On Oct. 24, 2005, Keith C. Gardner fulfilled his entrepreneurial dream by opening the doors to The Mighty Dog, a sports-themed Penn Hills eatery featuring salads, sandwiches and of course, a variety of hot dogs. The 1,558-square-foot restaurant boasted a half-dozen television sets, a Playstation 2 and a smoke-free, alcohol-free policy designed to make it family-friendly.

On June 18, 2007, after 20 months of struggling to lift sales to the breakeven point -- a battle that saw him fall behind not only on the rent payments for his restaurant, but on the mortgage payments for his house -- Mr. Gardner closed the doors to The Mighty Dog.

Two and a half weeks later, on July 6, in a scenario straight from a made-for-TV, he was hospitalized and underwent surgery for an umbilical hernia, a procedure that put him out of commission for three weeks.

When he returned to the restaurant to retrieve his business equipment and personal belongings, the management company of the space Mr. Gardner had leased, Downtown-based Union Real Estate, had changed the locks. On Aug. 9, the company took possession of the building's contents by way of an on-site sheriff's sale. On Aug. 21, Mr. Gardner was permitted to return to retrieve some personal belongings, in particular the sports memorabilia that had decorated the restaurant.

The Mighty Dog was not the impulsive concoction of someone with no business knowledge and no plan. After graduating from Thiel College in 1993 with a degree in accounting and business administration, Mr. Gardner spent 11 years as controller for B.T. Woodlipp Inc., the Applebee's franchisee that became the largest minority-owned business in Pennsylvania.

When he decided to venture out on his own, his business plan was solid enough to land him financing from PNC and the CL Fund, an economic development lender that focuses on lending to businesses in low-income communities.

But everyone knows the line about the best-laid plans.

Looking back over his experience, Mr. Gardner, 35, shared some of the lessons he has learned.

Location, location, location

The Mighty Dog was located in Churchill Center, a retail development at Frankstown Road and Beulah Road. According to Union's marketing materials, 16,000 vehicles pass by the intersection daily, a high enough traffic count to stoke Mr. Gardner's confidence that the business would do well.

But Mr. Gardner learned that a busy intersection isn't enough. The space he occupied was to the side and the rear of the complex's main building, so The Mighty Dog remained invisible to many of the 16,000 drivers who passed by.

He says the problem was made worse by the lack of a sign at the front of the complex to point the way to his restaurant.

"If I had a dollar for every time somebody came in and said, 'You need a sign out front,' I'd be rich," he said.

Capital, capital, capital

The most commonly cited cause of business failure is not having enough startup cash to sustain the business until it becomes profitable. Mr. Gardner is now a believer.

"Do your homework and do it over again with regards to working capital," he said. "If you're raising capital and you believe you need $50,000, go out and get $100,000."

The expenses of the business began to diverge from Mr. Gardner's business plan even before The Mighty Dog opened: He had intended to use a range hood left behind by the previous tenant, but the fire marshal declared it unusable. The new hood added $4,000 to Mr. Gardner's expense column.

"By the time I opened up, I was tapped out," he said. So tapped out that there was not enough money for the advertising and marketing that could have compensated for the lack of a sign.

Read the fine print

"Be smart about what you sign," he said. In his case, he now regrets not having read more carefully the clauses in his lease pertaining to improvements that he as a tenant might make to the property -- and what he could lose in the case of default.

When he signed the lease, he said, the space had been empty for several years and was "just a shell." He said his new landlord upgraded the HVAC and provided new restrooms, but, otherwise the rehab fell to him, and he spent "at least $30,000" to make it usable -- constructing walls, laying floors and adding plumbing. Now, he says, "I've added equity to their building."

"Don't go out and spend a bunch of money on somebody else's property," he said.

He acknowledges that Union greased the deal by offering him six months of free rent, and that by the time he closed the doors on The Mighty Dog, he was "at least a year behind" on his rent. But even so, he said, "I owed less than I had put into the building."

Losing walls and floors is one thing, but losing kitchen and office equipment is another. Mr. Gardner's lease was "a little unclear" about what Union could seize, said Thomas P. Sullivan, broker with Pennsylvania Commercial Real Estate. And in business, being unclear can be fatal.

"It's important to have things very, very explicitly outlined and to be very specific even to the point of making an attachment or exhibit to a lease so that there isn't any interpretation problem later," he said.

Having come out on the other side of all that difficulty without losing his home or his family -- and with a new job as a youth program coordinator for Operation Better Block, the Homewood community agency -- Mr. Gardner now says, "I don't want people to feel sorry for me. I did the deal."

But an edge creeps back into his voice when he talks about how things went between him and Union toward the end, especially on the day that he and his brother Eric returned to retrieve his belongings from the closed restaurant. He said that Union's representative, Dave Koltesh, who declined to be interviewed for this story, told him not to bring "an entourage."

"I'm not a rapper," Mr. Gardner said, "I don't know where that's coming from, 'an entourage.' "

He was taken equally by surprise, he said, when Mr. Koltesh said, "This isn't a black and white thing," because he hadn't suggested that it was. "I still believe Pittsburgh has a ways to go with regard to race relations," he said.

In any case, Mr. Gardner's experience has not cured his entrepreneurial bug. He said that since closing the restaurant, "I can't walk down the street" without encountering someone who says they miss The Mighty Dog. But while that validates his business concept, "It's kind of bittersweet."

"I would like to get open again," Mr. Gardner said, "I've been doing my homework and looking for a better location."