10 Signs You’re Ready to Buy a Restaurant

If you’re working in a restaurant or sitting at your computer in corporate America, visualizing yourself as a restaurant owner, read on. This post is for you.

You may intellectually know that buying a restaurant is frightening and full of unknowns. Your friends and relatives may tell you that it will be too much work for not enough reward. Meanwhile, the idea keeps returning to you day after day, as you work for someone else.

Are you the person who gets the sense you could do this yourself? Are you passionate about the restaurant industry but just not happy in your current role? Did you find yourself pushed into a college career tract that now has you sitting in a cubicle while your mind is churning out ideas for the next great concept? It could be time for a change in your life and you just may be ready to buy a restaurant.

In working with hundreds of entrepreneurs each year, we see common signs that now is the time to go ahead, take the plunge and buy a restaurant. If you’re experiencing these signs, it may be time to stop procrastinating and buy that restaurant that’s on your mind.

Sign Number 1: You’re Passionate about the Industry

Food is more than fuel for the body for you. Your social media stream is filled with photos of food (and you took most of them). You’re first to check out the latest restaurant and you have ideas to improve the experience every time you dine. You have a real excitement for the act of breaking bread that involves all five senses and delivers an experience. This is sign number one that you are long past being a secret foodie and well on your way to buy a restaurant.

Sign Number 2: You’re going nowhere fast in your current role

Are you feeling unfulfilled in your current role? Whether it’s filled with prepping someone else’s menu or handling another spreadsheet, life is too short to live unfulfilled. You keep waiting on the current guy in charge to leave but realistically, where does that leave you? For some, the 9-5 and reporting to someone else just isn’t for them. This is a sign you’re ready to head out on your own and potentially buy a restaurant.

Sign Number 3: You have a vision for something Bigger and want to see it Achieved

Some of the greatest minds of this century believed there was a bigger purpose to their life. Where would our lives be if Bill Gates was happy hanging out in college instead of dropping out to build what we know today as Microsoft? On the food level, imagine if Bobby Flay was happy as a chef and never saw the bigger vision of bringing food to the masses and joining a fledging start up network called “TV Food network” in 1993? Would we all be so smitten by the food industry without him?

Sign Number 4: You Aren’t afraid to take Risks

We often speak to college and university students as guest speakers on entrepreneurship. We always remind them to strike early in their career to try something risky. Take on the risk before you take on the mortgage and two kids or make sure you’re prepared for both the best and the worst. Those who are in the market to buy a restaurant have measured the risks and are still ready to go.

Sign Number 5: You Never Stop Thinking

If your creative juices don’t turn off, you might be a closet entrepreneur and not know it. Those who buy a restaurant are always trying to figure out the way to do it better, faster, smarter. If you’re experiencing this sign and living in corporate America, you’re feeling a bit of your soul get stifled each day. In your own business, you reap the reward for your ideas.

Sign Number 6: You Can Solve Problems Independently

You might be ready to buy a restaurant if you don’t need a team to resolve a problem. That’s a sign of independence that broadens your opportunities. Those ready to strike it alone, know that while a team is important, they can handle a challenge on their own. Group think is not a byproduct of the entrepreneurial spirit.

Sign Number 7: You are Driven

No one gets you moving. You don’t need three alarm clocks to open the day. You approach each knowing what must get done and relish in seeing it accomplished. This sense of self-motivation from within you inspires others. That’s a sign you may be ready to buy a restaurant instead of working in someone else’s.

Sign Number 8: You are Organized

Whether your skill set is front of the house or back of the house, you have the skills to organize the day’s work and the week’s calendar. That’s a critical skill for operating a business and a sign you’re ready to go.

Sign Number 9: You Know You Can Do It Better

You’ve been in the industry or been in the corporate world long enough to know that you can do better than your current situation. The wait times are unacceptable, or the hiring practices don’t work. You have ideas to get it right.

That means you can improve it for yourself and for those on your team. It’s not egotistical. It’s a sign you’re ready to buy a restaurant.

Sign Number 10: You Want to Build a Legacy

You want more for your family than you had growing up or you want to create something your family can participate in and grow together. That’s a sign that where you are will never get you where you want to be. You know you must build that legacy on your own and it’s a sign you’re ready to buy a restaurant.

Review your motivations, your yearnings and your thoughts over the past few months. If you’re exhibiting all these signs, it could be that you are indeed, ready to buy a restaurant.

Want to see our restaurant for sale listings? Check out this link for hundreds of opportunities waiting on you!

Robin Gagnon, Certified Restaurant Broker®, MBA, CBI, CFE is the co-founder of We Sell Restaurants and industry expert in restaurant sales and valuation. Named by Nation’s Restaurant News as one of the “Most Influential Suppliers and Vendors” to the restaurant industry, her articles and expertise appear nationwide in QSR Magazine, Franchising World, Forbes, Yahoo Finance, and BizBuySell. She is the co-author of Appetite for Acquisition, an award-winning book on buying restaurants.