What’s a Restaurateur?

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Restaurateur, also spelled restauranteur, refers to any restaurant owner, whether an investor, manager, or qualified chef. Novice restaurateurs face a 60% failure rate in their first year, but success is possible with a budget, vision, and bravery. Famous chefs like Wolfgang Puck and Gordon Ramsay have also become successful restaurateurs.

Restaurateur is the French-inspired name for a restaurant owner. The word is usually spelled restauranteur. While restaurateur is considered more correct, the common usage of restauranteur means that it is not entirely incorrect and both terms are used in the culinary world.

The novice restaurateur is someone with a budget, a vision, and a certain amount of bravery. It used to be often quoted that restaurants had a 90% failure rate in the first year. Actual studies of this find this exaggerated, and the statistic for failure is at approximately 60%. This is still a big risk when going into a business; people are more likely to fail than to succeed. Any available budget can take too long, and any vision of fantastic food could be a nightmare before the end of the year. However, there is always that chance of success when people are willing to risk the investment.

These scary statistics don’t stop people from entering the field as restaurateurs, and restaurant owners can come from very varied backgrounds. One could own a restaurant with very little involvement. They could essentially be funding other people’s creativity because they consider it a profitable concern. Occasionally, a celebrity will become the owner of a restaurant, and the main draw will be the celebrity’s name attached to the restaurant.

Alternatively, the store owner may have worked in several restaurants with different capacities and thinks he knows how to run one. Some come to this business with a lot of training, including studies at hotel and restaurant management schools. They can actively manage the restaurant, hire chefs and other staff, and plan every aspect of it. Those who have a great sense of how to provide wonderful food and excellent service can be very successful.

Another type of restaurateur is the chef/owner. When chefs start to establish a reputation for cooking in other people’s kitchens, they can dream of having their own place where they respond only to their own vision of how food should be created. Some chefs have done extremely well in this capacity and the likes of Wolfgang Puck, Gordon Ramsay and Emeril Lagasse may come up. Very famous chefs may not own one restaurant but several, or they may be lesser known but have a great local restaurant.

While the use of restaurateur seems to imply only high-end restaurants, it really means any restaurant owner, whether uninvolved investor, manager or qualified chef. The owner of the local grill is as much a restaurateur as the owner of ten fancy restaurants in big cities. Also, no matter how fancy or simple the menu and location, each of these professionals took that initial plunge, risked their investment, and hoped to be among the 40% who made it last year.




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