Why former NFL players SHOULD NOT get in the restaurant business..

[natty]

I worked for 4 for different local restaurants through high school and college and can say with absolute confidence that opening a restaurant is a dead wish. If you provide great food you have impossibly slim margins, if you provide mediocre food you don't get a customer base. You can't win.

[Matt Foley]

Mr. Richardson once told me that the hardest part of the restaurant business was finding good people. People who understood that the customer is always right.

[cookinwithgas]

I went to one away game at Cheesemoz, and I've been there several times on other occasions. The food is fantastic and the people are great, but it gets very expensive to watch a football game there, so it cannot be a weekly thing. Tonight my buddies and I are watching the game (both are Saints fans, and I am rooting for them now too over the Patriots, damn them) at Township in Matthews, food is good and the prices reasonable.

I knew SweetT's was going to fail when my (grown) kids and I walked up, looked at the menu, and they both decided that they'd rather drive a mile down the road to Chilis (they were CheeseMoz'ed out).

[shinner]

...Cheez Mo's is...even though I haven't gone there, it's always busy and people seem to like it.

Was nearly empty the night I went there with Mush, RW and youngins'....sure it was a Wednesday night but it was the night before the Dolphins game. Even so, I think other than maybe 1 other table and a few (literally) people at the bar, the waitstaff outnumbered the patrons.

[sunbunny]

We've been running a skeleton crew since opening, and we still haven't turned a profit yet. We only have 7 employees, and that includes the 4 of us that are in it together. My daughter goes in on weekends and waits tables for tips. We have 2 full timers that cook and help clean, and one part time waitress. We went into it knowing it was going to be rough and that we wouldn't really turn a profit for quite some time. We're tickled when we break even.

I don't know anyone in the restaurant business that isn't hurting right now.