So, you want to start a quick-service restaurant? Good on you! Making your mark in the fast food industry is a bold thing to do.
As a helping hand, we have detailed key features you need to be aware of when opening a quick-service restaurant. Happy reading, and good luck!
What Is a Quick Service Restaurant
If you’re reading this article, there’s a high chance you know exactly what a quick-service restaurant (QSR) is. However, in case you don't, we're going to summarize.
A QSR is a dining experience that focuses on efficiency and getting the food to customers as quickly as possible. Most QSRs have limited, if any, seating. When we think of QSRs we think of drive-throughs, cheap, inexpensive meals, and franchises.
Types of Quick Service Restaurants
When we think of QSRs, we can separate them into different categories:
- Fast food chains: franchised brands that are popular across states and perhaps even countries. They are not known for table service or for sitting in and eating. Often, it is used mainly with delivery, drive-through, or takeaway.
- Fast casual restaurants/fast food restaurants: much like the above, the casual restaurant element might include decent inside seating which can enhance your dining experience.
- Drive-throughs: self-explanatory, a drive-through has no inside seating and works solely on quick service.
- Casual dining restaurants: tend not to be quick-service, but promote a more relaxed dining style.
- Dark kitchen: A dark kitchen is a fast-service restaurant that has low operating costs as there is no table service. They only prepare food for delivery. The food preparation, staff, and delivery costs are the only costs included in operating a dark kitchen.
From here, you can narrow down the type of quick-service restaurant you want. You could decide on a breakfast spot like Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, and Tim Hortons. Or you might be more drawn to a lunchtime/dinner spot like McDonald's, Burger King, Chick-fil-A, Chipotle, Taco Bell, and Wendy’s.
Why Open a QSR
Quick-service restaurants can be a huge and consistent source of income if done correctly. IBISWorld reported that the quick service restaurant industry was valued at $387.5bn in 2023. Similarly, Drive Research presents that up to 40% of Americans consume fast food, spending an average of $148 per month.
What we’re trying to get across here is that the fast food industry can be extremely lucrative. People always need to eat and they often enjoy eating quickly and cheaply. Â
Aim to franchise your brand successfully, pay your staff decent wages, and remain consistent with your food. You should be able to tap into the restaurant industry within a few years.
How to Open a Quick-Service Restaurant
Now, the real reason you’re here. Below we go into detail about the elements of a QSR and how to best approach the opening of a fast food restaurant. We also list a few risks and ways to overcome them at the bottom of the article.
Menu
Developing a menu for a QSR is critical. Competing with established brands and their expansive menus means you need to ensure that you are working with a focused menu.
Once you have franchised your brand, this will increase your chances of consistency across locations. Having a limited menu means that your food items should stand out.
For example, think of McDonald's: they have the famous Big Mac, Quarter Pounder, and McFlurry. The key feature of these menu items is the consistency of the meal across locations. As a manager, you need to be on top of your duties when it comes to consistency. The back-of-house operations of food in each store need to be carefully managed.
In saying this, when you design your menu for your QSR you want to keep it simple. Use food items that can be adapted to a variety of different meals. This way, your kitchen will be able to streamline the production of meals, and once franchised, the consistency will be visible.
The territory of a quick service restaurant oftentimes means you will be serving fast food. Entering into a very dense market saturated with fast-food restaurant chains means that your managerial skills need to be up to scratch. This is why we suggest having a simple menu at first: easy to manage, and easy to produce.
Once you have secured your spot in the market, then you can start branching out and doing limited edition menu items, and slowly expanding your menu.
Costs
Ah, money. A forever changing and increasing element to a business. The combination of rising costs of life with less time for the individual has made the quick-service restaurant industry very popular in recent years.
According to CBSNews, Americans have been spending almost 11% of their disposable income on eating, and not necessarily in fine dining restaurants. As a result of people having less and less disposable income to spend on full-service restaurants, they end up relying on drive-throughs and online ordering to feed themselves.
One of the reasons so many people are drawn to so many quick-service restaurants is because of the cost. The convenience of the meal is guaranteed – driving home from work, or from picking kids up, or getting off a late shift. Whatever it is, you can drive through a fast food chain, order, and eat your meal all within 10 minutes.
This means that the selling price of the meal needs to be low and that you also need to be covering costs. As a new QSR in a competitive industry, you will be on a tight budget. So don’t expect to be making lots of money in the first few years of opening your QSR, expect to break even.
Location
When opening a quick-service restaurant, you have to make some serious decisions about the desired outcome of the restaurant. We have compiled a few questions you should think through whilst on a location and site scout:
- Do you want table service?
- If yes, do you want a quick-service restaurant with limited table service? Or have slower service in a fine dining restaurant?
- Do you want a fast-casual restaurant?
- Do you want a drive-through?
- If yes, do you want a drive-through and inside seating?
Opening Hours
An important element to keep in mind during your location hunt is your proposed opening hours. Do you want your QSR to be operative 24/7? And if so, will your chosen location receive foot traffic at all hours of the day and night? Or, will the noise and lights of your operations be disturbing an otherwise peaceful suburban area?
Fast-casual restaurants tend to stay open 24/7, especially on the weekends if they’re located in a student or industrial area. Why? Because students go out clubbing and are hungry on their way home. People with manual labor jobs also tend to work early mornings and late nights and are usually not in the mood to cook for themselves.
For example, let’s say you open a pizza place in a trendy, downtown student area. Every weekend you’ve got people queuing at your door in the early hours from 2 – 5 am. Same story for people who work early or late shifts and want to grab dinner/breakfast on their way home.
The convenience of having a 24/7 QSR might play into your hands.
Delivery/Takeout
Depending on what you want from your quick service restaurant, delivery and takeout become a challenge.
Opting for a delivery service as a new restaurant might seem like a good idea to attract more customers, but in reality, you could be losing costs. If and when you branch out into home delivery orders, you have to consider the costs of using a delivery service or employing your own drivers.
Since online ordering has taken the restaurant industry by storm, you should also think about this element. For example, let’s say you don’t have the starting cash to open a full fast-food restaurant. We’re talking tables, chairs, and counters to order.
A dark kitchen is a good way to tap into the booming food delivery market while keeping your other costs low. In this case, you would be working closely with delivery companies to ensure that your customers are still getting fast service via delivery.
Branding
Branding branding branding! The key to making your name in the quick-service restaurant industry is to have unique branding.
When you’re developing your business plan, you need to create catchy branding. This includes logos, colors, shapes, and design elements. Branding becomes your brand identity. Once you have a recognizable brand identity with consistent food items, your success should skyrocket as you gain loyal customers.
Design
As a branding element, your design style should be representative of your QSR. Most restaurants, especially franchised restaurants, have a distinctive design style.
As a manager in the fast food industry, the way you maintain your store location becomes pivotal in its success. Whatever branding has been decided for the interior design of the restaurant becomes your duty to maintain. This means menus must be clean and up-to-date, any degrading or damaged interiors must be replaced, and the store always looks clean.
Going back to types of quick service restaurants, the design of your space also depends on the type of restaurant. You’re going to be designing a very different interior space if you want a casual atmosphere versus a drive-through restaurant.
Another key element that includes new technology is the self-service kiosk. Because QSRs place such high value on quick service, self-service kiosks may be a beneficial investment. However, they may force you to hire more back-of-house staff, so we recommend reading up on the pros and cons before purchasing. For example, a pro could be cutting labour costs which could increase profits. A con however, could lead to customer frustration and loss of customer loyalty.
Staff
Now when it comes to staffing, the first element we want to address is your role: the manager. Managing the day-to-day operations of a quick-service restaurant is directly linked to its success. Before you even get into hiring staff, we suggest going over your basic managerial functions.
Similarly, the way you serve customers, if you serve customers, must also remain consistent. Some fast food chains pride themselves on a specific type of server personality.
As a manager, you need to make sure your staff are well-trained, present well to your customers, and serve your food with professionalism. We tend to think it's a good idea to get your staff on a joint email chain and calendar to ensure clear communication.
Having a platform where everybody is connected also is a huge help when your location is holding an event. While you may have been using Perfect Venue to get the event perfect, you can also be using it for your fast food restaurants. By sharing a calendar and having an email chain set up, everyone can talk about the restaurant in an accessible way.
Marketing
Now that we’ve gone over the basics of how to set up a quick-service restaurant, you’re going to want to tell the world. How do you do that? Marketing.
As a manager, effectively marketing your new restaurant to customers can be very daunting. Starting from zero with no reputation or industry knowledge is scary.
One of the popular methods of gaining traction is to have a grand opening and host events. Marketing your grand opening via social media can be a great way to gain attention. You can also offer a discount on food, or collaborate with social media influencers to promote your brand online.
Hosting events for new restaurants is highly recommended. We suggest using an online management software system like Perfect Venue to help host your events, especially in the beginning stages.
Target Audience
When it comes to the target audience for a fast-food restaurant, you’ll need to do some location-specific research. As mentioned earlier in the opening hours section, you’ll need to be targeting certain demographics.
Perhaps look at your location-specific demographics – where is your store located and who frequents the area? Is there a lot of foot traffic or are you needing to market an online delivery service?
The Risks of Opening and Running a Quick Service Restaurant
The risks of opening a QSR fall into two categories: bad for you (owner/manager), and bad for the consumer.
It is a well-known fact that fast food is unhealthy. Pre-prepared food that is ready to eat within minutes indicates high levels of preservatives, amongst raised levels of sugar, salt, and saturated fats. As fast-food chains pride themselves on efficiency and speed, there is oftentimes no fresh food included in meals either.
Research shows that Americans over consume fast food. As a result of this, fast food chains are required to state caloric and nutritional information for each meal. However, this hasn’t necessarily deterred people from consuming fast food.
As someone interested in opening a QSR or fast-casual restaurant, we suggest devising a business plan that could incorporate a more nutrition-focused menu. This could also set you apart as a new player in the industry. Instead of focusing on convenience, you would market your brand to promote fresh and nutritious food.
Turning to the risks you run as owner/manager, two major risks work in tandem: breaking into a highly saturated and over-populated industry, and costs.
Making your name in the fast-food restaurant industry in today's world is hard. You will be competing with well-established, big-brand conglomerates like Burger King, McDonalds, Taco Bell, and Starbucks, just to name a few.
Think of it from the consumer perspective: why would I try a new burger joint when I know I will get the flavor, convenience, and low price of a Quarter Pounder? This is why we suggest drawing up menus to stand apart from the rest.
As a result of joining a dense industry, you are more than likely going to be throwing money at your business for the first while. Keep an eye on projected sales and income, and if you have found a sweet spot with your brand keep persevering and it should pay off.
Conclusion
So, if you’ve been considering opening up a quick-service restaurant, you now have all the tools to do so now.
As a manager, starting in a new location and store can get overwhelming. If you ever feel like you’re struggling, we highly recommend using an online software system such as Perfect Venue. Perfect Venue helps streamline your online communication via email, syncs calendars, and collates all your information into one place.
Perfect Venue also has a blog in which they write about all things industry and management. Before heading into your new job as a quick-service restaurant manager, it might be beneficial to read through some articles.
