The Myth of Overnight Success in Hospitality

A while back, I wrote an article called “The Numbers Behind Running a Small Restaurant.” It’s the most-read piece on my site, and I’d like to think a few potential owners have read it, thought “f*ck this for a game of skittles,” and decided not to open their own restaurant.

The truth is, if you’re opening a restaurant to get rich, you’re probably doing it for the wrong reason.

At best you’re going to be comfortable. At worst, you’ve poured your savings into buying another job - a job with less pay, more hours, more responsibility, and more stress. It only takes a few minutes to register a limited company and hey, presto, you’re now technically a business owner!

But this is where most people get confused. There’s a huge difference between running a business (director) and owning a business (shareholder). Everyone thinks that owning a business means that you’ve got to be the one to take care of the day-to-day stuff - this couldn’t be further from the truth. If I buy shares in Ford, do I run the business? Hell no! But do I own it? Yes - I’ll own a small part of Ford. Does that mean that when I receive my dividends that I’m going to jump into the factory for a day to make sure everything’s ticking over? Not a chance- absolute chaos would ensue (it’d be fun for a couple of hours before security escorted me off the premises though).

Go and take a look at any post on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn that talks about the financial or operating side of the hospitality industry (pay particular attention to the posts that mention raising prices or advertising) and you’ll see a boat load of comments from individuals that say things like “all’s you need is good food at a reasonable price and people will come”. Unfortunately, this couldn’t be further from the truth (my mother-in-law makes good food and it doesn’t cost me anything when we go round but that doesn’t mean she’s going to open a restaurant), but we accept this premise as it’s logical and easy to follow.

Budding chefs start to think “hey! I can make good food, and I’m sure that I can sell it for less than the pub up the road!” But after 12 months of making a loss and still no sign of getting close to minimum wage, they often give up. So much more goes into running a successful hospitality business and it takes time. How much time? Well, that depends on how well you’ve planned out your path and what knowledge you already have of the hospitality industry.

To build a successful hospitality business, you need a good few things; dedication, an advertising budget, good staff, documented processes, a stellar finance function (*cough cough*), the right software, a great product, a USP (look at quite literally any successful brand and it’s often clear what their USP is), great service, and time. Yes, there are hospitality venues that seem to have overnight success- the reason we see so many of them on social media is more to do with algorithms than volume. A social media following does not necessarily mean success, and a large following does not mean that any success felt will continue.

The majority of companies that appear to have had overnight success actually spent years on their businesses before that viral moment hit. Sandwich Sandwich originally started in 2010, but it wasn’t until 2023 that the brand started to rapidly garner popularity when they were named as Uber Eats’ Restaurant of the Year followed by their strategic TikTok implementation in 2024.

Fourteen Years. Fourteen Years of blood, sweat, tears, setbacks, successes, and failures. Success both does and doesn’t happen overnight. Going from being unsuccessful to successful does happen overnight, but not in the way that you think. It takes years of trial and error until one day, something sort of “clicks” and you’ve got a little bit more money in the bank than you had the day before- it isn’t glamorous, but that’s pretty much how it happens. A lot of graft, and a lot of trials, until you find the thing that works for you. Then a little bit more time passes and something else just “clicks”, and then again and again, with the time between each “click” shortening after each one.

Don’t get me wrong, some people are better at this clicking thing than others. They almost seem to take to change like a duck to water - these people tend to get there quicker than others, but they’re also very dangerous people to work alone- they chop and change when they don’t like something, get bored, or decide that something is a bit too hard. These people need someone else in the background to be a little “pessimistically practical”- to tell them “No” from time to time or to help them to execute a good idea that’d otherwise get left behind with the other pile of good ideas that were never finished. These are Process people. Process people will on average almost certainly have more success than “Change” people, but it’ll take significantly longer for this success to materialise. They’re careful and cautious and they don’t like change. These people are more likely to succeed when they’ve got a fair amount of Capital behind them- they don’t usually have the risk appetite for quick change, and they don’t cope too well when a business needs to pivot instantly (Covid, recessions, crises).

Process people need Change people - and Change people need Process people. That balance is what turns chaos into consistency. Every “overnight success” you see online has probably been quietly clicking away for years. It’s not glamorous, but it’s real. And in hospitality, reality always wins in the end.