Four years ago, I abandoned this blog along and temporarily abandoned my ambitions to open a restaurant. I wasn't ready. It was great to get some of my ideas on paper, but I just wasn't ready at that point in my life to commit fully to my goals. Honestly, I'm not even 100% sure I'm ready now! But I'm commiting one hour a day towards it for now - we'll see where I'm at in a few months.
With four years of additional restaurant and life experience since my last blog post, I have some new ideas and a more matured vision of the restaurant I'd like to open. And I've realized that this isn't something I want to do by myself.
I'm strongly contemplating founding/opening a worker-owned restaurant. The structure would likely involve workers accumullating sweat equity which can result in a small ownership share after each year on employment, with opportunity to purchase a larger share by buying into the restaurant (money which would go towards paying back capital investors) upon that time as well.
I don't have an MBA and I'm not a lawyer, so I uncertain how a worker-owned restaurant would work from a business/ownership perspective, from pre-opening to opening to evolution of ownership share over time. It's something that I would need significant advisement from others to convert from good idea to well-planned, well-documented, working reality.
My current contemplation is this - as Founding Owner, do I reach out to the people I know who might be interested in working at a place like this and involve them in the process from the start, from conception? Should I recruit for staff this early in the process, and if I find someone(s) who wants to be involved pre-opening, should their efforts result in small ownership share from the start? What kind of efforts and/or commitment should result in ownership?
I don't know exactly, but for now I'll be putting my ideas down here for the restaurant I dream of in hopes that other progressively-minded restaurant people who think similarly and want to be involved or work there will join me in creating something special.
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