Foodie fans of fine French cuisine from all over have been known to schedule trips to the Bay Area just to get a table at Berkeley's Chez Panisse.  Alice Waters, the celbrated owner of Chez Panisse, started the business back in 1971.  She has been honored with the prestigious James Beard Award, a Bon Apetit lifetime achievement award, and most recently accolades from the French Legion of Honor, for her contributions to cuisine.  Getting the food right was one challenge.  But the bigger challenge was learning how to run a business.  Waters shares her Startup Story at CNNMoney, and she says the beginning, as with most startups, was rocky:

"In no time I had 50 employees, and I didn't know how to manage any of them," Waters says. "We were open seven days a week from 7:30 a.m. to 2 a.m., serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. It was too much. We were hemorrhaging money. I had to lay off half of my staff, and we stopped serving breakfast and closed on Sundays."

She turned things around, and the business started to make a profit...after eight years.  Read How Chez Panisse Began here.