24/09/2024
Restaurant Concepts
It is not easy deciding on the restaurant concept.
There are many factors at play. For example, I have to consider what my competitors are doing/what’s in trend. Currently, it is fine dining (potager, dewakan, beta etc) in the news (although the trend seems to be slowing down- and it is really not my cup of tea) or charcoal/wood fire cooking or some exotic cuisine. But I have to consider my limitations - ie size of kitchen/equipment, available talent (unfortunately a lot of talent has left the country, or expect a very salary or are opening their own restaurants), our location (no walk by crowd, upstairs ie a dinner destination dining) etc.
Then there are the financial aspects. I have to work out my operation costs (rental, salary, utilities, maintenance etc) and divided it by my profit margin (ie food /beverage costs). Then I will have a break even point. My estimate for Ed’s Kitchen is rm160-180k sales per month. Say 180k/30 days that’s rm6,000 sales per day. 😬 in the current market that can be challenging. Then I divide that by my seating capacity (60 seats, assuming 70% full, 42 pax per day for dinner. I am assuming 0 for lunch though we should have some sales) ie approximately RM140 per head average spend. What sort of food/beverage must I sell to achieve that ? It used to be that people would have starters and main - but these days a lot of customers are sharing their food (cost concerns? Diet?) and people are also drinking less wine.
So after much deliberation and changing my mind numerous times I decided Ed’s Kitchen will be:
1. Named after me for branding purposes, so I can tell stories about the food. For example one of our starters is a Nourishing Soup of the Day (herbal chicken soup). As a Cantonese my grandmother used to serve us soup every meal and till today I love my Chinese soups. I thought it would be nice to have that in the menu.
2. Serving Malaysian cuisine. It is back to basics - comfort food that we all enjoy. But some dishes will have the “Ed touch” ie a slight twist. Yes fine dining /using those unusual ingredients is interesting - but how much truffle (which frankly doesn’t taste good) uni etc can you eat.
3. Individual serving well presented - this is to increase the value positioning ie I can price it higher. 😅
4. Use of good quality fresh ingredients eg grouper for our Assam pedas fish instead of more common stingray. All the sauces etc are also sauces that my family uses.
5. A small menu (which we will change regularly) because of my kitchen limitations, and potential full house 60pax x 2 courses.
6. Well priced wines to get people to open more bottles. 😅 I highly recommend our V***e du Vernay sparkling wine priced at RM179 per bottle or RM338 for 2 bottles which will go well with our food.
So guys I present to you our menu below. (Will probably be some minor further changes before we launch on Saturday ).
I hope this works. 😅🙏
