[Acrylic-bob]

It's funny, isn't it. Everyone thinks they can run a restaurant or a pub. But they don't seem to realise that it is bloody hard work for very little money and less thanks.

A case in point, before we opened up the business in Blackpool, we operated a fast food takeaway in Burnley. When it came time to sell it, we spent a few days with the new owner showing her how we ran the business, where we got all the best supplies deals from etc. etc. It was clear from the first day that she was not listening to a word we said. She knew it all, even though she had never run her own business before and her only experience of catering was working in a hospital kitchen. So, having transferred a business which it took us eight years to build up, which was supporting itself, paying two reasonable wages and also allowed savings to be built up, we drew a line under it. We gave her our phone number in case she had any problems, wished her luck and left her to get on with it.

Six months later we happened to be in Burnley to visit one of our suppliers and so we decided to pop in on the old business to see how the new owner was getting on. She had gone bust. The business had failed, she had lost everything she had put into it and still had another four and a half years of a loan to pay off and a ten year lease to service..and a new job to find.

Dreams are all very well, but they are nothing unless they are backed up with experience, determination, resourcefulness, passion....and lots of hard cash! And even then, success is not a racing certainty. That is just here in the UK, where you know the language and the rules. Setting up abroad is much more difficult, by several orders of magnitude.