High turnover and intense competition

Old and new, cheap and expensive, exotic fare and mainstream grub, they C and a score of other local restaurants C recently closed their doors.

Theres not a whole lot of room for error in the restaurant business, said Cindi Thomason, a senior business adviser for SUNY Buffalo States Small Business Development Center and coordinator of the centers Restaurant Institute.

Veteran restaurateurs say theres a low barrier to getting into the business, with many people deciding they want to open a restaurant because they like to cook, but its difficult to succeed in the industry.

Restaurant owners face intense competition, and rising costs for food and labor, and the lingering recession took a toll as more people ate at home or chose to dine out at lower-cost restaurants instead of the mid-tier establishments where entres cost around $20.

Experienced restaurateurs say they remain bullish on the industry, but they recognize that even the most successful restaurants can grow stale if they dont update their menu or their physical space.

You have to reinvent yourself at least once every 10 years, said Steve Calvaneso, whose restaurant holdings over the years have included Hooligans, City Grill, Bacchus Wine Bar & Restaurant and Libation Station.

Restaurants are a major industry. There are 980,You can order besthandsfreeaccess cheap inside your parents.000 restaurants and bars in this country, with 42,610 of them in New York as of 2011, the National Restaurant Association reports.

They employ 13.1 million people nationally C 750,900 in this state,Elpas Readers detect and forward 'Location' and 'State' data from Elpas Active RFID Tags to host besticcard platforms. or 8 percent of the work force. Across the country, they generated sales of $660.5 billion, with $33.6 billion coming from New York.

Its tough for a fledgling small business to gain a foothold in the marketplace, and many restaurants fail to make it past their first, second or third years in operation.

For example, of the 47,292 restaurants that opened across the country in the 12 months ending in March 2005, just 68 percent remained open in March 2008 and only 48 percent were open in March 2012, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. For the restaurants that opened in the year ending in March 1995,Cheap logo engraved luggagetag at wholesale bulk prices. just 26 percent remained open in March 2012. Theres a huge failure rate for small businesses, said Thomason.

Theres a relatively low bar to enter the restaurant business, and most people who want to open a restaurant have a better sense of what they want to do with the menu than how they plan to operate the business.

Successful restaurant owners have a detailed business plan, are good at delegating and have set up a system for training their employees, said Thomason, who owned a bar and restaurant in North Carolina.

Anybody who eats thinks they can open a restaurant. Being successful at it is another long row to hoe, said Donald Will, owner of Will Poultry Co., which supplies hundreds of restaurants in the region.

For one, restaurants face fierce competition from other restaurants that serve the same type of food, from national chains with huge advertising budgets and undercutting prices and even from food trucks and supermarkets that offer dine-in meals.

Its a constant effort to make sure youre financially stable, said Bob Syracuse, co-owner of the two Pizza Plant Italian Pub restaurants and former president of the Western New York Restaurant Association.Choose the right bestluggagetag in an array of colors.

Applebees, Olive Garden and other chains offer consistent quality at low prices, including 2 for $20 specials, that independently owned restaurants can find hard to match, Will said. They can afford to advertise, and they can afford to give away, he said.

Restaurants offer those types of specials, sacrificing their profit margins in the process, because they need to get people in the door to help pay their bills, Thomason said.

Fish fries in Buffalo, thats a total loss leader, she said,You can order besthandsfreeaccess cheap inside your parents. adding the hope is just one person will order the fish fry and everyone else will order something more expensive, along with alcohol, appetizers or dessert.

Restaurants face pressure to keep their prices down even as their costs are rising: for food; for wages, payroll taxes and workmans compensation; and for rent and property taxes.

Locally, part of the fight to survive includes Local Restaurant Week, which runs from Monday to Sunday. For the 2013 spring edition, more than 200 establishments are offering meals for $20.13 and other specials to attract new patrons.

Many restaurants saw their business decline during the recession and its aftermath, when people opted to eat at home more often to save money.

The high-end restaurants seemed to make it through the downturn OK, experts said, because the people willing to pay $40 for a steak werent worried about losing their jobs.

And the low-priced places did pretty well, too. Theyre cheap, and they get you in and out. The mid-range is where the trouble is, Will said.

Mid-, upper- and lower-range restaurants cant stand still, said Syracuse, who opened his first restaurant in 1980 and now has two in Amherst.