people like accountants etc that eat at successful restaurants regularly and see the owners strutting around eating, drinking having a good time etc get very misled about the hospitality industry.
They think that their office jobs are "long hours" and "tiring" that owning a restaurant will be an awesome lifestyle change, and it is, but only by the 1940's definition of awesome.
In reality they spend their life savings on a poorly thought out restaurant, spend the next 3 years doing 100 hour weeks and stressing like they have never stressed before, and then losing everything when the place closes down.
end of the day, it's a VERY small margin of new restaurants that even survive, let alone do well.
Hospitality in Melbourne is the pure definition of an over saturated market. If you find a new niche and exploit it at the right moment, it IS possible to make serious money, but it's HARD work and very unlikely.
I know Ash probably doens't want to read this but unfortunatley it's how it is.
Ash, if you need any advice on this, you have my number