For most young entrepreneurs, opening one restaurant feels like a major milestone. For Erwan Heussaff, the challenge was multiplied. In his early twenties, he launched as many as eight restaurants in Makati and Bonifacio Global City. Within five years, all of them had closed.
That experience—though painful at the time—gave him lessons that shaped his approach to business and still inform the way he thinks about entrepreneurship today.
The Rise of Boutique Concepts
Back in the early 2010s, the Philippines’ dining scene was booming. Middle-income families were growing, and more people were spending on dining out. Instead of following the path of international franchises and fast-food chains, Erwan focused on boutique concepts.
“We opened a lot… maybe at one point we opened seven or eight restaurants,” he said. “We focused on boutique concepts… straying away from the international franchises or the fast food and really just focusing on one-off restaurants.”
For the first few years, the gamble seemed to work. The restaurants drew attention, and the market was enthusiastic. But over time, cracks began to appear.
The Harsh Reality of Consumer Fickleness
One of the toughest lessons came from the behavior of local diners. “We realized that there was a very low level of fidelity amongst the consumer base and that there was always something new opening and the consumer always looked for something new,” Erwan explained.
That constant chase for novelty made it hard to build long-term stability. While concepts could start strong, they quickly faced declining sales as new competitors emerged. For an entrepreneur hoping to build predictable revenue streams, the day-to-day volatility became exhausting.
“In hindsight, definitely there should have been more market studies,” he admitted. “The restaurant business here I felt was a day-to-day grind.”
The Importance of Capital Strength
Erwan also discovered how critical financial backing was in the food business. No matter how strong a concept or how good the food, without sufficient reserves, survival was uncertain.
“You talk to anyone today in the restaurant business and unless you are a very cash heavy person or group, it’s very tough to keep up,” he shared. “Even the best restaurants in the country sometimes go through these periods where sales just drop and no one can predict that. And to be able to make sure you survive through those drops, you need the cash in the bank. And if you don’t, then it becomes very tricky.”
For him, the biggest takeaway was that passion alone doesn’t keep a restaurant alive—capital does.
Learning the Value of Partnerships
As he reflected on that chapter, Erwan acknowledged another key lesson: the importance of partnerships and clarity of roles. “My biggest lesson out of everything is to really create the right partnerships to make sure that all the partners involved in the business all have very specific goals that they need to be responsible for,” he said.
This meant ensuring finance people focused purely on finance, operations people handled operations, and creative teams concentrated on the concept. By separating responsibilities clearly, entrepreneurs could avoid finger-pointing and confusion when challenges arose.
Walking Away with Hard-Earned Wisdom
Closing eight restaurants in five years might look like failure from the outside. But for Erwan, it was a crash course in business realities. The mistakes gave him insights he would later apply to his digital ventures, production company, and agricultural businesses.
“Everyone goes through that in their 20s, especially when you’re an entrepreneur. You think every idea is a great idea,” he reflected. “But in retrospect, there’s always more things you can do and more things that you can fix and change.”
The closure of those restaurants didn’t end his career—it redirected it. The experience sharpened his discipline, strengthened his caution, and made him more strategic about where to place his time and resources.
Beyond the Kitchen, Into the Future
Erwan is the first to admit that the restaurant industry is one of the hardest sectors to succeed in. “It’s a really, really tough business… it just took me five years to realize,” he said.
That realization pushed him toward other ventures where he could apply the same creativity and discipline without being tied down by the daily grind of running restaurants. From content production to agriculture, his new businesses carried the lessons he learned from those years: respect for operations, clarity in roles, and the need for financial foresight.
Closing eight restaurants may sound like defeat, but for Erwan Heussaff, it was the most valuable business school he could have ever attended.
