Ready to Reopen Your Diner? This Will Inspire You

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's episode, I'm going to answer a question from one of my YouTube viewers, I guess, who wrote in and asked, "As always, Evan, great video. I have a question for you. I'm 49 years old. I grew up in the diner and the comfort food business. My family sold our diner in 1999." I'm passionate about comfort food, roast gravies, homemade soups, etc. Not always the healthiest kind of food, but it's what I know best. I want to get back into that business for myself. How can I add more value for my customers? Everyone is into organic and healthier foods these days. Any ideas? So thank you for the question. My thought for you and for any entrepreneurs who are starting out, number one rule is you have to do something that you're really passionate about. So if you're super passionate about comfort foods, then that's the business that you gotta get into. If you don't really know about organic and healthy foods, or you're not really excited about it, your business isn't gonna go anywhere. You're not gonna be successful. So you have to do something that you're super excited about and you can pour your whole heart into. So think back to the diner of '99 and look at other diners that are successful and think about, you know, how can you replicate that success but do it in a more modern way, right? And how can you add a lot of value to your customers but still provide the food that you really love. There are people who want to buy from you. Not everybody is into organic. I mean, the organic market is growing, growing quickly, but it's still only a tiny percentage of the overall market. So there's still a percentage who want to buy and want to buy from you. So you got to cater to those guys, right? Don't worry about the entire market, worry about your specific market. Pour your heart into it, think about everything you really loved about your diner, and what you think a new diner should look like for people like you and build it. Again, if you're really passionate about it, that'll show through in the quality of the food and the quality of the experience, and you're not going to target everyone, and that's okay. And you're more likely to have success than to try to go after everybody. If you're really curious about organic, you can still have organic options. You can do organic gravy and organic, you know, chicken or stews or whatever it is that you're going to be providing. But again, it's got to be something that you're really excited about. If you don't care about organic, then, you know, don't go that way. Follow exactly what you're excited about, and again, pour your whole heart into it. Be really excited about it. Put as much as you can into the experience, and people who are like you and who want comfort food will say, "This is the place to come to. This is the best place in town," and hopefully tell all their friends about it. So hopefully that helps. You know, 49 years old, you're not too old to start, and I would— don't worry about not going through with it. I think a big thing a lot of entrepreneurs is they think about an idea and they think it may not work out, so they never take that leap and regret it for the rest of their lives. And I'm not saying it will absolutely work out, a lot of businesses do fail, but I think you owe it to yourself to know if this would work out or not, and so you don't live the rest of your life regretting that you didn't take your shot at what could have been a successful business. So hopefully that helps. If you guys like the video, please give it a thumbs up. It makes me wanna do more of these videos for you guys. And if you have a question about this video or a different question about your business, please leave a comment below and I will try to answer it for you. So thank you and we'll see you on the next episode.