The importance of the restaurant business plan for startup | Case study alumni David Pareja.

David Pareja is an ex-student of the Postgraduate Program in Strategic Restaurant Management, entrepreneur of a chain of coffee shops with a concept that revolutionized the Ecuadorian market more than a year ago. Today, and after finishing his studies at the Culinary Institute of Barcelona, ​​David tells us everything he would have liked to know before setting up Prot Inn.

1. Where did the idea of ​​Prot Inn come from?
2. Problems starting a business
3. Learnings from starting a restaurant business
4. Things to know before starting a business

Where did the idea of ​​Prot Inn come from?

David is a certified sports nutritionist, and served people with nutritional counseling. He always ran into the same problem, he didn't have a referral site to recommend to his customers when they were looking for healthy options for eating sweets. This was a problem that even he had when he started in the world of fitness.

The options he had to recommend were medium-quality processed products for sale in supermarkets, but not an establishment where the user could approach and select a craving, being sure and confident that he was consuming a nutritionally adequate product. Prot Inn arises from this need, offering the market products that were rich, sweet and at the same time healthy.

What prompted David to take the step of starting Prot Inn was his previous experience in a food-related venture. Together with his partner, they created Be Nutrition, a web page from which the user was able to enter their personal data, medical conditions and nutritional needs, and obtained personalized and healthy menus at home.

Problems starting a restaurant

At the beginning, David began to make arrangements to open Prot Inn in Miami, but the opportunity arose to open his first branch in Samborondón, Guayaquil. He had to prepare the opening of the premises in a matter of two months, because if he did not take the premises at that time he would lose it. The main problems that arose at the time were:

1. He had the concept, but no plan developed for his Business Model
   The development of the business model is essential for the start of a business, since management problems can arise in both people, finances, communication or the day-to-day management of the company.
2. It didn't have a naming
   Giving a brand a name goes way beyond making it sound good or being catchy. The name can influence the positioning of the brand in the mind of the consumer, so this step is essential when creating a business.
3. It didn't have a Brand Identity
   Like the name, all the elements that accompany the brand, such as the color, the elements of the logo, the tone of voice of the brand, the type of images to be used or the messages it transmits, can create or destroy a business. This will be related to the type of customers that the brand will attract, which may not be the ones the brand expects if it is not communicating efficiently.
4. The menu and products were not designed
   Developing a menu and scandals for each of the dishes in a restaurant business is very delicate. If you don't know how to calculate the real profit or loss for each dish, product or service, the company and its employees may be working for fun. Or, conversely, by finding a suitable pricing strategy, profits can be exponentially maximized.
5. Lack of staff
   It is common that at the beginning of a company the number of collaborators is few, since the company sometimes prefers to invest in technology or marketing rather than in personnel. Finding a balance in the elements to invest is crucial to guarantee that all the pillars of the business work in the best way.

Learnings from starting a restaurant business

David went through many stages during the initial growth of the business that changed his vision of managing it. Despite acknowledging that he could have managed certain aspects of the company much better, he admits to having learned things along the way:

• Customer service:
  You understood the importance of customer service and how difficult it can be to have different types of customers. This led him to want to learn more about internal conflict management, customer complaint management, crisis measures, and other topics.
• Empathize with your own business and service:
  At the beginning, David worked at Prot Inn every day of the week from 7:30 am until 10:00 pm. This experience broadened his vision regarding the experiences of his employees, allowing him to empathize and adopt ad hoc measures to the style of business he was leading.
• Stock management:
  By not having studies of markets or any business plan before opening Prot Inn, it was almost impossible to foresee the demand that the cafeteria products would have. Once opened, David found himself many times with a lack of product and stock, finding himself needing to modify the logistics within the kitchens until he found the optimal formula under his growing demand.
• Digital Media Strategies:
  Part of the impact that had Prot Inn from the beginning, it was thanks to the campaigns he carried out with influencers from the fitness world, which helped him bring potential customers to his establishments. It is then that David understood that taking advantage of new technologies and marketing trends go beyond publishing attractive photos, and that the results can be measurable if the campaigns are well executed.

Things to know before starting a business

Despite having three stores in operation, as an entrepreneur he wanted to professionalize and scale his business. It was then when he was presented with the opportunity to open two more stores with a new partner under new requirements and needs that until now he had not contemplated.

At that time David decided to train in Restaurant Management , in order to master the knowledge and skills necessary to continue to lead your business more effectively. By studying, and experience the Postgraduate in Strategic Management of Restaurants , with a new foundation in restaurant management, he realized that there were factors, mistakes, processes and opportunities, that would have made their idea a more successful company, such as:

1. Human Resources Management
   Prot Inn, until the moment he did not have a Human Resources department, and was not paying attention to it. By taking the course, he understood the importance of the interview process, staff training, monitoring and evaluation of the performance of each team member.
2. Definition of values ​​and Development of the Company Culture
   The culture and vision of the business that is usually considered superficial in some companies, or that may have been created at the beginning of the project, is often forgotten and is not reflected in the daily practices of the business. Developing the company culture, implementing objective metrics and developing a strategy for their execution, helped David define the pillars on which to base decisions and actions for his business.
3. Digital Communication
   Thanks to the materials of digital communication, David knew how to give Prot Inn a voice, knowing how to define who, how and through which channels he should communicate to get closer to his potential customers and see results directly in the operating account.
4. Managing finances
   David studied Business Administration , and he was in charge of this area from the beginning in his endeavor, but he did not believe that financial specialization was going to be so necessary for the growth of his company. Having had a well structured and defined financial plan from the beginning, would have avoided unnecessary losses and made a difference in the success of Prot Inn.
5. Manual development
   What motivated David the most To be interested in the subject, it was that the partner who proposed to invest in the expansion of his business required them to be able to trust the company, guaranteeing that the management of this was as it should be. It means, then, that the importance of manual development lies not only in its creation but also in its implementation.
6. Empowering Creativity and Innovation & nbsp;
   The Creativity as a tool for solving problems and innovation as a tool to generate competitive advantages, acquire great relevance in a sector as competitive as the restaurant industry. The continuous practice of methodologies such as Desing Thinking to develop skills in creativity and applying innovation as a transversal axis in the postgraduate , allowed David to develop new competitive advantages, new opportunities and find solutions that have allowed him to enhance the products and services that Prot Inn offers to the market.