How to Open a Diner: 9 Steps to Become a Known Brand in Your Community

If you want to take the first step into the food industry and open an establishment focused on providing clients with a relaxed and tasty dining experience, a diner may be the best choice for you.

While diners used to be a beloved type of restaurant in America, the concept has spread worldwide, and many people are interested in them, both in being the owner and the customer.

In this article, you will find useful tips on how to open a diner and ensure it will remain profitable for years to come.

What Is a Diner?

There are a variety of restaurant concepts out there that you can choose from when you decide to open a business. To choose the best one, you must consider the target audience, your experience, and your personal preferences.

Read more: 8 of the best restaurant concepts to implement in 2024

Here are the main characteristics of a diner, that you can adapt and fine-tune to create the best business venture for you:

• Casual atmosphere: as opposed to fine dining and fast food, diners encourage customers to spend a longer time in the restaurant enjoying the food and drinks;
• Comfort food: traditional diners serve classic American breakfast items all days such as pancakes and omelets plus the usual cheeseburgers, fries, and pies. You can always update the menu with more modern or even vegetarian dishes;
• Long working hours: many diners are open 24/7, especially in busy places where clients come in at any hour;
• Affordable meals: the loyal clients keep coming back because they can afford to enjoy the food served at a diner;
• Retro-style décor: you could usually identify a diner by the seating and the jukeboxes. Nowadays, some places tend to innovate the old décor, but there are still clients who appreciate the old-timey experience.

How to Open a Diner in Just 9 Steps

If you’re wondering how to open a diner, you must know the steps are similar to starting any other type of restaurant with a few exceptions such as a different target audience, type of marketing, and décor choice.

Read more: Opening a Restaurant: 8 Things You Need to Have to Succeed

Follow this simple guide to get started:

1. Identify your target market

Opening a restaurant in an area where there is no need or want for it is a recipe for failure. To ensure that your diner will turn a profit each month, you must first do some research and see if there are interested customers.

Therefore, use different research methods such as surveys and competition analysis to determine:

• Age group
• Food and dining preferences
• Income level
• Number of competitors
• Types of cuisine and menu items served by the competition

You will use this information to create the perfect blend between catering to your potential customers’ needs and your preferences regarding opening a diner.

Read more: Restaurant Target Market: How to Identify It and Why It Is Important for Your Business

2. Choose the most profitable location

This is the most obvious step in the “How to open a diner” guide. You need a location your audience can easily reach and that won’t cost you an arm and a leg, no matter if you plan to buy the space or just rent it out.

Here are a couple of things you should pay attention to:

• Footfall: how many people do you see around the restaurant, at each hour of the day? Are there offices around or other businesses?
• Visibility: will the diner be located on some hidden street that is hard to reach and people will easily miss? Or will it be on the main street where a simple sign will attract everyone’s attention?
• Transportation: if you want more people to come to your diner, you must make it easy to get to it. It would be ideal if you could find a location that is both close to public transport and has a lot of parking space.

Read more: Restaurant Location Analysis: How to Choose the Best Restaurant Location

3. Brand your restaurant

The question shouldn’t be just how to open a diner, but how to open a profitable diner that stands out from the competition. To achieve this goal, you must create a brand for your diner that will resonate with your potential clients.

Read more: 12 Restaurant Branding Ideas to Build a Memorable Presence

Follow these tips:

• Define your diner as a persona: what are its values, what is their type of personality;
• Create design elements to support the branding such as logo, brand colors, and specific décor; Using a simple free logo maker can simplify this process for you.
• Come up with a Unique Selling Proposition that highlights the benefits of your diner and what makes it so special that other clients should choose it over the competition;
• Get a sales and SEO-optimized website that reflects your branding: you can get a restaurant website that will rank you high in searches in less than 10 minutes with GloriaFood.

4. Use décor to reflect the branding and create an inviting atmosphere

The way your restaurant looks on the outside and the inside will significantly influence the number of new clients you attract and persuade to become return customers. As decoration can be a big investment, you may not get to do it twice, so make sure to do it right the first time.

Pay attention to the following when you choose the diner décor:

• Reflect the branding: after you choose the colors for your diner, use them throughout the space, in a way that increases appetite and makes clients comfortable. Don’t forget to also add your logo, maybe in a photo corner where clients can have a small photoshoot and market your diner in the process, for free;
• Provide comfortable seating: to encourage customers to spend more in the restaurant and order more menu items, make each seat so comfortable they won’t want to leave;
• Focus on safety: think about the flow of clients and servers and ensure there are no floors or décor items that may be in their way and lead to accidents. You should also consider making the place accessible for people with disabilities by adding a ramp.

Read more: 15 Restaurant Design Tips That Will Attract More Customers

5. Create the perfect menu

The secret to a perfect menu is to have good food priced fairly so your diner remains profitable while still offering good value for money for customers.

Here are a few tips for opening a diner with an irresistible menu:

• Start with classic diner dishes: if you describe your restaurant as a diner, people expect to be able to order pancakes all day. You can innovate with new additions such as different toppings and unusual ingredients, but give people the comfort of their usual dishes;

• Be inclusive: a lot of people suffer from allergies or have specific diets, yet they still want to enjoy the diner experience. Therefore, consider including some gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, and vegetarian dishes and marking them as such on the menu;

• Create combos: people perceive combos as better value because they get all they need for a meal in a single package. For example, you can create breakfast, lunch, and dinner combos;
• Offer promotions: tempt people to try out your diner by adding some restaurant promotions like free desserts for orders over $70 or 2+1 free for pancakes;

• Make the menu available online: don’t limit your sales to your location. Sell more of your food by allowing customers to order your delicious menu items online. You can do so in less than 10 minutes with GloriaFood:

Read more: 9 Menu Engineering Design Tips & Secrets That Will Boost Your Sales

6. Write a business plan for the diner

If you’re wondering how to open a diner, creating an efficient business plan is a must. If you create a detailed one from the start, it will help guide you and keep you accountable on your way to success.

Here is what a business plan for a diner should include:

• Concept definition, complete with values and goals, all with a specific timeline;
• Market research that proves there is an audience for the concept;
• Operational strategies that describe in detail each process at the diner from inventory and hiring to daily processes like cooking and serving;
• Initial cost and projected costs including labor costs, food costs, start-up costs, and marketing costs;
• Sales forecast;
• Solutions to potential problems: creating restaurant standard operating procedures can also be a great help to identify eventual issues and find solutions for them.

Read more: How to Write a Restaurant Business Plan: 6 Practical Tips & Tricks

7. Obtain the necessary licenses and permits

Getting all the required permits and licenses will help you run a legal business and avoid big fines that could affect your profit. Consult your local legislation to find out the necessary permits in your area.

In general, you will need:

• Health department permit which may need to be renewed with an inspection;
• Business license;
• Food handler permits for each employee that handles the food;
• Liquor license.

8. Hire a productive and friendly team

How to open a diner? Enlist the help of great employees who will create an unforgettable experience for your customers and persuade them to become loyal.

To lower labor costs, you must focus on hiring the right employees from the start (productive, motivated, good attitude), so you don’t have to spend money replacing them. Here are a few tips to get and maintain a good diner team:

• Create a detailed job description where you outline expectations, responsibilities, required experience, and qualifications;
• Hold thorough interviews to analyze if the candidates will fit with the culture you are trying to create at the diner;
• Offer competitive salaries and benefits to attract only the best candidates;
• Provide training to offer employees the knowledge and skills needed for the job;
• Motivate employees and reward accomplishments to make their work experience better and increase staff retention.

Read more: 18 Best Restaurant Interview Questions To Ask to Hire the Perfect Team

9. Market your new diner

You can’t just open your doors and hope the customers will come. You have to invite them in with marketing. Check out these tips that will help you promote your diner easily, with almost no investment:

• Claim your Google Business Profile account: and complete your profile with information such as address, working hours, link to your website, and many photos of your delicious menu items;
• Be active on social media: use Facebook for the older generation and Instagram and TikTok for the younger ones. Post often, link to your menu, and try to generate engagement with questions and contests;
• Get on review sites: create an account on review platforms in your area and encourage customers to leave positive reviews that will act as social proof;
• Take advantage of technology: if you use the online ordering system from GloriaFood, you get access to premium marketing features, such as the Kickstarter module that helps you attract new customers and the Autopilot module that helps you create email campaigns for returning clients.

Final Words

Now that you know how to open a diner, it is your time to shine. Take the knowledge and enlist the help of technology to create a remarkable diner that customers rave to their friends about.