It’s always been my dream to open my own restaurant.
- I went to culinary school and got my degree but graduated with a huge debt.
For awhile, I worked as a chef at an upscale restaurant. I was making decent money but very unhappy. I was determined to have my own place. Unfortunately, buying an existing business or building from scratch is extremely costly. I needed to find something less expensive that wouId still suit my requirements. I then came across shipping containers. I wasn’t sure how to design a kitchen in a big steel box, but I’d seen other people make it work. I had a little over three hundred square feet to play with. I wanted my establishment to be a full-service restaurant. I planned to create a stand-alone eaterie like any other, with food prep, cooking, grilling, frying and baking all completed on-site. One big advantage of a shipping container is the speed of completion. The turnaround time was cut in half. Because shipping containers are designed to be transported, it was not a problem to have it delivered across the country. That means that it wouldn’t be all that difficult or expensive to pick up and move my restaurant to a new location. I like that the container was able to be customized to fulfill the demands my menu. At one time, I considered investing in a food truck. Food trucks, however, have some limitations. For example, they have a maximum water supply capacity of thirty gallons. Once the water runs out, I’d need to shut down my business. With a shipping container restaurant, I was able to link to an existing water supply, allowing me to operate whenever and for however long.