Is gastronomy an exercise that will challenge the skills of experienced strategists?

To run a restaurant is a game of strategy as well, although the implications of victory and defeat on this board are often much more complex than the most trivial game.

Like a chess player, the restaurant owner has at hand a palette of chess pieces (tools) designed to fill different purposes and which he must combine wisely to achieve his goal.

Moreover, and to the detriment of the consideration given to the Science Game: while in chess the goal is simply to defeat in a limited period of time an opponent who at the beginning has the same amount of tools, the owner of a restaurant must seek profitability on a stage far more rugged than 64 squares, facing an unknown number of competitors. These competitors all have different tools and resources at hand.

Kasparov does not look so tough anymore. Huh?

In the conformation of his proposal, the owner must combine not only tools, but even strategies, each with several elements to be used, such as marketing or food processing mechanisms.  

In such a complex scenario, it is always useful not to lose sight of things and to avoid being diluted in tactical day-to-day affairs, for this might reduce our ability to identify threats, opportunities, and our own strengths and weaknesses.

A guide and an effective prism to interpret the true implication of each event, could come from the enunciation of a simplified scheme of its activity. A kind of pyramid could be a rough image:

At the top is the ultimate goal: profit. These are obtained by selling a product to consumers at a price higher than the cost of production. Hence, to make the sale you must have a product whose production should be as economical as possible. You must also have as many customers as possible and induce them to consume as much as possible.

This results in all the elements that contribute to produce the product and attract customers and the interrelationships between both elements increasing almost infinitely the complexity of the matter. However, the backbone, so to speak, the center of his game and the motive of all his plays are here:

• You need tomakea product asdiverse andcompetitive as possible.
• You need to attractas many customersaspossiblewithin the market segmentof your choice.

This may seem a well known truth, on which to scribble new pages it’s unnecessary. However, reality suggests that anyone who goes into this business should repeat himself so obvious truths every morning before getting to work.

It is from these premises from which he must interpret all things faced in day to day, from the composition of its Income Statement, to the promotion proposals received.