Red Tape or Guard Rails?

Derek

I know someone in Vietnam who owns a handful of bars. Out of curiosity, I asked him, a 20-something white guy from Ohio, how he got the liquor / business / whatever-he-needed licenses.

“I just started selling booze. Soon, the cops came to inquire. Then I paid them a fine (bribe), and they brought me a license.”

If he had done it the “right” way, it would have been a 6-9 month process to open. Instead, he had a legal bar in 2 weeks. It wasn’t legit on day 1, but it got there much faster.

Sometimes sequence matters. But surely there are times it doesn’t.

TLDR

Oops, we did some stuff out of order! 😇😇😇

Now that we’ve made a few thousand dollars, it’s time to scramble to get a legal entity, a bank account, stop using personal credit cards, proper paperwork, appropriate business licenses, set up payroll, stop paying people in cash, etc.

Paul Graham writes that “every check has a cost”. What would we have given up if we had followed the official playbook to the letter?

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(For the record, we’ve had appropriate sanitation/food handler certificates and been working in licensed, inspected kitchens the entire time.)