Soo I’ve had the idea of starting a small restaurant on a permaculture farm for a while. Every single ingredient would be grown right on the farm and customers would be able to see and walk around the farm if they want(with supervision, I guess in a short tour?), im thinking it should be a vegan restaurant, it just makes more sense to me. All the food would be organic/pesticide free/herbicide free, This would be the healthiest restaurant in my whole country for sure.
The restaurant wouldn’t be on the middle of the farm but it would be right in the middle of a nice botanical garden. The garden would make the place so much more pretty and attractive, plus this way people can sit down benches placed around the garden and eat while. In my country theres not many 3rd place , I could advertise the place as a free botanical garden with a restaurant on it.
The farm would be right besides the garden but it would be fenced so people dont touch the plants too much or steal them. So yeah these are 3 ideas together, botanical garden/restaurant/farm. I feel like I can advertise the botanical garden and the vegan restaurant separately so its less confusin.
Around here, it would likely fail.
According to national polls, only 3% of the population are “vegan” with 5-8% being “vegetarian”. You’re starting off on ground zero by potentially alienating 90% of the population. When it comes to a food business, I’d shoot for “inclusive” vs. “exclusive” menu planning.
Now, if you were in LA, San Francisco, Seattle, etc., vegan/vegetarian havens of the West Coast, you might have a better chance - but you’re also going to have substantially more competition from local businesses. I’d carefully profile the success of those other ventures before deciding if I’d get into it myself.
We did have one restaurant where I used to live that featured home-grown produce, scratch-made recipes, soups, and bread - and it was pretty great. They did serve locally-sourced meat products in addition to their own vegetables, etc. Eventually they folded, because you can’t pay 4 family members, the electricity, external vendors, insurance, and taxes on $500 a day in gross revenue. It was a “great” restaurant, with “great” food, but unfortunately, there simply wasn’t enough people coming in the door to make ends meet.