#1 - Starting a business in the Community

“An existing Mediterranean restaurant was purchased for $30,000 and an additional $35,000 was invested remodeling the restaurant to transform it to Simi’s Restaurant.”

We had a discussion with Funmi Johnson, owner of Simi’s Restaurant based in Chicago, IL. Funmi is in the process of launching a new venture Simi & Temi, an offspring of the restaurant.

Interview Takeaways

When starting Simi’s Restaurant, a decision was made to buy an existing restaurant and modify it which was more efficient and cost effective than building a new restaurant from scratch
Through market research they learned that the most important attributes for African professionals when it came to restaurants were: Taste, Customer Service and Price. Here are results of a survey taken by Africans between ages 22 and 45.
They later developed a high level business plan for the restaurant: Simi’s Restaurant Business Plan
An existing Mediterranean restaurant was purchased for $30,000 and an additional $35,000 was invested remodeling the restaurant to transform it to Simi’s Restaurant. Below is the breakdown of the start up cost:

Restaurant opened during dinner hours and weekends and experienced an annual revenue of approximately $250,000. In October 2018, the restaurant decided to pivot towards catering and events because those services were more profitable.
One of the challenges the restaurant faced: The restaurant used to run out of popular item on the menu, Ayamase (ofada stew). Ayamase is typically labor intensive and a time consuming item to make, as a result, the restaurant was unable to keep up with the customer demand and consistently ran out. This forced Funmi to develop a new product mix to make ayamase at the restaurant. The mix has been used for over a year at the restaurant and it reduced the time spent making ayamase from 2 hours to 30 minutes. As a result, Funmi is looking to slowly transition the business from a restaurant to a product manufacturing operation.