On Jul 30, 7:26 am, ImStillMags > wrote:
> I have a question for this group.
>
> I'm asking because I have three separate business plans and three
> separate concepts done for restaurants. Most of you know I've been a
> restaurant owner. The food business is my first love.
>
> I'm interested to hear from you, fellow foodies, about your thoughts
> on what constitutes 'your favorite place'.
> [snip]

It varies a lot but on average we eat out once a week for lunch, once
a week for dinner, never for breakfast except on road trips. About
every fifth time--or maybe less often than that--we'll try a new
place. New places come from reading restaurant reviews, personal
recommendations from friends, and internet searches. A good web page
that includes the menu can help. The rest are repeat business. We do
not go to fast food places or chains. Why do we return to the places
we do? The food. We like the food of many ethnicities (including
various 'fusions') and over time have developed our favorite places
for Chinese, Chilean, French, Italian, Cuban, Mexican, etc. What
makes them our favorites? The food.

Well prepared and tasty (and promptly delivered) matters more than
"authentic" to us. Variety on the menu helps, as we like finding new
things. "New, innovative" don't matter much, but we don't go out for
food I can easily produce at home.

Service is important but more as a negative feature. We don't choose
a restaurant because the service is extraordinary but we'll veto a
restaurant for bad service.

Atmosphere/ambience matters as to the choice on a particular night.
That is, the kind of place it is fits our mood that night, but we have
many moods. Sometimes we want fancy, sometimes plain; sometimes
inexpensive, sometimes pricey is okay; sometimes loud (but not too),
sometimes quiet. Always we want good food.

As to price, we will often try lunch first at an expensive place. If
we like it, we may then try dinner.

We tend to go more often to closer places rather than distant ones but
this is L.A., which means we have an incredibly diverse selection to
choose from and we are used to driving. Some of our favorite places
are worth a long drive.

I hope your business plans include due consideration of the reason(s)
why your previous venture failed. Being realistic about that is
probably difficult, but I would guess it's important. -aem