Gloomy forecast for restaurants

[gfweb]

https://thecounter.org/why-restaurants-are-closing-nyc-los-angeles/

 

The writer mostly makes sense.  Lots of competition from non-restaurant food sellers like trucks and supermarkets.

[blue_dolphin]

Evan Kleiman interviewed Karen Stabiner, author of the article cited above on her radio show/podcast, Good Food. Here is a link to the segment. 

[teonzo]

Moving towards take-away brings many cons for sure, but also many plus sides.
You don't work with a front of house department, which saves lots of costs and unexpected troubles.
You can base your kitchen in the outskirts and not in prime estate areas, saving quite some money. Ok, not much for cities like New York, if you want to serve Manhattan then your kitchen needs to be in Manhattan.
You are not going mad about timing different dishes for tables of 6 or 8 customers, your dishes are going to sit in a van for quite some time so if a dish is ready 4 minutes before the others then it's perfectly ok.
You are not facing the hassle of explaining to a customer that a dish in the menu is gone. This if you are good managing your software and kitchen.
You don't need a liquor license and tons of money invested in bottles and glassware.
You don't have customer toilets to clean (probably the worst nightmare). You don't deal with drunk/stoned/worse customers.

 

 

 

Teo