How to Open a New Indianapolis BBQ Restaurant


You’ve got your business plan prepared, a good location scouted, a menu is in the works, a good meat supplier at the ready, and all the financials are lining up. What else could you be missing to open a new Indianapolis BBQ restaurant?

With that in mind, here are five tips from experienced barbecue restaurateurs that could help you avoid a major pitfall.

Location is important, but funding is critical
Rick Morris had been in the restaurant business for years before he opened Bubba’s BBQ & Bash in 2008 in Spartanburg, S.C. He and his business partner had been running a catering company when they were asked to cater a barbecue, and things grew from there.

Make sure you have the right location for the Indianapolis BBQ restaurant; you need to have visibility and don’t need to be off the beaten path. You need to have the funds up front to be able to maintain at least a solid year of overhead. If you don’t have those, you aren’t going to make it.

The devil is in the details
First is that there is no task so simple that it can’t be done wrong. When you’re training restaurant staff to do a job, you can assume nothing. And related to that is the fact that it is not always obvious to an employee how a deviation from procedure will impact product quality. I’m sure this is true in all businesses, but I think it is particularly true of barbecue.

Choose hard work over taking on debt
We know, easier said than done, right? But if you dig yourself a hole by financing much of your start-ups costs, you’re going to be forever playing catch-up. That’s exactly what Cory and Tarra Davis wanted to avoid, so they started small, with a catering and food truck outlet called Daddy Pete’s BBQ. The couple spent several years saving profits from their food truck and scouting locations before the right brick-and-mortar spot came available.

When we started the food truck, our goal was to remain debt free. We didn’t have a pre-existing restaurant and had different careers, so banks weren’t jumping out of the gates wanting to fund us. If this is what we want to do, we’ll do what we have to do to make that happen.

Start small and grow the business
You have so many great ideas for Indianapolis BBQ restaurant, and it might be tempting to launch them all at once. But there’s always the risk of spreading yourself thin. So focus on one aspect of the business and get it right before shifting your attention to another area. Sell barbecue for three months before adding bakery items (if you want to), and waited even longer before renovating the second floor of his building to add a private dining and catering room.

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