Starting a business in brownsville tx?

Question

Is brownsville tx a good place to open a japanese hibachi restaurant? what do majority of the people there eats? and what is brownsville downtown like? would this city be considered a wealthy city or so so? please describe bownsville economy and people's attitude over there, i am considerign of moving down there. Thank you

Answer 1

If you don't come up with the lucky break of having someone from brownsville answer your question i would highly suggest traveling down there and spending a few days in town if you're serious about starting the business.  Go around to local chinese/asian food restaurants and look around to see how business is doing.  If it's hopping then obviously the people of the town enjoy asian food.  Have you ever been there before?? As obvious as it is i still should ask if there are any hibachi's already in town and if there is are you going to be able to drive the business to you with a certain niche? Theres a thousand other factors that we could discuss but i would say start with that before you further pursue starting it.

Answer 2

You need to do a lot more research on Brownsville before you even think about building a hibachi restaurant.  A good start would be to actually go there for a month or more BEFORE you actually move down there.  Get to know the city, look at the restaurants that are there already, maybe hire a company to do market research about the type of food that people like to eat.  You may find that no one is interested in a hibachi restaurant, or may find the reverse.  Do you have any experience with a hibachi restaurant?  Not just as a waitress or cook, but as a manager or owner?

Basically, before you try to open any business, you need to know your market.  

Before you go any further, I STRONGLY recommend you contact your local Small Business Development Center (at your local community college) and talk to them; the counseling is free.  And sign up for the NxLevel Entrepreneurial program...  it's a 12 session course that walks you through the ins and outs of starting or growing your business, and as part of that you will write a business plan.  At the end of the class your plan will be reviewed by a lending professional, and will be critiqued, telling you the strong points of your plan AND the weak points.  Then you can work on the weak points and hopefully get it into shape to actually present to a lender and get the loan you need.  

Even if you hire a professional to write your plan, you should still take the NxLevel course.  It saved me from going into a business that would have failed within a year from lack of resources.  There is a cost for the NxLevel program, but it’s a lot cheaper than losing your investment..