[greyeaglem]

I shouldn't say I learned the hard way as it was a lack of money and support from my partners that made my experience at opening a restaurant so difficult. I will never do it again (at least not this week).
First, establish what type of reastaurant you want. Make sure you and you partner are in complete agreement on what that should be. I cannot stress this enough. Consider your location and make sure your concept will work in the area you are in. If you are in an area that has many restaurants, try to offer something different. Be original; don't try to copy someone else's successful concept, you will only wind up looking like a cheap knock off. Do what you know how to do. If you have a particular style of cooking that you excel at, go with it. Keep it simple in the beginning. Make up a bare bones menu, you can always flesh it out with specials. This allows you to find out what works and what doesn't without locking an item into the menu that doesn't sell. If an item is very popular, you can then decide to add it to your main menu. Try to stock only items that can be used in more than one dish. This reduces your inventory and saves on start up costs. An example of this might be a boneless chicken breast that can be grilled for a sandwich, cut into strips and battered for an appetizer or prepared as an entree dish or two. Four uses, one ingredient.
Most suppliers have a service that will design a menu for you. I did mine on Microsoft publisher and was told by a supplier that it was as nice as what they would have done, but it was also very time consuming and you may need to focus your energy elsewhere.
Keeping your menu simple allows you to master the dishes you offer before expanding into new items. No matter how hard you try to avoid it, you will run into production problems. This way you can iron out the wrinkles easier.
Make sure your equipment works. Just because your grill heats up doesn't mean it works right. ( Boy did I find THAT out the hard way!) Do at least two trial runs a week or two before you open. We did one the day before we opened and it left us no time to correct problems.
Try to foresee worst case scenarios at every turn. You'll have some nasty surprises no matter what, but not so many. Carry a list around with you so you can add items you're going to need as they occur to you, because you need everything from salt and pepper on up.
Above all, believe you can do it. Other people do, and you can too.
One more thing, make as many things from scratch as labor allows. There is a big difference between restaurants that make their own soups and dressings etc., and those that don't and customers notice.