Open a BBQ restaurant, they said. It will be fun, they said

Mikhail said:

Curious, though - how does this stack up with your business plan? Are expenses and volume running about where you thought they'd be?

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Volume is higher than expected, and costs are fairly in line with projections.

Labor is running right around 29% and food cost is kind of high at 37%. We're having a meeting this morning to discuss food costs. I think a few guys on meat during service are being a little heavy handed on portions.

Mikhail said:

Thanks for the update. It sounds like you are right on track - the harbinger of success. The food cost issue can likely be managed fairly easily. I would not bother weighing unless they are buying by the pound. It slows down the line and looks kind of tacky. The guys need to learn to eyeball it correctly.

As I said though, to be this close to your plan is excellent.

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Exactly, I have a scale on the line, but its very tight quarters in the kitchen and unless it's for catering or weighing out meats by the pound, it's not very practical for every single order when you've got a full dining room and a line for to-go orders.

But we've got the scale up there today and they are using it to get a better feel for what needs to go on sandwiches and platters. A little practice and they will be on target I'm sure.

In the meeting I explained that even just being one ounce heavy, times 140-200 covers a day, that could easily be 10 pounds of meat going out that shouldn't have, and that alone can drop food costs significantly... not to mention help keep us from selling out as early.

As a side note, we're already expanding even more. While we finished part of the basement to put in a prep kitchen, we're now finishing the rest of the basement to make a full catering kitchen. Equipped with ovens, more holding cabinets, steam table, another walk-in cooler, the whole nine. This project is turning into a behemoth.

SmokinAussie said:

Once you get this all set up are you going to turn and burn this place, or stick around for the long haul. You seem the kinda bloke who could do both.

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I'm sticking around. I love what I do and I love food. I can't picture doing anything else. I'd like to open up another one in a nice warm part of the country though, because I'm not a winter person though.

You know, I never posted any photos really of the new location so that you guys who aren't local can see what we're working with. So, here's what The Pig II looks like.



Here's the smoker out back. We had to build that platform so that the smoker could be right out the back kitchen door. Never seen a southern pride up in the air like that before!





Here's the dining room. Still waiting on some custom decor to be delivered and our bar should be finished in about a week. Seats around 54.





The incredibly small service kitchen. It's literally what you see there. One 6 ring range, a single fryer, steam table, and reach in cooler/meat station. Behind the meat station there are two CVAP holding boxes for all the BBQ. It's quite a dance on busy days when there are 3 or 4 of us in that tiny space :crazy:



Down in the basement is where most of our renovations were done. It was a completely unfinished basement but we made a decent sized prep area which is where all the butchering is done and bulk side prep is done.





Here's dry storage, which we weren't required to finish that part of the basement.



And finally, this is the back room of the basement, about 150 square feet. We just started the renovations for this room and we are going to finish it to work as a catering kitchen.We've got some equipment already moved in there like two more Winston CVAP boxes, a small steam table, and we're getting an oven installed and some more sinks. As you can guess from the picture of our kitchen above, imagine trying to feed a full dining room and push out catering for 100+ at the same time. Damn near impossible.

We are also putting in a second walk-in cooler downstairs as well for extra capacity and holding kegs for draft beer that's coming in a few weeks.



All in all, we're now north of $100k in the equipment and renovations. Slightly above initial budget, but we didn't anticipate needing to buy more equipment and finish so much of the basement so soon.

Hopefully this proves helpful for some of you and any questions feel free to fire away!

Well crap. Google photos sucks. I'll upload elsewhere and relink hold on.

Hopefully it's working now?