Hi There

Your situation was ours about 2 yrs ago!

We've got a little pizzeria on the beach that we owner/operate ourselves.
I don't work there as its nights - but DH does & I do the books etc from home.
I also take care of the running around during the day (picking up fruit & veg etc).

When we first opened, we both worked in there initially to get started (we had family/friends help out)... and put staff on gradually as we got busier.
After 2 yrs we now have 3 pizza/pasta chefs (DH, his brother & one other full time), 2 girls that answer phones & waitress, 2 drivers full time (they also share cleaning duties in the kitchen) & 3 other drivers for weekends.
Sometimes we have to call in a few extra helpers for weekends at busier times (over Christmas & public holidays... and weekends like football grandfinals etc)

Its going fantastically - we are so happy with how everything has come along over the last 2 yrs.. much better than we'd anticipated so early!

Its a LOT of work, & consumes every day (even the days we're closed) but I truly think its much better to work for yourself rather than other people

DH works his butt off, & my laundry is forever full of tea towels, tablecloths, aprons etc but its worth the hard work - we were like Boomba & couldn't get the $$ from banks as the little shop had had a few average people in there before us.

Some advice is that I would second Astrid - get yourself a really good accountant!
Also I guess be prepared for it to be number one in your lives for at least the next 12 months - our restaurant has come first before everything for us to get it off the ground - it was tough at times, but we're starting to have a little bit of a life now

Anything else don't hesitate to ask.... the only other big tip I can give you is to be really specific when you choose your menu - when we wrote ours, we made sure we could use the same ingredients on many different things... doing this, we could simplify our stock order/costs each week & also cut down the risk of having too much wastage on stock if it didn't get used (eg. if you're going to have smoked salmon, have it for 3-4 different dishes instead of just one, so it has a greater chance of being used IYKWIM?)

Good luck