Building Credibility In Your Restaurant Startup Business
People with money are approached all the time by people who want money and their job is to figure out who, if anyone, will be getting the money that they have to offer. This decision is usually based on which investment has the best chance of providing the highest return for the least risk.
Therefore one of the best things you can do when working on a plan to approach people who have money and trying to convince them to give you some of the cash is to help yourself by building your credibility in the eyes of the people who will be investigating. Credibility is another way of saying less risky so that is the goal you want to shoot for in your appearance to investors.
In this article we will cover several simple things you can do to significantly enhance your credibility and make you stand out as someone who is both more established and more likely to succeed than the other people who are competing for the same dollars. The general perception of people who are investing in businesses is that the more established and credible a person is the more likely they are to succeed.
This isn't hard to understand as you can imagine yourself easily in their role and being approached by two different people seeking an investment. Who would you pick if you had a choice between a person who had only a vague plan that wasn't written and who had done no research and had very few answers about what they're going to do and who didn't seem to have actually got in anywhere yet in the pursuit of their plan and someone else who had completed all of the above and more?
If the second person had a written plan with a complete deal package with numbers and data to back them up and a business card, working website, a good restaurant name picked out and an estimated opening date and a whole team of credible knowledgeable industry experienced people who are backing them in this start up it would be easy to see who the right choice would be for an investment.
In order to appear as credible as possible to someone considering investing in your restaurant concept, you should make sure you have these five things already completed:
- A name for the restaurant
- An estimated opening date
- A website and logo already designed and live
- Business cards printed and ready to hand out
- A location scouted out and possibly a lease option in hand
- Either personal restaurant operations experience or you have recruited someone (or several someones) to your team who does have experience as a manager or owner of a successful restaurant
If you have these things in place your chances for getting funded go up dramatically. Without them you are much more of a long shot for getting the money you want.
