>I have recently been inspired to follow a business idea that
>I have for a restaraunt geared for girls and woman. My
>restaraunt will have an "Alice in Wonderland" theme
>and I am also trying to put a boutique in there. The problem
>is that I have no money and I've been looking for grants. I'm
>working towards getting my business name registered and to get
>my website up and running. I've started on my business plan
>and I've been checking the business grant pages on the idea
>cafe website. Please let me know if you've heard of a woman's
>business grant or for minorities or even another website I can
>look into. Any help would be very much appreciated.
>Victoria M Lomas

I'm wondering about what you did with the grant information that was supplied on the ideas cafe site? Are you applying for any of those?

If you want to go the grant route one of the things that you are going to have to understand is that it will be a process. Most of the grant programs that I know of that are related to entrepreneurial type endeavors require a complete business plan of some sort specifically outlining what the grant money will be going towards.

You also have to understand the objectives of grant programs in the first place and that is to bring an awareness to something or fill a need. In your specific case you should first check and see if your local area has any grant programs relating to starting a business. Will your business bring jobs to the area? Can you incorporate some kind of special awareness or need into your business that there are grant programs for?

And last but not least as a number of replies have pointed out - what about your experience with operating a restaurant. One of the most notorious disadvantages to opening a restaurant is the inspection and food and health-related needs that have to be met.

I'm not trying to discourage you but there are a lot of things that have to be taken care of - most notably the planning of your restaurant - and more notably the specifics of your restaurant plan.