Depending on your concept and build-out, you will need anywhere from $500,000 to $5,000,000 to get you off the ground. You have tapped out your family, and that SBA loan will only get you so far. Where are you going to find that kind of cash? Who would be willing to finance a business in an industry with a failure rate of around 60%? Fortunately for you, there are people out there – from glamour seeking angels to hard nosed venture capitalists – willing to invest in restaurants, hoping to grab a nano portion of the $537 billion in sales projected by the National Restaurant Association for 2007, or maybe to get in at the ground floor of another Cheesecake Factory or McDonalds.

Situated inside Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Bravo Restaurant’s chef Jacqueline Kelly wows her diners just as they are intrigued by the art on the museum’s walls. Her philosophy on cooking: “Keep it simple.” Her relationship with vendors allows her to use the freshest ingredients available, including vegetables picked the day before or fish that was caught the same morning. “Farms will send me what’s ripest and what was just picked,” she explained. “So, what’s available is what I use that day.” It makes you realize that painting a piece of artwork and creating a fabulous meal are quite similar.