Finalizing Competitive Analysis

Okay now that we have: demographics, general competitive analysis within a reasonable radius (depending upon restaurant density this can be anywhere from 1 mile to 5 miles), and a specific cuisine in mind, you can begin carving out your niche.

Now this is where you begin making basic assumptions based upon data provided by accredited sources. Using Kinsai as our template let's take a deeper look into creating a niche--this is assuming you are not creating a 'all things for all people' restaurant', if you are then creating a restaurant is significantly easier (sell a few 'gourmet' burgers on brioche bun, have a 'local' and 'artisinal' beer selection, maybe a few mid-range whiskeys, a 'blackened' protein with Caesar salad and boom).

Let's start with our cuisine and determine similar restaurants in the area, then branch out and determine similar restaurants within the greater Boston metro area. However this is where you cull restaurants that may share the same cuisine but are in a different tier (if you are opening a high end Bistro you wouldn't list Au Bon Pain as competition simply because they have a French name).

Blue Dragon
Blue Ginger
Empire
Mei Mei Street Kitchen (not the food truck)
Meyers and Chang
Red Lantern

So after looking at these restaurants we can make the following price assumptions based upon their menus and check averages, which involves getting their menus in person, eating both lunch and dinner on different days. So let's say you give yourself a budget of $500.00 for research--don't forget to save the receipts as a business expense!

Lunch: $9.00-$16.00 (assuming one entree, 0.25% appetizer, 0.1% a beverage)
Dinner: $35.00 - $44.00 (assuming one entree, 0.5% appetizer, 0.2% dessert, and 0.2% a beverage)

With those assumptions we can put a tentative goal of--these numbers will change depending upon your location and reputation:

Luncheon Per Person: $13.00
Dinner Per Person: $40.00

Now with those numbers we can do some general numbers to estimate opening costs, profit, ROI. The average restaurant size you will encounter is between 2500 ft2 - 3500 ft2. For all intensive purposes let's go for 3500ft2 as a general number. We are going to stop here for now and on Monday before we go any further we should learn some basic terminology.