Don't let the allure of gourmet food and the dreams of adoring customers fool you into thinking that running a restaurant is easy. It's not. A restaurant is a business like any other, which means that it has to be managed well to survive. These tips can help:
Play up your strengths and make them matter to your diners.
Analyze your competition, determine their deficiencies, and exploit them.
Identify your own deficiencies and address them quickly.
Continually create new, ownable points of difference between your restaurant and your competition.
Know your audience, realize how your points of difference matter to them, and then determine how to reach them.