Know What You Don't Know

Yeah seriously. But not everyone is aware that this is the first thing he/she should be aware of.

"WTH? You mean, I should know what I don't know?"

Yes that's right, by definition, first time doers lack knowledge and experience. In fact, even experienced restaurant operators continue to learn all the time. Nonstop.

So for first time pho restaurant owners, awareness of your own limitations is critical. You want to know as early as possible what need to be done, when and how, so you can plan for it, budget for it, then do it at the right time and do it right the first time.

How does this help keep your cost down? Well, in a few words:

Knowledge = Planning = Reduced Mistakes = Efficiency = Time = Money.

In other words, things cost more 1) when you don't know that you needed to do them, 2) when you didn't plan or budget for them, 3) when you make mistakes especially those that are avoidable, 4) when you don't execute things the best possible ways under given circumstances, 5) when you don't do them at the right time, and 6) when you don't do them right the first time.

Have A Solid And Realistic Business Plan

This can't be said often enough, but many pho restaurant owners-to-be do not create a business plan. Many think they don't need one. Aside from the fact that the business plan represents your planning and budgeting, it is actually the time you learn what you don't know and start asking the right questions and to search for answers. For tips on pho restaurant business plan, you can read the series starting with Pho Restaurant Business Plan, Part 1.

Understand Your Market And Customer Service

Even though you open your doors to everyone, not everyone will come and eat at your pho restaurant. Only a small segment of the population will find their ways to your door, and an even smaller number will decide to come back. In an area of 1 mile, 3 miles or even 5 miles radius surrounding your business, who will decide to come and at what time? Turning it around the other way, the question becomes: what type of customers do you really want to attract and frequent your restaurant? This may seem too abstract to quantify and design for, but it can be done and is done frequently by those who know they need to identify their market and design their service to attract those exact people. Why would someone open a restaurant without knowing what customers they intend to serve?

Negotiate The Best Lease

Quick question: Once you open, what is one of the biggest costs of your pho restaurant operation that you can't control?

Well it's not a trick question. It's the lease of course.

The problem is, not many realize this until after they open. And many never realize it even after they close their doors prematurely. Reality is they've already made the choice to pay this cost long before the first customer walks in the door. In fact, for many who contacted me for consulting service, the lease has been signed before they even know what they'll have on their menu, who the customers will be, what concept they will serve, and what revenue and profit they will make.

To put it simply, restaurants have controllable costs and uncontrollable costs. I will discuss controllable and uncontrollable costs in a future post, but suffice it to say, the lease that you pay monthly to your landlord, once signed, will not change for years. It will not change for the duration of your restaurant's life at this location, whatever the terms of your lease are. A lease can be good or bad depending on many things, and for this reason alone, you'd want the best deal for your concept at a particular location and make sure it's a good lease.

The bottom line is, why sign the lease before anything else? Why not negotiate and sign the "best" lease you can after you have a business plan and have a clear idea of what you want to achieve?

Keep Design And Buildout Costs Low

This may sound like another obvious statement. The fact is, total cost to open a pho restaurant is made up of many components. Design and buildout (or construction) costs just happen to be 2 of the biggest cost components before you open. Since this is the case, watching closely your design and buildout costs is an absolute must.

It's important to recognize what phases you are in during the process of opening the restaurant. Viewed at a high level, common and major phases include concept definition, design, construction, pre-opening, opening, post-opening, and operation. Each phase has its own timetable. The design phase starts with your concept and menu, and defines nearly all aspects of your restaurant operation before the buildout phase. Design can overlap with the buildout in almost all cases. The trick is to minimize design changes after construction has started, and/or put project management in place to control any negative impact one has on the other.

Preparation, Discipline, And Flexibility

Last but definitely not least, the owner/entrepreneur needs to possess excellent preparation skills, strict discipline with total flexibility to deal with challenges and hurdles normally encountered when building a restaurant. It's all about the knowledge and attitude of the owner. The success of the new pho restaurant depends on its owner first and foremost, and the owner's leadership must be clear from day one. So be prepared, have discipline, be flexible, all while never lose track of your concept's goals.

Obviously opening a new restaurant requires a lot more than doing just the aforementioned things. However, if you do these things right, then you'd have done the 20% that will benefit 80% of your new business. In so doing, you'd be positioned for a very high probability of success.

Leave a comment or question below if you have feedback about this post or any other posts.

Original posted date 09-13-18.
Updated 02-19-19.

Updated 04-23-23. It's a question aspiring pho restaurateurs in North America often ask me.

This is just like asking: "How much does it cost to custom build a car?" without specifying what you want in the new car, what it looks like, what you want to use it for, and how you will use it. Without sufficient detail, all you'll get is a generic ballpark number that's not very useful. Oftentimes a quick answer with no context is a meaningless answer.

For those with just a casual curiosity, I can tell you right now and you can save time and skip the rest of this post: It will cost in the neighborhood of $50K (maybe, and if you're extremely lucky) to more than $400K or higher (depends on what you want in your concept).

For those more serious entrepreneurs, please read on for the good stuff.

What's The Cost? Simple Question With Not So Simple Answer

The question is simple. Fact is, the answer is not. But there are ways to get to the cost.

If someone gives you a number as soon as you finish your question (which is essentially what you're looking for by asking just this question), then you should take it with a big grain of salt. Because 100% of the time, that person is giving you a number that is not applicable to your situation.

At a minimum, the cost to open a pho restaurant depends on a number of factors:

• The location of your market (the neighborhood, demographics, age of the building, what's already built in the space versus what you need to install, etc.)
• The concept of your restaurant (how you brand yourself, how you serve your customers: fast food style, full table service/fine dining style, or somewhere in between, etc.)
• How much you will depend on modern kitchen equipment to improve customer service and compensate for (or even eliminate) kitchen labor costs (using time-saving full-featured modern equipment and tools, automated dishwashing machines, prep tools and cooking equipment for large volume production, cooling equipment and tools, etc.)
• How much you focus on providing memorable and unique experience for your customers (bare-bone dining room vs. full ambiance, character, sights and sounds)
• Your menu (how many items, whether the items have common ingredients and similar prep procedures, level of difficulty to prepare them, etc.)
• Your process, training and procedure (do you have the facility for properly storing, moving your foods, and training, preparing, serving, etc.)

Think About What You Want To do: Some Important Considerations

In order to get a better and more accurate cost-to-open figure, you will want to think a little more about what you want to do. Here are some important considerations to help you develop a better estimate for your new pho restaurant.

• A new pho restaurant can be built in two ways. One, you find an existing restaurant, acquire it, modify/improve on it, then open for business. Two, you build from scratch, putting in everything needed to open for business. There are pros and cons whether you choose one or the other.
• At the lower end of the spectrum, it can be less than $100K if you can find an existing space that has been previously used as a restaurant, preferably Asian and sometime more specifically, Chinese or Vietnamese or even Thai restaurant. This means the space should already have some kind of ventilation hood system and grease traps in place, plus possibly usable equipment already installed. The good thing about this option is lower initial cash outlay, but you'll be limited by what's already there, and you may run into the exact problem why the previous business failed in the same spot. More often than not, stuff that are already there do not meet your own requirements and it's time to spend more money to remodel to what you really need.
• At the other end of the spectrum, the sky is really the limit, but a typical range of $250K to more than $400K is the norm depending on concept and location. In this scenario, most everything will be newly installed during the buildout to get the restaurant to a functional state, even with used instead of shiny new equipment. This option is obviously more expensive and require more work and time, but you get the exact pho restaurant needed to achieve your process, procedures and most importantly, your financial goals.

So what's the answer? Well, nobody says restaurant business is easy. An aspiring pho restaurateur should spend the proper time developing as clearly as possible what her concept should be, then learn how to integrate everything to make it happen. Cost estimate, recipe development, cooking procedures and operational concept are all important first steps as you ask the question "How much does it cost to open MY pho restaurant?"

The Two Key Factors: Planning and Execution

Accurate cost estimate to open a pho restaurant rests on the following factors:

1. Planning: Create a business plan and pro forma and update them as you go. At the very least, a pro forma should be developed and updated regularly throughout the development of your design and buildout cycle. If you're not willing to spend the time to do a pro forma for your business, I'm not sure you're really cut out for this business later on, because it will get harder and you'll need numbers to help you make good decisions. A pro forma is the exact tool to help you with numbers, among other things that it can do for you. A pro forma will tell you how much your pho restaurant will cost to open, and how much it will cost to operate after opening.
2. Execution: Minimize the cost of making mistakes as you build and run the pho restaurant. Many pho restaurant owners, and of restaurants in general, fail because they fly by the seat of their pants as they make amateurish mistakes. A few get lucky, but many don't. The vast majority of pho restaurant operators are "self-taught" and make costly mistakes as they learn to do things. The cost of making mistakes should be included in answering the question "how much does it cost". By my own estimate, this number can range from 10% to 30% of your pro forma estimate, sometime higher.

There are only two types of restaurateurs who don't need to worry about both items 1. and 2. above.

The first are those who are experienced at what they do or know what they don't know, and spend the time to search for answers to guide their decision and action. Whether they teach themselves or receive guidance from a knowledgeable friend or family member, or a pho restaurant consultant, the net result is they learn to work and know the numbers like the back of their hands, and they learn how to avoid making costly mistakes. And if they do make mistakes, they know how and are willing to find help to fix the mistakes. The problem is, to the untrained eyes, these people are "lucky" and if they can do it, anyone can too.

And that's a dangerous assumption, which leads to the second type of restaurateurs, those who count on pure luck to succeed. They skip one or both of 1. and 2. And when they don't succeed, they chalk it up as another "bad luck" or "market not right" or other excuse. They may as well play roulette with their money in Vegas where they will do much less work and have much more fun losing their money.

Getting to the Real Cost to Build and Open a Pho Restaurant

In all seriousness, in order to determine the cost of open your pho restaurant, you should do both 1. and 2. above. It's like this:

• Planning = Defining and developing your concept, and creating and maintaining an accurate pro forma to guide you.
• Execution = Follow your plan and be nimble to adjust and improve in order to minimize costly mistakes throughout the construction and operation phases.

By working out your costs systematically using a pro forma as a tool, and updating it regularly, and then minimizing mistakes as you go, you can keep your cost as close as possible to your pro forma numbers. This is exactly what you want to do.

If you don't do this, then the cost to build and open your pho restaurant will be whatever plus whatever, add to that some more whatever you didn't know you need, then finally add the cost of the mistakes that you didn't know you will make.

Original posted date 08-23-14.
Updated 02-18-19.

Existing Pho Menu - Too Many Choices

Too Many Unnecessary Choices

Starting in North Vietnam, Pho Bac or Northern Pho is pretty much available at street vendors as a single dish. Once brought to the South in 1945, pho took on more elaborate form with many options of meat and garnishes added. Pho restaurants in the South present customers with a menu that include all combination and permutation possible of the same pho bowl. Forty five years later the same practice continues, as it migrated with Viet immigrants to all corners of the globe.

Looking at the pho restaurant market, there are really only 2 groups of pho customers: one already knows pho, the other does not.

The fact is, when ordering pho, Vietnamese and many many non-Viet diners do not need to look at the menu. On rare occasions, he/she (more likely a she through my observations) may want something else for that meal, thus he/she wants to look at the pho menu. But for the vast majority of us, we know what we're there for.

Much Improved, More Simplification Still Needed, Pho Hoa Franchise Menu Page 3

The Trouble With Current Pho Menus

So what's the real problem? Considering the non-Viet clientele and those new to pho, let's start with these:

• Too many choices. Too many combinations and permutations of the same thing as already described above.
• Unfamiliar ingredients and terminologies. Let's face it, pho is ethnic food outside of Vietnam, definitely in the U.S. Facing the challenge of conveying pho and its ingredients in English terms, early Viet immigrants did okay by strictly translating ingredients. At times these translations are a little too literally and may not be suitable for menu use.
• Culturally "unconventional," odd, strange and scary meat parts. Many meat ingredients in pho are nonexistent on an American or Western dinner plate. When you talk about diners taking a "risk" to try the tendon, tripe, etc., you pretty much just created an obstacle in helping pho expand in popularity.
• Lack of explanation on proper use of garnishes. Thai basil, culantro and bean sprouts are important pho experiences, along with the chili sauce and hoisin sauce for pho. "Foreign" diners are left on their own to figure these out by themselves.
• Missing chicken meat choices for chicken pho. Beef pho is the king of pho, but chicken pho is very good too. On most menus chicken pho may be mentioned as a single item. This is true even for restaurants well known for their chicken pho! What more, that single chicken pho item is listed as the last item under the beef pho menu. Pho restaurants in the U.S. are missing an opportunity to sell thousands of chicken pho bowls to non-red meat diners.

Good Explanation of Ingredients and Options, Pho Hoa Franchise Menu Page 4

What Is Pho Really?

Why not just tell or show what pho really is? If you really look at it, pho is quite simple to serve and to order, and the menu should reflect this fact. Any bowl of pho (pho bo or pho ga) consistently contains the following:

• Pho noodle, or bánh phở: the square variety of rice noodle.
• From-the-kitchen garnishes: the standard chopped green onions (scallions) and cilantro.
• Pho broth: either beef or chicken broth option.
• Choice of meats: various beef or chicken meats. Chicken pho has many options or choices of chicken meats and parts as well, but these are excluded or omitted outright.

Once served at the table, diners can further customize with additional garnishes and sauces. That's it. There are not 20 or 25 pho dishes to choose from.

Pho Menu For Mainstream Appeal

Existing pho menus can benefit from a good facelift. A very attractive design, with clear explanation, and great graphical elements will help take pho menus, and pho itself, mainstream. Content-wise, solution for a better pho menu should consist of the following characteristics:

1. Simplify description of pho choices. Keep it easy to understand.
2. Explain ingredients and their terminologies. Add photos or other helpful visual cues.
3. Describe unfamiliar meat choices and meat parts. Elaborate on their tastes, textures, etc. and why they're important to pho.
4. Provide instructions on how to enjoy the garnishes and sauces. Present brief dos and don'ts.
5. Provide clear options for phở gà or chicken pho. Add a separate section for chicken pho and give it the same level of attention as beef pho section.

Several pho restaurants already made attempts to improve their menus, most probably to differentiate from the competition and/or to appeal to more clientele. In doing so they are (deliberately or inadvertently) taking their pho menus in the right direction. For now these are the exception rather than the rule though, and it will take more to go mainstream.

David McGaw's Repaired Pho Menu

To the right is another great example. It's David McGaw's repaired pho menu. It's got many elements that can provide inspiration for improved pho menus. The full write-up on pho menu is no longer online unfortunately, but we can still find the original document Localization Repair for a Favorite Vietnamese Dish via the Wayback Machine.

So pho restaurants, having a large pho menu does not equate to having quality pho - the two are mutually independent. But having clear and easy to understand pho menu will improve your clientele's pho experience, and will definitely attract new business.

Small or large pho operations, including pho franchises, should take note.

Original 09-07-09.

Can you provide some guidance on how I can start creating a useful service and final plating floor plan? I'm actually exploring a hybrid cooking/service area where we pass the final food to a service counter all in the open, no pass-through window or pass-through counter. My goal is to create a system when we require a minimum of staff members to serve 2 orders per minute during lunch rush. The peak is probably 130% of lunch rush.

I'm attaching a sketch to show you what I'm thinking of doing. Note that it does not include a few things I consider confidential.

Thanks for any guidance.

He/she uploaded a rough plan of the ordering/service area.

Original image: Need high volume high efficiency pho service expediting

Here's my analysis and reply:

Ok so first a few caveats. Providing the sketch is helpful to help us discuss the specifics instead of just glossing over general scenarios. That said, it would be even better to also provide dimensions of the space that we have to work with; many people don't realize that a few additional inches of reach or one additional step, when repeated hundreds of times over the course of days, months and years, can make a huge difference.

Anyway based on what you provided, though without knowing the specific dishes you're serving, here are some feedback.

Implied design requirements:

• Regular lunch rush is 2 orders per minute = 120 orders per hour.
• Peak is about 130% of lunch rush which means 2.6 orders per minute or 156 orders per hour.
• For regular lunch rush use the 120 orders per hour as design requirements.
• Lunch rush must be sustained for 2-3 hours.
• For peak use 3 orders per minutes or even 20 seconds per order as design requirements.
• Peak can be sporadic to constant and may come in waves.
• When sporadic peaks become more constant, this becomes your new regular rush, and recalculate your new peaks.
• Also assume takeout orders go through the same paths, with the only difference being final packaging before service.

Design considerations (see image below):

• Suggest to have an expeditor (80% customer facing) and an assistance (80% cooking staff facing).
• Add multi-level shelves to allow cooking staff to more easily pass through cooked foods to the front (expeditor), while keep the cooking area clear for cooking.
• Add work counter (blue in attached drawing) with under-counter shelves to further help expediting team to inspect and finalize both eat-in and takeout orders.
• The expeditor runs everything at the pass, but focus more on customer facing tasks to ensure foods go out properly and timely.
• The expeditor assistance does everything to help final plating for expeditor approval. He/she is focused more toward making sure cooked foods come out correctly and timely as called for.

Recommended: Designing for high volume high efficiency pho service expediting

That's the gist of it. Obviously there are variations to any scenario, and this is not a "set it and forget it" task. Everything must be regularly adjusted and improved so you get better and better all the time. More critically, you must allow your staff to give feedback and suggestions. They work the system day in day out and their input are extremely valuable.

Additional variations may be needed for different traffic requirements and patterns, for simpler versus more complex menus, and for staff proficiency among other factors.

This is only a rough analysis based on the limited provided information. There are still a lot more to this exercise. Hopefully this simple exercise illustrates the fact that properly designing your new operation is much more than just picking equipment and placing them around the floor plan, and call it done.

If you truly want to have a tight operation, with staff efficiency and even satisfaction (yes there's such a thing as staff satisfaction), and increased quality in the products you send out, then this is the right time and the right question to ask, early in your design stage.

If we can take into account further detail about this business and location such as what foods are being prepared and served; what are the specific space dimensions, equipment type, and staff level of proficiency; and eat-in versus takeout final plating or packaging considerations, I'm pretty sure there are tons of things we can design out further and make this even better.

Follow further discussion in the Pho Forums.

Does anybody know of a quicker cook banh pho noodle beside the fresh kind? The dry banh pho requires like 8 to 10 minutes to cook, so I’d looking for something faster and maybe easier/cleaner to do.

The Problem With Traditional Dry Banh Pho

LNMknw3 was looking for banh pho that is faster and easier to cook without compromising quality. I gave a quick answer to the question in the Pho Forums but thought I'd share additional in-depth information here.

So fresh banh pho being what it is, it's always going to the best, quickest and highest quality. Nothing really beats ingredients that are fresh.

On the other hand, dry banh pho has always been a main staple for homemade pho. This is because fresh banh pho may not be available everywhere, generally costs more, and requires refrigeration. Dry banh pho solves pretty much all these problem as it is available in abundance, is very affordable, and can be store at room temperature for a very long time. When cooked correctly, the quality of dry banh pho is actually very good, providing soft and al dente quality to the texture.

Of course, the drawback of dry banh pho is the fact that you have to cook for 7 to 10 minutes depending on the thickness/size of the noodle.

Considering about 10-15 minutes to boil a pot of water, and another 7-10 minutes for the actual cooking of dry banh pho, it can take up to 25 minutes to have the banh pho ready to drain and serve.

Get The Quick Cook Banh Pho

It came to my attention recently that there are now available dry banh pho that cooks much faster. Two that come to mind are the Bình Tây Phở Chay brand and the 3 Miền Phở Khô Rice Noodles (photos below).

These mainly come as single portion packs complete with small flavor and oil packs inside for a full meal, similar to other "instant" noodle and ramen. If you've already made pho broth at home, then just use the noodle and not the flavor packs. Some if not all of these brands do have larger packaging for sale if you you look around in the same supermarket.

My personal take is, these are decent to pretty good quality. Both instructions say to boil in water, but I've experimented with just pouring boiling water into the dry banh pho in a bowl/container, and you have great banh pho noodle in about 2 minutes or less. If you decide to boil in a pot of boiling water then you'll probably need only 30 seconds or less. Any longer and you may over cook it. So test it the first time you use it.

Binh Tay brand

Binh Tay banh pho instructions says 3 minutes, but my experience is more like one minute in boiling water or less. Any longer time will cause mushiness quickly.

3 Mien brand

3 Mien brand banh pho is more forgiving. Its instructions says 4-5 minutes, but n my experience 1-2 minutes in boiling water is plenty.

How About For Pho Restaurant Use?

These two banh pho are perfect for home use. For restaurant applications, bulk packaging and wholesale pricing are required. However it's not clear if they are available in commercial bulk packs since I've only seen the retail versions.

The manufacturers may have produced the commercial packs but obviously normal supermarkets are not carrying them. With that said, since many pho restaurants do buy supplies directly from Asian supermarkets, I hope the markets will decide to offer them sooner than later.

Let me know how you make out. Also please share other quick cook banh pho options if you've found something that works.

For those who make pho at home, a common challenge is they always have more pho broth than they can eat in one sitting/meal, even when having a large group of family and friends over.

So what do you do with the extra broth?

What's the best way to store it?

And what's the best way to reheat to enjoy it again?

Here are some of my recommendations. Where appropriate, I've also provided notes on the differences between serving at home versus in restaurants.

• Assuming that you eat the first pho meal right after you finish cooking, I would suggest portioning the remaining broth into 2 or more portions: one group for the fridge/cooler, the other for the freezer. The number of portions is determined by your container sizes and cooler and freezer spaces.
• Portioning for the cooler (short-term storage) and freezer (long-term storage) should occur preferably within 3-4 hours of end of cooking process.
  Note: This is ok for homemade meals; actually anything goes with homemade meals. On the other hand, for restaurants or public service, North American health departments require cooling/freezing within 2-3 hours. Furthermore, when placing containers into storage (either cooler or freezer), restaurants need to properly label everything then follow FIFO (first in, first out) procedures.
• You should consume the cooled portions within 6-7 days. Frozen portions can be kept up to several months or longer if you want.
  Note: For restaurants I'd recommend more stringent process to ensure quality and to meet regulations.
• To prepare cooled broth for a new meal, just heat in a pan or pot, bring to boil, adjust for taste (adding water and/or spices, fish sauce, others, etc.), then serve.
• To prepare frozen broth for a new meal, if you have time, either thaw it first in the fridge/cooler or leave it out on the counter. The former saves the most energy as the thawing broth helps keep the cooler cool, and the latter is less safe. If you're in a hurry to serve your pho, then the most common methods are 1) running under cold water, 2) thawing in the microwave oven, or 3) running under warm/hot water. The first two ways are safe; the third is less safe. All of these are acceptable for home pho. But for restaurants you need to follow the more stringent rules or your local health regulations.
• Under no circumstance that you should endlessly reboiling or maintaining heat on the broth just to keep from having to store in either color or freezer. Aside from very poor cooking technique/practice issues (who would do this to their own meals), endlessly reboiling/reheating doesn't meet the food safety requirement, while at the same time changes the broth's taste profile and the quality goes down fast.

As noted, for home cooked meals, pretty much anything goes because the health department won't ever be pounding on your door and post a health grade on your window.

But if you follow the steps discussed, you will be able to make large portions of pho broth, and enjoy the best pho you can have at home anytime you want, knowing that you've followed safe practices.

It should be mentioned again that for restaurants it's a different thing. There are important reasons why stringent regulations are in place and why a pho restaurant operator should have and follow good standards in their operation.

Here's a video clip showing 6 gallons of beef pho broth being poured for storage. It's actually a very small amount for restaurant, but is way more than enough for a single seating for homemade pho. So proper storage is key.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTcw0WAfIfw
Leave a question in the comment section below.

Parboiling beef and bones: An important part of the beef pho broth making process.

A question comes up in the Pho Forums about restaurant kitchen efficiency. It's about how the whole process of making beef pho broth can be made more efficient. In particular, the discussion gravitates toward specifically the parboiling and simmering portion of the process since these seem to take the most time.

I get it. When you run a restaurant, efficiency (making it easier, doing it faster, taking less time, doing it less costly, etc.) is everything. So this is an excellent question. A good pho kitchen operation should always be looking for shorter/easier/quicker ways to do things, as long as quality and safety are not compromised.

Efficiency in Parboiling and Simmering

To make pho broth (beef), the following steps are generally followed:

• The bones and meat are first parboiled quickly (~5 minutes) to remove impurities.
• They are then drained and rinsed/washed thoroughly.
• They then are brought back up to boiling.
• And finally they simmer for whatever amount of time called for in the recipe.

There are implied steps in between such as draining and cleaning up, but for now we'll stay with just the recipe instructions.

Take the steps of parboiling and simmering. Each requires bringing water to a boil. The question here is, when it comes to parboiling and simmering, what does efficiency really mean?

Being able to boil water quickly is a big plus for both these steps. Boiling water takes a lot of time, and it actually is a function of many things including BTU ratings of the burner, the pot/vessel shape and material, and altitude above sea level (many don't realize this), among other things.

So if reducing boiling time means reducing production time, then it is one excellent way to improve efficiency.

Again, do realize that boiling time is not the only factor that impacts overall efficiency. It's just the front end portion. There are other factors just as important to consider, such as the back end portion of winding down and cleaning up. For now, we'll concentrate on the front end and break it down further in the next section. This way you'll see the whole process to figure out efficiency. Once it is well understood, the same principles can be applied the other portions of the process.

What It Takes to Boil Some Water

Boiling water is a simple task. Your recipe may say something like "Bring 20 gallons of water to a hard boil".

The purpose may be to parboil something, or to actually cook something. It doesn't matter for now as I just want to focus on just the boiling process to illustrate some important considerations about efficiency.

An experienced staff in a commercial kitchen may do the following to perform this task:

1. Select a clean pot/vessel with capacity of more than 20 gallons. Preferably the pot should be 30, even 40 gallons or maybe larger capacity depending what will actually be cooked in it.
2. Wash pot as necessary.
3. Fill pot with 20 gallons of clean, preferably hot water.
4. Transport pot and place it on a floor burner and turn to maximum heat.
5. The water boils and you determine you've achieved boiling water.

Now, to carry each step above you have to have these 2 things:

1. A piece of equipment/tool for the job, and
2. The process to perform that job/step.

If you missed it, I'll repeat: To perform each of these steps you have an opportunity to choose a) the equipment and b) a process to do the job.

It's clear that you always have a choice, but choose wrong, and you lose efficiency.

A sharp operator would always choose the combination of equipment and process that is optimized for quickest, safest, "most efficient", or least costly to do that step.

Not All Results Are Created Equal

The end result of achieving boiled water is always the same; water boils at 212°F or 100°C. But not all results are created equal.

Efficient operations can get to 20 gallons of boiled water quickly, safely, and with less effort and manpower. Inefficient operations can get 20 gallons of boiled water as well, but they may take longer, require a lot more effort and manpower, and may risk employee safety considerations.

But it doesn't mean you should always strive for high efficiency. Instead you should strive for high efficiency with the least investment (effort, cost, time). This will give your the best return on your investment (ROI).

Time to Boil 20 Gallons of Water

We'll break this part down this way.

Note that working with 20 gallons of water means you're working with almost 167 pounds of sloshing liquid, not including the weight of the pot itself. So lifting and handling it requires at least 2 people, and transporting most definitely requires a cart. This is the front end of boiling water.

The back end water boiling is draining this same pot with meat and bones in hot boiling water. The time requires for this will be at least 3 times the front end.

Adding the time for all steps, you're looking at from one hour to one and a half hour (1 to 1 hr 30 min) to boil your water.

Next Step: Total Time to Parboil Meat and Bones in 20 Gallons of Water

So that was just boiling water. The total times to carry out all parboiling steps involving 20 gallons of water are shown below.

So, it would take 1.5 to 2.5 hours just to complete the parboiling steps of making beef pho broth.

Bottom Line on Efficiency

You can do similar calculation to come up with your actual simmering/making the broth.

• For a recipe calling for 3-hour simmer, you're looking at roughly 5 to 5.5 hours of actual total time required.
• For a recipe calling for 6-hour simmer, it's closer to 9 to 9.5 hours total.

If you as a pho restaurant operator do this day in day out, or even only 2-3 times a week, you owe it to yourself and your business/partners/family to do this as efficiently as possible.

If you can shave off 10 minutes from your process, you're actually eliminating more than 60 wasted hours per year. Think of what those 60 hours per year is costing you, not just in labor, inefficiency, and production costs but also in opportunities lost. One can do a lot with that extra 60 hours a year.

By the way, professional restaurateurs also do what I call recipe optimization. So what is it you ask? Among other things, it's to minimize BOTH the amount of ingredients required AND the steps/time to prep, cook and serve a given menu item! Making the connection yet? Amazing, right?

On a practical level, what does this all mean? Well it's all about choosing the right equipment and process, as already mentioned above. Here's what you do.

Process

In order to achieve your efficiency targets, here are some tips to tighten up your process, or to just get it organized:

1. First define or quantify your efficiency goals (time it takes, number of people required, safety measure, etc.).
2. Next you need to choose the right equipment within your budget to do the job.
3. Then create a process you and you staff must follow to use your equipment to achieve your goals.
4. Monitor and measure results and performance, with top priority given to the best tools/investment combination.
5. Make necessary adjustments to continuously improve.
6. Implement this as standard mode of operation.

Equipment

Following are some tips for selecting the right equipment:

1. Choose the right equipment that will both fit your budget and allow you to follow your process above. Get the help of a consultant if you're not knowledgeable and can't learn it yourself.
2. Choose equipment that eliminates or at least minimizes the manual portions of the process (lifting, handling, fill up water, transporting, etc.). You'll not only do things more quickly and safely, you'll also cut down on labor cost as well. Again, get help if you don't have the right knowledge.
3. Invest time and learn to be proficient and expert user of the equipment.
4. Maintain the equipment for top and trouble-free performance per manufacturers' recommendations.
5. Be willing to invest more upfront on the right equipment to ensure continued benefits from subsequent years of smooth operation.

There are a lot more that can be said about process design and equipment selection, but we're getting outside the scope of this post. I'll save them for a future one.

While this is only a simple water boiling exercise, it serves to illustrate how you as a pho restaurant operator can be more efficient in all aspects of your operation, and more importantly, can systematically identifying problems and work out solutions to those problems.

Imagine everything else that needs to happen every day in your restaurant, and think about how they can add up to A) an efficient operation or B) one that is full of waste and, worse yet, is unknown or invisible to the owner. That's not what we call a successful restaurant business by any standard.

Sadly I run into a lot of the latter case.

Why didn't Vietnamese use the "Vietnamese Soup" or "Vietnamese Noodle Soup" names for their pho when they brought the delicious food into the US?

I know I know. Questions on Quora can be pretty stupid. On the other hand, there may be gross ignorance or misconception behind a question, so there's real opportunity to provide good information and context so that others may understand the topic better. So here are my views on this question.

There are really 2 separate things going on here.

Why Call It Pho Instead Of Vietnamese Soup Or Vietnamese Noodle Soup?

Firstly, “soup” is more of a Western concept. In Asian cuisines in general, and Viet cuisine in particular, almost all of these noodle-in-broth dishes are really noodle dishes. They are mainly a meal in themselves, whether you have pho, or bun bo Hue or bun rieu. Not many Vietnamese actually have one of these bowls, then order another main dish. The noodle bowl was, and still is, the meal.

In Vietnamese, there is a thing called “canh”, a catch-all broth dish of countless variations that is normally served at the table among the other communal dishes. While some individuals may eat canh all by itself (maybe with some rice or noodle added if that’s what they want/have), most Viet enjoy canh during or to end the meal.

When the French came to Vietnam way back when, they had “soupe”, and we naturally use “súp” as the Vietnamese version of it. When the American came, the English “soup” became again just “súp”. Very convenient. To be clear though, having some soup before the main course is again a very Western concept.

By the way, noodle houses can be found in Asia, but probably never in the Western world, or maybe even anywhere else.

The point of all this is, to Vietnamese people, pho is not a soup dish the way Westerners may think of soup as.

Now on to the second thing.

Once Vietnamese refugees came to the U.S. beginning in 1975, Vietnamese/pho restaurants were opened to serve mainly the Viet community. There was no need to call pho anything other than pho, and in these early days, many restaurants didn’t even need an English version of their menus. Viet people did bring pho to the U.S., but only by accident, and definitely not to sell to Americans as a goal.

To be sure, there were American-born and non-Viet customers, including Vietnam vets, who did know about pho or were adventurous enough to enter a Viet restaurant and tried it. But their numbers were miniscule in the grand scheme of things.

Fast forward to around 25-30 years later, in the early to mid 2000’s. This was when the Internet and personal blogging boom occurred, which gave pho much wider visibility and publicity. Subsequently, the foodie movement played a major role in bringing and promoting pho (and many other obscure dishes) to the mass. And with publicity comes more curious customers and fans.

This is where we are today. You can find pho restaurants in all corners of North America, Australia and Europe. You can find pho restaurants run by non-Viet owners. And you can find “pho-inspired” and “banh mi-inspired” influence in many non-Asian dining establishments. And of course you can find menu descriptions to suit the expanded customer base. Hence "Vietnamese Soup" or "Vietnamese Noodle Soup”.

It’s still one of my pet peeves, but there you have it.

Would love to hear your comments and feedback below.

He mentions he has the following inventory categories already set up in the restaurant: meat, dairy, fruits and veggies, dry goods, alcohol, restaurant supply (plates, glasses utensils, etc.)

Pho restaurant inventory using a tablet. Fast, convenient, accurate, and can be done anytime.

Below are my tips and suggestions for this operator. While this is not a pho restaurant, the idea behind having the right inventory system with the right implementation applies to all restaurants, pho restaurants included.

Purpose of an inventory system

Inventory system should be designed to meet a restaurant's operational goals. It's not just for counting purpose, but what the counting is used for or what key performance indicators (KPIs) you're trying to meet. For a properly designed inventory system (IS) to work well, it should allow you to do these 2 things at a minimum:

1. Accurately, quickly and efficiently track your inventory, and
2. Utilize the collected data to run your pho restaurant business better, more profitably, or allow you more efficient ordering process, or tracking food cost for Prime Cost calculation, or even ensure food quality with proper stocking and rotation or first-in first-out (FIFO).

Regarding orange juice and ketchup

In this case study, if you have categories already set up as meat, dairy, fruits/veggies, dry goods, alcohol, restaurant supply, then any item purchased must fit within these existing categories. If you have an item that you don't know how to inventory, then it's clear the inventory system hasn't been very well thought out and built.

You definitely don't want to keep adding new categories (read, making it up) as you go, because before long, you'll have a mess on your hand. And once this happens, you'll get frustrated and stop doing inventory all together, it becomes "too complicated!"

To the owner asking the question, someone suggests to put the OJ in with the "liquids" category and the ketchup with the "condiments" category.

Someone else recommends the OJ as part of "beverages" and ketchup in both the "sauces" and "condiments" categories.

Clearly the result of the above suggestions is a growing and messy inventory system. The reason: everyone has different motivation and thinks differently about different things; they don't think about what's appropriate for this particular restaurant, what is already in use, and how to conform to the policy and system already in place.

It's OK to be arbitrary

The suggestions clearly didn't consider this particular owner's own system that is already in place. As a result these suggestions don't really help much. Of course OJ is a liquid but it's also a beverage, and ketchup is both a condiment and a sauce. So unless you have a sophisticated system (and good reasons) to categorize a product in multiple categories, the reality is this is most often an arbitrary choice. And for inventory it's ok to be arbitrary. You just have to be consistent. If 50 people suggest 50 ways to add these items, then they are just giving the owner a bigger headache.

This is not to say that you can't ever change the system you already have. However, a change and its implication or impact on the operation has to be understood before such change is allowed.

So as an owner, before you ask the mass or anyone for help, make sure you understand that the mass neither necessarily provide useful help nor always has your best interest in mind. They may just want to show off how smart they are, and you end up spending more time wading through numerous (often worthless or irrelevant) recommendations before finding that one thing that works for you.

The right way to categorize orange juice and ketchup in this restaurant

To do this right, I'd suggest the following, based purely on the existing system the owner has already set up:

• If OJ is frozen, then it goes to meat (freezer) on proper shelves.
• If OJ is room temp shelf stable, then it goes to dry goods (same place as other shelf-stable liquids/sauces).
• Ketchup (bags or bottles) should go to dry goods (with shelf-stable liquids/sauces).

Additionally, I suggest the owner may want to rename some categories, or even add a few to accommodate quicker and more efficient inventory process. The currently existing categories as it is may be too limited and inefficient.

More importantly, the owner needs to have inventory rules and policies clearly defined and in place so that the system is clean and lean, the data is highly reliable and useful, and taking inventory regularly can be done quickly and efficiently.

Remember, speed and accuracy is both important.

Categorizing inventory by locations

A good method of doing inventory management is to inventory by location rather than, or in addition to, categories. This means you can store bulk ketchup for cooking in the back of the house (BOH), and pre-portioned ketchup for condiments closer to the front of the house (FOH).

What this does is it forces you to recognize that ingredient items may come in various shapes, sizes, forms, and purposes that need to be counted separately. You are actually buying them as different and separate things and you are using them differently in your business. This is exactly how your suppliers organize their inventory as well.

With location as one of the inventory dimensions, you can think of it as a multi-dimensional matrix. You would have something like

[list of ingredients x categories x locations]

as opposed to a 2-d matrix of

[list of ingredients x categories].

Whether you identify an item in a database or a spreadsheet, you must identify it by all its important and relevant dimensions.

To illustrate this, check out the table below as we use OJ and ketchup as sample ingredients:

Inventory Category and Location Breakdown Example: OJ and Ketchup

As can be seen, if you clearly plan it out, you'd recognize that both OJ and ketchup may actually 3 different products, depending on how you use them, what your recipes are calling for, and how you plan to service or sell them. Once you set it up this way, you can do inventory very quickly without confusion and cross counting.

Note that each ingredient itself has its own multiple dimensions such as different prices from different vendors, or similar/second choice if first choice is unavailable, or varying packaging sizes for same item or brand, etc.

The real purpose of doing inventory right

Operationally, I'd suggest inventory by location because it's the fastest and most accurate way to count. Further implementation of other techniques will speed it up even more. We'll discuss these in future posts.

Once you have everything counted, utilizing categories will get you (again with speed and accuracy) all financial parameters necessary to run your restaurant (ordering, running specials, marketing & promotions, calculating Prime Cost, etc.)

Three more important notes:

1. Your inventory system should use the concept of unit of measures (UM). You will order and take delivery of ingredients in VENDOR UMs, but once inside your system (restaurant), you need to control ingredients/assets via your own internal UMs. I won't go too much into this here at this time but in most cases your own UMs should track with or be driven by your recipes, which is why they're often called Recipe UMs. Of course conversion between the two UMs should be necessary, but it is pretty straightforward and easy.

2. Your inventory system must have all control gates identified for each storage location. It could be a door (for a room, walk-ins, or standalone refrigerator) or an imaginary planes (for areas with free standing racks or shelves in the open). Any item crossing the control gates will need to be inventoried, either in or out. This way there should be no question of whether to inventory something, when to do it and how.

3. Lastly, set up your FIFO system and get everyone to adhere to FIFO everywhere as standard practice.

These should get you on the right track of setting up and running a solid inventory system for your pho restaurant.

Recently I replied to a question on another forum. It was a long question/message so I'm including here just the important points, followed by my answers/suggestions.

The Question

Some key points from the original post (OP) :

My first restaurant is opening up in just about 1 month and I’m running a thought exercise to figure out just exactly what’s left for me to do. Obviously as a first iteration, I’m trying to figure out what I’m overlooking and I’d like to ask for your help. Skip below to see the list I’ve mapped out and chime in if you feel I’m missing anything.

... Construction slated to complete June 20th and I assume inspection takes place the next day. I also assume this requires 1 processing day before my physical operating permit is available for pickup. So June 22nd would be technically good for opening.

...

My Plan:
The way I see it, as soon as construction and inspections are done, I’m immediately free to open for operation.

[Editor's note: below are some items from the OP's posted to-do list]

...

• Hiring employees--Initially I was going to start the hiring process a month out but my boss said in about 2 days, he got about 8 hits for his job application. … So I don’t want to hire too soon and have those employees quit/not show up because they’ve found other gigs. I think starting about 2 weeks out should give me sufficient time to set up interviews, complete paperwork, and training would take place during the soft opening .

• Read up on what’s actually involved in hiring… relevant forms, who to submit them to, etc

• Need to conjure up and put to paper a SOP (standard of procedures for opening/closing)

• Produce non-compete and non-disclosure agreements and whatever other paperwork

...

• I have no idea what to do for bookkeeping or accounting. Right now I’m just keeping all the receipts and tracking everything in an excel sheet.

...

• Grand Opening/Soft Opening marketing--I don’t even know how to begin approaching this. So far I’ve read the differences between each.

• Should I design a grand opening banner and if so, when should I post it up?

• Should I bother with a coming soon sign/poster?

• How should I even properly time the grand opening date with enough of a buffer that could account for construction and unknown delays but simultaneously not set it too far out that we’re losing out in opportunity costs with the space just being ready but empty?

• Make a NOW OPEN sign?

...

• I have had menus designed previously but don’t think I will be using them (and even if I were, where do I get menus blown up and installed?). At this point I’m thinking of just having a local artist design my menu on a chalkboard and I’ll hang it up on the back wall, behind the counter.

...

Basically it's a long list of remaining things to do in the remaining time before opening, and OP's asking for help from the community if he's overlooking something or missing anything.

The Answers & Suggestions

There are tons of things to do when prepping for grand opening. I don't think anyone can give detailed list or line-by-line suggestions of what you're missing or what you should add. All that said, VDerevyanko gave you excellent points regarding marketing plan, which as he/she pointed out, should have started 3 months ago or even earlier, in my opinion. You said you've been planning this project for 2 years, but without marketing consideration all this time!? A gross oversight, for sure. But rest assured that my input are never about shaming or blaming, rather they're to make the point that most newbies must/should know what they don't know, but fact is they usually don't.

Below are some high priority, high level stuff you may want to focus on asap in addition to whatever items you still have on your checklist. You seem organized and know how to use checklists, so I'm sure you can translate these high level stuff into actionable items.

1. Menu design. Look into/learn more about menu engineering. Just to be off-topic for a few seconds (but still very relevant): There are different stages of "menu design" depending on where you are in the timeline.
   a. Early/concept development stage. "Menu design" means creating something that reflect your concept, brand, your target market, your capability, etc. This is not about graphic designing your menu. Along the way the "menu" should go through iterations to ensure it's still valid for the concept/business goals while incorporate improvements or updates.
   b. Mid/build-out/training stage. "Menu design" means recipe development to include food cost analysis; selection of ingredients, equipment and procedures to meet your quality and cost goals; prep and production procedure development, and of course training. You must allow/should expect any of these to help tighten up your "menu". Again this is not about graphic designing your menu, and more about getting your menu to actually work.
   c. Pre-opening stage. "Menu design" now means continuous improvement and training, finalizing ingredient selection and inventory system, applying menu engineering consideration as you actually do graphic design of your menu. The graphic design part may result in several versions of your menu including one for your website, one or several for your online ordering/delivery services, in-store menu boards, and possibly printed take-out paper menus. Each of these should look different (to take advantage of each medium) and look the same (to maintain your brand/look). I'm assuming your bulleted items refer to this stage, hence the menu engineering suggestion.

2. Marketing. Do as much as you can with VDerevyanko' suggestions. [VDerevyanko is another poster on the forum].

3. Hiring. Consider to follow strict structure in your interviewing, hiring, and firing practice. By the fact that you're considering non-compete and non-disclosure agreements, it seems you are very serious about staffing. So should your hiring process. If you get 8 hits for job application after 2 days, I can tell you that you don't want to hire most of those 8 people. Good rule of thumb: don't hire the first persons walking in your door, unless you really know what you're doing. Bottom line: Give yourself plenty of time to find only good employees, and you won't be among those who say they can't find good people.

4. Training. Consider giving in-depth training before your soft opening. By definition, soft opening is public opening, not training period. You can and will get negative reviews from soft opening, so why risk it. By my own estimate, negative reviews (1-2 stars) during the first few weeks of opening will require 1 to 3 years for a restaurant to get their total rating up to 3-4 stars. So it's better to train, then use soft opening only for stress tests, confirmation and identification of problem areas for further changes/training.

By the way, since you mentioned "your boss", it's not clear if you're a decision maker. If you're not then these suggestions may be moot. Regardless, hope these help in some ways.

Also I added another followup.

Something I meant to touch on but forgot (with all the other stuff pouring out of my head lol): So if construction is targeted for June 20 completion and OP plans to open to public 2 days later then that's not very realistic. Construction is rarely on time, and 2 days for training, prepare to open and everything else? No way. I think OP won't have enough time to implement any of these things.

To OP: why is the rush? I had projects where the owners tried to beat the first rent payments (which is very poor reason to set opening day imo), without fail they'd regret it later.

The Takeaway

Opening a new restaurant is never easy. There are zillions of things to pay attention to. Even when you think you have done everything, getting the RIGHT THINGS DONE AT THE RIGHT TIME is always a challenge especially for people who've never done it before.

I hope the above information will help those who want to open their own pho restaurant (or any restaurant) to

• Do good planning upfront, and
• Inspire you to pay attention to the right details at the right time.

Otherwise when comes crunch time, you may have to make decisions based on what you can and cannot do in the time available before grand opening instead of what's best for your restaurant.