The How To Books

Six years isn't a long time in the restaurant business, but it seems to us that there has been little other than revolution in people's attitudes to food and restaurants in the intervening period. We all want to eat out more, we all want to drink more interesting wines, and we are all less than impressed by the old formal approach that makes so many places seem like dinosaurs. It was in considering the tumult of all these changes that we decided there was a need for a new edition of How to Run a Restaurant, first written and published by John McKenna back in 1998.

There is pressure nowadays on restaurateurs to recognise, respect and react to the different ways in which people want to use restaurant spaces. Those who are doing so are enjoying great success; those who aren't are steadily slipping back. This new book tries to look at the changes taking place, and how you can ride the tumult.

The brand new edition of How to Run a Restaurant reflects on the challenges that lie ahead for everyone in the business, and analyses the demands being exerted by the modern customer and how cooks and restaurateurs should respond to them. The book also features some splendid, eye-opening testimonies from some of today’s leading Irish restaurateurs, who discuss the demands of the business and explain how they succeed.

If the new How to Run a Restaurant was inspired by respect and admiration for the business of opening and running a restaurant, its sister volume, How to Succeed in Hospitality, was inspired by dread, disappointment and, occasionally, disbelief.

Have you any idea just how awful, how unspeakably dreadful, are some of the hotels, B&B's, guesthouses, country houses and restaurants with rooms in Ireland? Time and again last year we encountered standards that were shocking to behold.

And so, rather than just complain about it, we have tried to point out the vital necessities that are of supreme importance for people to understand in order to make a success in the hospitality business. We hope the book is practical as well as informative, and it also gave us a chance to try to answer what is probably the question we are most often asked: what new ideas can you offer people for breakfast? We have devoted no fewer than fifty pages to exciting recipes to make the most important meal of the day also the best meal of the day.

How to Run a Restaurant, and How to Succeed in Hospitality, by John McKenna
(Estragon Press €15 each title)

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How to Run a Restaurant

How to Succeed in Hospitality