Anyone who likes cooking and eating out must have considered at least once about opening their own restaurant. It sounds like a fantastic business, everyone has to eat right? A cup of coffee that costs little to make, can sell for a few bucks. A beer or bottle of wine can be sold five times the cost price. Your friends all tell you that you are a great cook and you should open your own restaurant.

You imagine how much fun it would be hanging out with your friends in your own restaurant or bar.

So what's holding you back? Here are some things you might want to think about before you go ahead with your plans of opening your own restaurant or cafe - five myths of opening a restaurant, bar or cafe.

Your friends and family are being nice. Sure they happy to get a free feed when they visit your house, but are paying customers going to react the same way if their steak is over cooked when they asked for medium rare. While you can cook things however you like when you are at home, in a restaurant people have a certain expectation as to how something is supposed to look and taste.

You are going to experience some good times and some bad, but your costs of running a restaurant will not change, ie. your fixed costs. Even if you have a bad month in the restaurant, unfortunately your landlord is not going to reduce the rent.

You have staff wages to pay and there is the cost of ingredients, electricity, gas, insurance, the list goes on. There are a number of set up costs like kitchen equipment, chairs, tables, cuttlery, interior decoration, business licences and certificates. You will also need to have a fair bit of savings to fall back on while you are still setting up the restaurant, as you take the time to build a following of loyal customers.

To run a successful bar or restaurant you need to be open 6 or 7 days a week, serving lunches and dinners and maybe even late night suppers.  If you have a group of people eating and drinking past your closing time, are you going to kick them out because you want to go home? 

While your other friends and family are out enjoying their holidays, you will be working or at least you will be somewhere close to your restaurant.  Running a restaurant involves extremely long hours, no matter how good your manager or staff are.  The success of the place will be directly related to how much effort you put into running the place.

Yes, your friends and family will come to the opening night party, but will they keep coming back every night for dinner?  You can't rely on your friends to make up any portion of your income. 

Your friends might not stay your friends for very long if you only agree to meet them in your restaurant.

Everyone dreams of fame and success.  There are thousands of chefs and cooks around the world, thousands of talented and highly trained executive chefs that are unknown outside of their own circle, so how do you think you and your restaurant are going to magically become famous? 

Running and opening a new restaurant requires special skills that can only be learnt from experience.  A restaurant failure can be an expensive lesson.  If there is one thing which successful restaurant operators have in common is that they are extremely hard workers.  There are no short cuts in the food business.