1. QUALITY
This is the first and last requirement of any restaurant. Before anything else happens; before you open the doors; before the open sign is turned on; you have to first and foremost know with every fiber of your being that everything you make and everything you do is the highest quality to be found anywhere. Every dish you offer should be great! Every aspect of your service should be great! The cleanliness of your restaurant should be great! Your brand and the image you portray should be great! Even the culture within your business should be great! Don't settle for mediocre quality in any aspect of your restaurant business and always strive to improve that quality. Check with your restaurant analytics software to determine how well received you products and services are so that you can make the necessary changes.
2. CONSISTENCY
Once you've established great quality in everything you do, it's imperative that you maintain that quality in a consistent manner. Those great dishes need to come out with exactly the same level of quality time and time again. The timing of those dishes needs to be precise and never change. The restaurant needs to be spotless at all times. When you get hit and the rush is on, IMPROVE on your quality. Don't let the bathrooms get dirty when it gets busy. Don't let the food come out slower when it's busy or, worse yet, when only a few customers are in the restaurant. And don't let one cook or bartender make an item different from the next. Customers need to know that they can always expect quality from you; and, hopefully have those expectations met or exceeded every time. Maintain the same products and services with the same great quality at all times. Maintaining proper systems and training is the key to ensuring great consistency.
3. VISIBILITY
Obviously, no matter how great your quality and consistency are; if people aren't walking in the door, the success of your restaurant will be suspect. So in order to get people in the door, you have to have consistent visibility. A great online presence like a web page and social media profiles will help make your restaurant brand discoverable. Maintain good reviews (here's that quality and consistency thing) to help drive local and mobile search rankings and impress would be customers. Improve direct business to customer communications with the use of a CRM, email campaigns and SMS or social media to drive positive conversations about your restaurant. Create good community relationships and promote local events and charities to improve your brand's appeal. And pursue public relations angles so that you can maximize any opportunities to be talked about and seen in a public forum. Just like in physics, "a body in motion stays in motion," so make certain you maintain the same level of consistency with your restaurant marketing efforts as you do with everything else.
4. MONEY MANAGEMENT
Factors 1-3 have a lot more to do with sales than anything else and, ultimately, without sales your restaurant would not be successful. But once we've established a good level of sales, it's beyond imperative that you manage your money. It should go without saying that if you spend more money than you make, you success level in nil. You might not even be open for long. It is unfortunate that too many restaurants fall into the trap of believing that sales drive their success. This is still a business after all and the name of the game is profits; and restaurant have notoriously slim profit margins. Make absolutely certain that you are doing predictions and creating budgets. Make double certain that you check and tweak those budgets and predictions to ensure there's always change in the register, tip out cash in the safe and rainy day money in the bank. Don't get caught assuming that, just because you have good sales, that you will make money at the end of the year. Track your COGS (cost of goods sold) and budget your ordering. Track your payroll and budget your scheduling. Track you back office expenditures and budget your restaurant expenses. Make sure you know IN ADVANCE that you will make more money than you spend. That is the ultimate way to gauge the level of your restaurant's success.