节目资讯
刊物:空中英语教室
日期:2012-01-13
难易度:Low
关键字:responsibility, scary, barrier, invest, option, restaurateur
(Music).
Hi, friends.
Welcome to Studio Classroom Worldwide.
Thanks for joining us today.
My name is Steve.
And my name is Kaylah.
Friends, have you ever wanted to start a company?
Does it seem like a hard thing to do?
Today Studio Classroom interviews Francis Beauvais, a restaurant owner in
Taipei.
OK. Beauvais gave us tips on how to start a restaurant and the unique challenge
of starting a company in a foreign country.
Starting a restaurant has its problems anywhere, but especially when you don't
speak the local language.
Wow, Kaylah, I can't imagine the problems you would have to work through with a
language barrier.
Well, Steve, you don't have to imagine it, you can learn about it as we start
our reading on page 30 - Starting a Restaurant.
Starting a Restaurant.
A small business owner shares his experience.
This month Studio Classroom talks to Francis Beauvais about starting a small
business.
Beauvais is the owner of Le Rouge, a Taipei-area restaurant that has been
serving pizza, pasta, crepes and appetizers for the past five and a half years.
Why did you decide to start your own business?
I wanted the freedom of being my own boss.
I like working for myself and taking responsibility for my own decisions.
When I had the opportunity to open a restaurant in a good location, I took it.
What was the scariest thing about starting a business?
I guess the scariest thing was the language barrier.
I'm from Canada, and it was difficult to communicate with my customers and
suppliers here.
Thank you for joining us, friends.
My name is Ryan.
And my name is Kaylah.
And today we are looking at "Starting a Restaurant." Studio Classroom talked to
a small business owner who shares his experience.
Yes. We want to get some of their life experience on how they started a
restaurant.
So now we're going to see an interview between Studio Classroom and, as we'll
see, the restaurant owner Francis Beauvais.
This month Studio Classroom talks to Francis Beauvais about starting a small
business.
Beauvais is the owner of Le Rouge, a Taipei-area restaurant that has been
serving pizza, pasta, crepes and appetizers for the past five and a half years.
OK. So we want to learn a little bit about his experience as to how he started
his business, in this case, a restaurant.
That's right. So Studio Classroom we're going to go ahead and start our
interview with our first question:
Why did you decide to start your own business?
And this is a great question, Kaylah.
If you're going to be spending a lot of money and a lot of time starting a
business, you want to know why.
Well, Francis Beauvais answers:
I wanted the freedom of being my own boss.
Now Ryan, I know this is the reason a lot of people start their own companies.
They do want this freedom.
Right. You get to be in control, you get to make the choices on your own, and so
you have your own business.
It's yours.
There's no one else telling you what to do.
He says: I like working for myself and taking responsibility for my own
decisions.
If you are going to start your own business, this is important to be comfortable
with and excited about is you do have to make your own decisions.
Now you have to be responsible for that as well.
Yes. And he actually wants this.
And that's a good thing... is "responsibility." And that means that you own
something... he takes responsibility for his decisions.
That means that he... it's his job to deal with those decisions.
So he wants these responsibilites because he likes making these decisions.
"When I had the opportunity to open a restaurant in a good location, I took it."
So not only was he wanting to open a restaurant,
but it is important to pick a good location.
That's right.
Restaurants, some are successful and some could fail depending on where they
are.
And that is their location.
And so it's true, Kaylah, he would want to look for a good opportunity.
And it seems that when he got it, he took it.
And we can see already that it works because his restaurant has been around for
a little over five years.
Well, what was Studio Classroom's question next?
OK. The next question is: What was the scariest thing about starting a business?
That's a good question.
But you have to understand what "scariest" means?
That means what was... had the most fear in it, what caused you to have the most
fear about a situation.
A lot of times we think of our... when we were a child, we think of monsters
that might have been in our closet or hiding under our bed.
Those were the scariest things in our lives.
They caused us fear.
Hmm. You know what I thought was the scariest thing as a child, Kaylah?
Hmm.
It was clowns.
Oh...
Very scary.
But now we want to know what Francis Beauvais thinks is the scariest thing about
starting a business.
Well, he answers.
Here we will see in our article "FB." Now this is referring to Francis Beauvais,
not to Facebook.
Just to make sure you know this is the man we are talking to.
Yes. He says: I guess the scariest thing was the language barrier.
Ah. I have to say that the scariest thing about moving to any new country to do
any kind of work is definitely the language barrier.
OK. Now the word "barrier" by itself is referring to something that stops
something else.
For example, a barrier against the ocean stops the ocean waves from coming into
a harbor.
But what is a language barrier, Kaylah?
A language barrier means you don't speak the language of the country you are in,
so you have a very hard time communicating.
Language stops you from communicating.
All right. Now we know Francis's restaurant is in the Taipei area.
And... so he must be from somewhere else.
And he says: I'm from Canada, and so it was difficult to communicate with my
customers and suppliers here.
In Canada, the main language is English.
But they also often speak French.
But in Taipei, the most common language is Mandarin and Taiwanese.
So his language barrier would probably be very great as he has to work with
suppliers and customers.
Yes. And suppliers are people who provide items that you need for your
restaurant, or any kind of business.
And so you need to be able to communicate with them and get the right supplies.
So communicating to get what you need and making sure a customer gets what they
want would definitely be a challenge if there was a language barrier blocking
your way.
Yes. And so now is his chance to try and maybe learn a little Mandarin, and try
and break through that barrier.
So we're going to talk about these different barriers; language is only the
beginning.
But we see he is successful.
We're going to learn how he was successful and all that he did here.
Let's go see today's skit.
Welcome to my restaurant.
We serve pizza, pasta, crepes and appetizers.
Mmhm. It all sounds good.
I think I really want...
Yes, what do you want?
I really want to ask a question.
A question?
Yeah. Why did you decide to open a restaurant?
That's easy.
I wanted to be my own boss.
I like working for myself, making my own decisions and taking responsibility.
Great! But isn't it scary?
What's the scariest thing about starting a business?
I'm from Canada, so the scariest thing was the language barrier.
It's difficult to communicate with customers and suppliers.
And the market is different too.
Were you afraid of failing?
Yes. I've invested everything in this business.
So how did you prepare yourself to open this business?
Well, I've worked in restaurants nearly all my life.
My dad was in the restaurant business.
I started working for him when I was only 14.
Oh. So you have a lot of experience.
Yes. Now, what do you want to order?
We serve pizza, pasta, crepes and appetizers.
Hmm...