreclosure).<p>&quot;That chicken is a confit (with duck fat, aka $$), then served with a stock&#x2F;stew that takes days (of labor dollars) to prepare, plus cost of employees to serve&quot;<p>I sympathised with the author until this point. No it doesn&#x27;t take days in the way the author points it out, it takes minutes with a time to follow. (Eg you don&#x27;t have to actually do anything after you prepare and set it).  That&#x27;s akin to saying a good jam or beer takes months - yes in pure time, but it doesn&#x27;t take staff time(and $$ as the author said).<p>As for the hours? The author is correct, hospitality is a slug fest, there is no doubt about that.<p>What I take from this article? An unexperienced person tried to build a new business in an industry that didn&#x27;t have the experience in.<p>Would you try to start a software business, a cloud storage or a trucking business without experience? No it would be foolhardy, and that&#x27;s the biggest problem with hospitality.<p>Frankly if you&#x27;re not a chef - dont purchase a restaurant. Anyone can cook one decent meal, now try doing 100 a day while managing costs and staffing. (That&#x27;s just the basics, there are hundreds of things you need to do just to begin).<p>At the end of the day, I sympathise with the author, I have seen (and tried to help), a lot of people in that situation, but you cannot just jump into hospitality with money and assume that it will work.<p>Edit: typos ( thanks qwerty_asdf :-p )