A restaurant that has been dark does not reopen. It gets rebuilt from scratch, and the building is the smallest part. At Greensleeves we ran it like a launch. A PR campaign so the town heard the name again. Press. Events for the city so the room was full of people who lived there, not people passing through.
Underneath that was the part nobody sees. Chef after chef until the kitchen could hold a standard, and then a general manager who finally turned the place around. He was the key person, and he ran it through me. My job was to set the standard, keep the purchasing and the menu economics honest, and stay out of his way.
The restaurant grew to about $2.1 million a year at a 4.8 star standard, and it held that through COVID until I exited in January 2022.
Here is the mechanism. Marketing gets people in once. A standard that holds on a slow Tuesday when I am not in the building is what brings them back, and that standard lives in one person on the floor, not in the owner. Find that person, back them, and build everything so it runs without you. A business that only works when you are standing in it is a job, not a business.