You won’t be able to find the answer as to what it is exactly that makes a restaurant successful in any forum. Without experiencing it for yourself, it’s tough to imagine that a restaurant is one of the most complicated businesses you can run. Most businesses are pretty simple. You buy a product, mark it up enough to cover your overhead, and hire people who can sell it effectively and count change, or you manage a warehouse, a sales team, a manufacturing line or a specific service your business offers.

A restaurant is so much more complicated than that. First, you are more than a retailer. You are running a warehouse. You have to have the same skills a good warehouse manager has, including a system for checking everything in and out of inventory, protecting your product from theft, knowing how to keep your vendors honest in their pricing and…