" started out working at a coffee shop close to my house when I was 15 years old," he recalls. "I worked every position available--busboy, cook, back room, hosting. From there I moved on to a more upscale restaurant and did pretty much the same thing. I started as a cook, worked on the wait staff, as a host."

It was at that point Negi decided for sure that a career in the hospitality industry was the path he wanted to follow in his life. Despite his already considerable experience, however, he opted to formalize his training by enrolling in the highly regarded hotel/restaurant program at California Polytechnic's Pomona campus.

Negi stayed actively involved in his chosen industry throughout his four years in college, working full-time at a hotel. When he graduated in 1985, he was immediately recruited by a large hotel chain that relocated his to one of its 450-room units in Kentucky and placed him in charge of a food, beverage and catering department operation that did $5 million in annual sales. He was all of 22 years old.

"I was recruited by a general manager I had worked for previously," Negi recalls. "I spent 18 months running the food and beverage operation in Kentucky, then I got myself assigned to a task force opening new hotels around the country." He spent the next year-and-a-half launching operations in Dallas, Houston, San Jose and St. Louis, but all the time the entrepreneurial bug was growing inside him.

Learning a business 'from the inside' by working in it can be very valuable.

Negi was 25 when he made the commitment to himself that he was going to open his own business. "I was totally dedicated to what I was doing for the years I was working for the hotel company," he says. "I remember thinking that I was really doing a great job for them, and I felt I could put that drive and dedication to my own use." Because of his decade of experience in the restaurant business, Negi felt confident he was ready to strike out on his own.

From his early experience, Negi learned a critical lesson: Formal training can be important, but often the most valuable education for a budding entrepreneur is learning a business "from the inside" by working in it.

Negi's career up to this point had involved long hours and near-total involvement in his work. While he was realistic enough to recognize that launching a new restaurant would require at least an equal intensity of dedication, he was determined to find a format that would accommodate a lifestyle allowing for other interests besides work. He began an intensive round of research, searching for a niche in the restaurant business that would meet his demands.

"I had always been into a healthy lifestyle--wholesome foods and working out," he relates. "I felt that this might he the next new wave, and my research seemed to confirm it. so I decided to launch this hugh salad bar concept in 1987. It was a 35-foot salad bar with some 85 items. At the time, this was a totally innovative concept. No one had really done it on this scale before. I thought it would be the McDonald's of the 80s."

BRUTAL HOURS

With a solid concept nailed down, Negi still had to figure out a way to blunt the brutal hours demanded in running a conventional eatery. His solution was to open a lunch-only establishment in San Francisco's financial district, an area that operates on a Monday-to-Friday schedule. When he opened the doors of Soupreme Salads, Negi knew he had the luxury of fairly "normal" working hours and most weekends off, which was important to him.

Lack of capital is probably the single most common cause of business failure.

As a result of that experience, Negi learned a lesson that many other entrepreneurs know all too well. No matter how well prepared you think you are, the unexpected always lurks in the background and can present daunting challenges to any new business.

Despite the financial pressures, Negi hung tough and squeaked by every month. "Being young and aggressive helped a lot," he quips. Gradually, things improved, and by its fourth year in business, Soupreme Salads was turning a respectable profit, and it grew every year after that. Eventually, Negi bought his own equipment and vowed never to fall into the leasing trap again.

During that time, Negi says he really go to know San Francisco's financial district. He enjoyed the Monday-to-Friday schedule, which he describes as "a big change from the hotel business." He also became convinced that the area would support more eateries operating on the same kind of schedule. However, by this time the trends that had prompted him to create Soupreme Salads had shifted, and he knew he had to come up with a new concept. Soupreme Salads was still doing well, but it was not to be "the McDonald's of the '80s" after all.

"Through my first five years in business, I learned what people in the financial district were looking for in a restaurant," Negi says. "Times had changed, and now the demand was for something more modern and chic."

UNIQUE FEATURES

In 1994, Negi opened the first of two Cafe Venue restaurants. sporting interiors with a modern, industrial look, Cafe Venue is a concept combining a fresh atmosphere, fresh food and creative people. The units feature juice bars, espresso, gourmet sandwiches, hot pastas and--their trademark--fresh salads tossed right in front of patrons.

"Actually, our whole food line is open, so you can see everything as it's being make," Negi explains. "What sets us apart is our food and our people; both are very creative."

Cafe Venue's menu boasts gourmet sandwiches such as roasted eggplant with red bell peppers, tomato, melted mozzarella, spinach leaves and sundried tomato spread on foccaccia bread and vine-ripened tomatoes, melted mozzarella, sun-dried tomato cream cheese and organic greens on a baguette. Its work force is very diverse and very friendly. "The service they provide and the environment it creates--it all makes us just a little different here," Negi says.

As Negi had discovered, keeping pace with shifting trends is important in every business, but especially one as subject to the whims of consumer tastes as the restaurant business. Even operators with a successful concept must be open to embracing change.

Keeping pace with shifting trends is important in almost every business.

Having learned the lesson of the importance of capitalization the hard way with Soupreme Salads, Negi took a unique approach to launching Cafe Venue. He took over an existing space that had gone out of business, a strategy that allowed him to leave a lot of things in place and to avoid costly structural changes. "We just had to do some cosmetic things, and we incorporated the existing features into our decorative motif," he says. "We made creative use of what was already there, and it actually reinforces the modern, industrial look we were after."

Negi also cashed in on other lessons he had learned through the process of nurturing Soupreme Salads into a success. For example, he acted as his own general contractor in fitting out both the original Cafe Venue and the second unit, which opened in 1997. (A third Cafe Venue is opening this year.) "I did the same thing with Soupreme Salads, but the difference was I had no idea about all the permits required and how everything would come together." he says. "That was a big challenge at the beginning, but now it's a piece of cake." Experience, he says, has been an excellent teacher.

Business success should be a means to an end, not an end unto itself.

Over the past 15 years, Negi has been more than a restaurateurs. He's been a sheetrocker, a plumber, an electrician--and whatever else he had to be to get his restaurants up and running and keep them that way. "When you work for a big hotel and a toilet gets backed up, you call maintenance," he observes. "When you own the place yourself, you grab a plunger."

That willingness to deal with the nitty-gritty details of running a business coupled with the experience he garnered working for others have been the keys to his success, he says. And now he is getting to enjoy the fruits of that success, spending more time with family and friends and pursuing activities he enjoys while his business continues to thrive.

ACCESS TO CAPITAL

That being the case, it is a good idea for aspiring business owners to keep in mind a few other pieces of advice offered by experts on the entrepreneurial experience. One warning many business start-up advisors offer is not to put everything you own at risk in a new company. Similarly, be very tight-fisted with whatever money you do raise to start the new venture. Cash has a way of disappearing faster than you ever dreamed possible when it comes to launching a new business.

John Cullinane, author of "The Entrepreneurs Survival Guide," offers these tips to help you survive through what he calls the "entrepreneurial phase," that is, the period when you first begin thinking about starting your own business:

* Force yourself into new job situations because broadened experience breeds confidence.

*Good ideas are very easy to find, but bringing them it life is extremely difficult.

*Resist the temptation to give away too much equity in the venture in order to attract quality management, although it may be necessary to offer some ownership incentive to get the people you really want.

*If you have enjoyed success as an employee at other companies, by all means, consider striking out on your own as an entrepreneur.

*Do not be afraid of failure. In fact, Cullinane suggests you assume that you may fail. "Its not the end of the world if you do," he says. "In fact, you may be able to get a better job because of the experience gained in forming your own company."