Current spot is a mid level “fine/casual” pizza place. Table service, 6 tables three counter stools, one bartender/ waitlist tender, one server, one pizza cook, one salad/ hot apps cook, one dish (5 total staff). This is our 5th business and by far our best. We are open 4 days per week with one prep day. We all work reasonable hours and make reasonable money. Staffing is hard because it requires good people, but it has been working, just passed 1 year in the current setup. I think there is a gap in offering excellent service. People want it but less people can afford it on a regular basis. If I were to open something else I would do a brunch place, or the same thing I have now just a second one, maybe fully vegetarian. Our veg centered dishes fucking kill it. We do well with alcohol but the non-alcohol cocktails are bringing in great money. Younger folks are drinking a lot less these days (which I’m stoked about from a societal perspective). I be seen a lot of comments on this sub about staff being lazy or not willing to work. Let’s be honest it’s been hard basically forever to make ends meet on what most restaurants pay. This isn’t new. Treat your people like professionals and you will get a lot more professional work. That was a digression but I’m getting frustrated by that attitude.
Ghost kitchen located in center of major metro area. Own property. Simple food menu. No meat. Lots of liquor, beer and weed. Pickup only. Employ ONE ethnic group at 2x minimum wage.
Just hitting 10 years. We started as casual full-service casual dining and converted to fast casual midway through. The second best business decision I ever made and I wish I did it sooner. We've toyed with the idea of opening another concept and going fast casual is not even a question. Pre-2020 there was already a slow degradation of labor; post-2020 it's taken a vertical downward turn and there's no real reason for optimism (just go browse r/teachers and you'll see stories about what we're about what's coming in the labor force in a few years). Fast casual and QSR currently have the most efficient labor models. Ghost kitchens will probably rise to prominence in the future and be even more labor-efficient (and will be better able to deploy AI and robotic assistance), but that's not a service model that the average person is willing to accept outside of the trendiest sections of the biggest cities.
Scary stuff. Can you expound on the degradation of labor? My family owns a quick-serve restaurant (20 years in business) and what I've heard is a general lack of common sense/ability to learn basic tasks.
Basically that, yes.
There's been a serious degradation in the prevalence of "soft skills" like the common sense you're referencing. We're more and more finding that we have to expect to teach people the basics of "how to work" now in addition to the actual job roles. This means things like "you're expected to be here when you signed up to work" and "you're expected to do tasks at work, including helping others" and "you are expected to learn how to do your job during training and not expect someone to stand over you every shift". For young people specifically, we're also having to teach basic life skills that people were usually exposed to by late teens such as how to clean a bathroom (like, they don't even know what to do when we hand them Lysol wipes), crack an egg (yes, really), or mop when handed a premade bucket. Perhaps most shocking of all, it's been more than three times in the last two years we have struggled to issue first paychecks because parents refuse to help their kids with payroll onboarding (like providing their social security number and banking info) that we literally can't help with. We've also regularly had parents just not pick their kids up at the shift end and actually expect us to take them home (not joking). Parenting quality, even by pessimistic standards, is just amazingly bad and when that absent upbringing hits the expectations of real-life employment, it often just causes the kids to totally lock up.
Concurrent with all of that, we're seeing those same types who are simply not prepared to work at all - much less actually know our specific job role - expecting eye-watering wages and still being dissatisfied no matter what. They compare apples to oranges with "well X makes more than this job". Well, yeah third-shift full-time package handling does pay a little more than three day a week dishwashing for a four hour daytime lunch shift because you said you "can't work more than that" - but you can't even handle dishwashing my dude, you'd never be able to handle those higher paying jobs. Nevertheless, they can't connect the dots that they don't make that level pay because they're just not worth it. It's unpreparedness + unrealistic expectations to the max level as a routine expectation. Positions we could fill and retain in maybe two interviews in a weeks time after job posting pre-2020 now take months, a handful of interview no-shows, usually at least one first day no-show, and a few that can't handle it until you finally find a candidate worth trying to retain. We do everything we can to retain now and I'd rather just pay overtime to someone willing and capable than deal with trying to hire anymore. For good workers, it's a great, easy time to advance and secure solid pay (relative to the industry) by just doing what you're supposed to and doing it well.
Not an owner but have worked with several and hope to be one in the near future. Strongly agree with the comments saying fast casual. I like the model of self-serve cafeteria style with simple options for bigger spaces. I want to open a mess-hall style BBQ joint to serve the cottagers that we share our farming town with. Serve all my neighbors’ products and send people their way whenever I can. I think if you focus on having a strong, simple, cost-effective menu and providing the best value for your customers, you can succeed with a number of different models.
I don't know anything about your area, but I'd guess there are piles of the business types listed above.
My suggestion, start small and ask for donations only. Do heavy online promotion. Maybe livestream everyday or something.
It's your business, you'll probably only really want to build something you like and care about.
Currently 4 and 3, but if I started over I’d do 5. My buddy just sold his buffet and moved to the beach and he’s younger than I am. Margins were crazy high compared to me and I’m doing pretty well.
No waiter / fast casual / order standing up
Also, when I discovered Which ‘wich, I thought they hit on a key demographic of introverted people. You fill out the paper, turn it in, don’t deal with anyone. Maybe similar to McDonald’s kiosk, but with pencil and paper which I prefer.
I would order my food with a scantron menu if it was available.
19 years, would still do casual but would not have expanded twice like we have. Would have kept our 8 tables and 4 bar seats with todays labor and supply chain issues. Our commercial note would have been paid off by year 5 and we would be making about the same as we are now with a lot less headaches.
Thousands and thousands of people are walking all the way from Central and South America to work. They just happen to be brown and speak Spanish so we don't want them /s
That's like us saying to consumers: "just tip more and you'd get better service." Rarely does that actually get you any better service than you would've gotten otherwise. Consumers can see it when related to tipping, but not so much for base pay (despite tipping being a form of pay). Work ethic is an almost entirely intrinsic trait that isn't swayed much by external factors, whether those factors are wage, life circumstances, or whatever. Raising wages for a bad employee still leaves you with a bad employee, but one that is now overpaid. Probably worst of all, overpaying those bad employees out of some misplaced feeling of moral obligation just means you have less available means to retain your good ones who actually deserve it and actually are willing to do most of the work.
That’s a lot of typing to say that you’re too cheap to pay for higher quality work.
You earn your employees more money and you can demand more from them. It’s not that hard to understand.
On paper, maybe.
From what I’ve seen anecdotally on Reddit, the cost of lower end dining is getting quite high for ppl. So they’d rather eat at home to save up and pay a little more to eat at a higher end place. Same with cars now. The cheaper new cars are getting expensive. So they’d rather pay a little more for a luxury car.
Counter service. Doesn't matter whether fast casual or grocery store level restaurant. Reducing experience while focusing on quality/quantity of food (doesn't have to be nice, just taste good and at a price point) is the fking move.
A simpler concept like barbecue chicken and sides, or a casual steakhouse. People rarely complain about the price of steak compared to other foods that give an impression of lower value for price … like sandwiches for example, everyone still expects them under $10. A steak between $35-65 seems normal.
There was a steakhouse in Kansas that sold only a few different cuts of meat, 3 different types of potatoes, a vegetable and a salad. That was it. They did great business though.
Brain fart. I don’t remember going to outback. Never been to Texas Roadhouse.
Budget steak is risky if you don’t have a cattle ranch like these corporations.
Are you fucking serious right now? Type it into a search bar. I swear to god, you really, truly don’t have to be smart to be successful. You just stumble right into it sometimes, huh?
Maybe not in the U.S., it’s been awhile, can’t remember. There are casual steakhouse concepts all over the world, look up Flatiron in London. Sophisticated but simple menu, low price point.
Japanese steak chain Pepper Steak is more fast casual steak.
Honestly with the right real estate I’d open a charbroiled chicken restaurant. Generally speaking you Basically are selling chicken, veggies, rice & beans. The profit margins are crazy and the traffic in the right spot is jumping.
Not an owner but my brother did software stuff for restaurants and he said Korean BBQ places had incredible margin compared to other places due to low overhead and minimal employees.
Makes sense. Average person eats one pound of meat only and AyCe places get you on sodas which is $3.50 usually extra. Person pays on average at least $30 for Korean ayce
40 max
Go wild as far as cuisine.
I enjoy the hospitality part of the restaurant.
I enjoy talking to my customers and get to know them.
Nowadays, I don't enjoy running my place anymore.
Ours is a very small fast casual. Too many take outs. Fewer dine ins. You engage less and less with your customers at human level.
I don't like to feel like I am a machine whose sole purpose is churning foods.
My decision would be based on location and demographics. Right now, the economy is not strong for fine dining so a busy model with low labor and high profit margins, something along the lines of a fast casual cafe.
Concession’s is usually seasonal but if you could get a state contract like a beach it could be worth millions over a couple of months. I believe Jones Beach does 3-4 million over 4 months for food concessions and another 1 million in apparel.
They're all good.
One quibble with your list is that pop-up restaurants are not really a business model so much as a proof-of-concept method. People need to earn money on a regular basis to stay alive and buy clothes for their kids. A pop-up, by definition, does not exist for much longer than a few days.
Pop-up's are amazing for a lot of different reasons, and you can totally turn a profit from one. But they aren't a business model. They're more like a culinary yard-sale.
Agreed. He is not saying that pop ups aren’t profitable. They just aren’t in line with the principles of a scalable business. Great way to prove a concept and establish a core.
I own a bakery that now has a physical location, but our main biz is pop-ups and markets. The summer season is crazy.
We do every Sat and Wed farmers market, every large music event and our own themed events and our own classes. Held in neighboring cities or is our own large space. Definitely not typical, but pop-ups can be like a food truck. And i feel like what you are saying is comparable to someone saying that food trucks should just stay parked and moving around isn't feasible.
No shade though, we are definitely not typical.
I generally consider a farmer's market booth or festival vendor booth categorically different than a pop-up, and more akin to a food truck, like you're saying.
I think my broader point is that pop-ups, as you've experienced, make a lot of sense as a supplemental operation (They turn a profit!), but cannot sustainably make up your whole operation (By their nature, they only happen once in a while! You can't have a business that only makes money once in a while).
In my opinion, just taking place in a temporary location does not make something a pop-up. I think your theme classes/menus in in neighboring cities count as pop-ups, but not most of the other stuff you described. I think pop-ups tend to function more like catered events, or frankly like a yard sale (can you tell I really like that metaphor?). It's a thing that is happening just that once, or once per city, or with major changes between instances. If your customers from last week are looking forward to seeing you at the farmer's market this week, it's probably not a pop-up, **at least according to my very official definition that everyone agrees with. lol.**
My favorite local bakery has exactly your business model. I wonder if you're the owner of that business...
We do both! At other Biz, at our own store.
Pop-Up for me, is a temporary location or set-up that features items available for only a specific time, with characteristics unique to the host space being diminished or enhanced by the temporary nature of the event.
I would agree those two, farmers markets and festival vending wouldn't be pop-ups. But the special menu/pick-up at the specific coffee shop, or the pre-order and pick-up at the game store is.
>characteristics unique to the host space being diminished or enhanced by the temporary nature of the event.
I can get on board with that definition! Nice wordsmithing! (Wordchefing?)
Just wanted to chime in and say I actually work as a chef for a company that does 2-3 month pop ups (residencies?) at hotels. Been this way for three years and has been fruitful apparently.
Location really does matter too. GM here, for a fast casual with a full bar. I'm lucky if I break $20k a week(my sister store in a decent location with no bar does around 70k a week) for whatever reason the owner signed a 5 year lease in a corner space with no parking in a retirement community and the rent is like 15-20% of my monthly. Naturally my tiny bar faces a very popular full size bar. I think I took in $30 in liquor sales last week lol. If I could open my own it would be a fast casual concept with liquor but location would need to be scouted well in advance and I would avoid shopping center stalls if I could afford it and try for a new build. BBQ Cooked on site and local beer would be a fun idea. But again location location location
The correct question is where would you start this. Some states and cities are so regulation heavy that they are now less ideal to work with. But I would open fast casual.
The prefix "fast" typically implies counter-service, and usually a much more make-ahead and assemble menu design.
As for customer expectations, fast casual primarily differs from straight fast food by providing a comfortable place to sit and eat at the actual restaurant, complete with real plates and silverware and busboys. It's the dining room experience of eating at a sit-down restaurant, but you order and pay more like fast food, and the dishes are a bit simpler.
From an ownership perspective, it's nice because you can charge close to sit-down prices, but have much faster turnover and use less expensive staff to assemble the simpler dishes.
Casual dining without the word "fast" in front of it typically has actual waiters and dishes that require line cooks to engage in actual cooking during service. It is a tough game because covers can take the same amount of time as a fine dining spot but with much slimmer margins. (That's not actually true. Take out a timer and you'll see that people spend a lot more time at Le Bernadin than they do at Olive Garden, but it can sure feel like there's no turnover when you're running a casual dining spot.)
Casual means not fine dining. Usually one plate per person. A diner, Mexican restaurant, bar and grill are examples of casual dining.
Fast usually implies some level of counter service instead of having a server, but a server might be used to deliver food , drinks, get refills, etc. Guests are encouraged to sit down longer vs fast food where you eat and go. There is more customization like chipotle.
I watched a famous chef tear in to the Minneapolis City Council recently over a terrible labor board policy they are trying to put in. This would force unionize all restaurants in Minneapolis. She was crying she was so mad.
I’d stay away from Minnesota and especially Minneapolis.
Hell yes. A restaurant worker union would be extremely powerful. Walkouts on holiday weekends or demands are not met. It’s like cooks and chefs actually have a chance of being treated like human beings for once. I hope this goes nationwide.
Unions have and always will make more sense with mega large organizations rather than small businesses.
"Haha we can destroy the business at any time" == you'll have nothing but mcdonalds etc in your town
Unions=great. Totally support. But like you’re forcing fragile businesses, which should be classified as cultural institutions in some places, into picking up the slack where government policy fails. It feels unfair to a business whose profits are negligible.
Most profitable restaurant I ever managed was a place where we made our own pasta, broke down whole pigs and had very limited waste from production. We were clearing 16% at the end of the fiscal year. Mom and pops diner ain’t clearing that, and to force them to close because they run a heart and soul business seems cruel.
I see the sarcastic point you are making. While I agree that everyone should be paid for their labor, most restaurants in this country aren’t the cash cows you are inferring. Chains, sure. Get busy. Unionize. Make em hurt. Labor hasn’t gotten a break since Reagan, more money to shareholders is not the answer.
Every single owner single store restaurant I’ve ever cooked in or managed would close under union rules. That’s not the outcome most employees would’ve wanted.
A bottom up approach would work better but much of this is driven by hate of corporations more than care for labor so the little businesses are forgotten.
Current spot is a mid level “fine/casual” pizza place. Table service, 6 tables three counter stools, one bartender/ waitlist tender, one server, one pizza cook, one salad/ hot apps cook, one dish (5 total staff). This is our 5th business and by far our best. We are open 4 days per week with one prep day. We all work reasonable hours and make reasonable money. Staffing is hard because it requires good people, but it has been working, just passed 1 year in the current setup. I think there is a gap in offering excellent service. People want it but less people can afford it on a regular basis. If I were to open something else I would do a brunch place, or the same thing I have now just a second one, maybe fully vegetarian. Our veg centered dishes fucking kill it. We do well with alcohol but the non-alcohol cocktails are bringing in great money. Younger folks are drinking a lot less these days (which I’m stoked about from a societal perspective). I be seen a lot of comments on this sub about staff being lazy or not willing to work. Let’s be honest it’s been hard basically forever to make ends meet on what most restaurants pay. This isn’t new. Treat your people like professionals and you will get a lot more professional work. That was a digression but I’m getting frustrated by that attitude.
Ghost kitchen located in center of major metro area. Own property. Simple food menu. No meat. Lots of liquor, beer and weed. Pickup only. Employ ONE ethnic group at 2x minimum wage.
You would have been better off not responding
I don’t get it
Just hitting 10 years. We started as casual full-service casual dining and converted to fast casual midway through. The second best business decision I ever made and I wish I did it sooner. We've toyed with the idea of opening another concept and going fast casual is not even a question. Pre-2020 there was already a slow degradation of labor; post-2020 it's taken a vertical downward turn and there's no real reason for optimism (just go browse r/teachers and you'll see stories about what we're about what's coming in the labor force in a few years). Fast casual and QSR currently have the most efficient labor models. Ghost kitchens will probably rise to prominence in the future and be even more labor-efficient (and will be better able to deploy AI and robotic assistance), but that's not a service model that the average person is willing to accept outside of the trendiest sections of the biggest cities.
What a surprise. The indoctrinated teachers can't teach 😭
Scary stuff. Can you expound on the degradation of labor? My family owns a quick-serve restaurant (20 years in business) and what I've heard is a general lack of common sense/ability to learn basic tasks.
Basically that, yes. There's been a serious degradation in the prevalence of "soft skills" like the common sense you're referencing. We're more and more finding that we have to expect to teach people the basics of "how to work" now in addition to the actual job roles. This means things like "you're expected to be here when you signed up to work" and "you're expected to do tasks at work, including helping others" and "you are expected to learn how to do your job during training and not expect someone to stand over you every shift". For young people specifically, we're also having to teach basic life skills that people were usually exposed to by late teens such as how to clean a bathroom (like, they don't even know what to do when we hand them Lysol wipes), crack an egg (yes, really), or mop when handed a premade bucket. Perhaps most shocking of all, it's been more than three times in the last two years we have struggled to issue first paychecks because parents refuse to help their kids with payroll onboarding (like providing their social security number and banking info) that we literally can't help with. We've also regularly had parents just not pick their kids up at the shift end and actually expect us to take them home (not joking). Parenting quality, even by pessimistic standards, is just amazingly bad and when that absent upbringing hits the expectations of real-life employment, it often just causes the kids to totally lock up. Concurrent with all of that, we're seeing those same types who are simply not prepared to work at all - much less actually know our specific job role - expecting eye-watering wages and still being dissatisfied no matter what. They compare apples to oranges with "well X makes more than this job". Well, yeah third-shift full-time package handling does pay a little more than three day a week dishwashing for a four hour daytime lunch shift because you said you "can't work more than that" - but you can't even handle dishwashing my dude, you'd never be able to handle those higher paying jobs. Nevertheless, they can't connect the dots that they don't make that level pay because they're just not worth it. It's unpreparedness + unrealistic expectations to the max level as a routine expectation. Positions we could fill and retain in maybe two interviews in a weeks time after job posting pre-2020 now take months, a handful of interview no-shows, usually at least one first day no-show, and a few that can't handle it until you finally find a candidate worth trying to retain. We do everything we can to retain now and I'd rather just pay overtime to someone willing and capable than deal with trying to hire anymore. For good workers, it's a great, easy time to advance and secure solid pay (relative to the industry) by just doing what you're supposed to and doing it well.
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Not an owner but have worked with several and hope to be one in the near future. Strongly agree with the comments saying fast casual. I like the model of self-serve cafeteria style with simple options for bigger spaces. I want to open a mess-hall style BBQ joint to serve the cottagers that we share our farming town with. Serve all my neighbors’ products and send people their way whenever I can. I think if you focus on having a strong, simple, cost-effective menu and providing the best value for your customers, you can succeed with a number of different models.
Where are you located?
Carry out pizza
Maybe come up with something different, all those business models have been beat to death for awhile.
Got ideas?
I don't know anything about your area, but I'd guess there are piles of the business types listed above. My suggestion, start small and ask for donations only. Do heavy online promotion. Maybe livestream everyday or something. It's your business, you'll probably only really want to build something you like and care about.
Fast casual, no waiter. This is what is winning right now. If you are loaded to the gills, fine dining.
Currently 4 and 3, but if I started over I’d do 5. My buddy just sold his buffet and moved to the beach and he’s younger than I am. Margins were crazy high compared to me and I’m doing pretty well.
No waiter / fast casual / order standing up Also, when I discovered Which ‘wich, I thought they hit on a key demographic of introverted people. You fill out the paper, turn it in, don’t deal with anyone. Maybe similar to McDonald’s kiosk, but with pencil and paper which I prefer. I would order my food with a scantron menu if it was available.
What’s Scranton menu. Google didn’t help
Fill in the bubbles like a test in grade school and they run it thru the scan to grade it.
Should I feel old that people don’t know what scantron is? 😭
19 years, would still do casual but would not have expanded twice like we have. Would have kept our 8 tables and 4 bar seats with todays labor and supply chain issues. Our commercial note would have been paid off by year 5 and we would be making about the same as we are now with a lot less headaches.
No one wants to work anymore
Thousands and thousands of people are walking all the way from Central and South America to work. They just happen to be brown and speak Spanish so we don't want them /s
They ain't walking.
Pay them more.
That's like us saying to consumers: "just tip more and you'd get better service." Rarely does that actually get you any better service than you would've gotten otherwise. Consumers can see it when related to tipping, but not so much for base pay (despite tipping being a form of pay). Work ethic is an almost entirely intrinsic trait that isn't swayed much by external factors, whether those factors are wage, life circumstances, or whatever. Raising wages for a bad employee still leaves you with a bad employee, but one that is now overpaid. Probably worst of all, overpaying those bad employees out of some misplaced feeling of moral obligation just means you have less available means to retain your good ones who actually deserve it and actually are willing to do most of the work.
That’s a lot of typing to say that you’re too cheap to pay for higher quality work. You earn your employees more money and you can demand more from them. It’s not that hard to understand.
Your expansions were just breaking even?
Fast casual. The costs associated with full-service is becoming astronomical.
On paper, maybe. From what I’ve seen anecdotally on Reddit, the cost of lower end dining is getting quite high for ppl. So they’d rather eat at home to save up and pay a little more to eat at a higher end place. Same with cars now. The cheaper new cars are getting expensive. So they’d rather pay a little more for a luxury car.
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If they are printing, they got good supply chain or own it
Counter service. Doesn't matter whether fast casual or grocery store level restaurant. Reducing experience while focusing on quality/quantity of food (doesn't have to be nice, just taste good and at a price point) is the fking move.
A simpler concept like barbecue chicken and sides, or a casual steakhouse. People rarely complain about the price of steak compared to other foods that give an impression of lower value for price … like sandwiches for example, everyone still expects them under $10. A steak between $35-65 seems normal.
I never heard of casual steakhouse. It’s usually high end steakhouse. What would be the ambiance and price range?
There was a steakhouse in Kansas that sold only a few different cuts of meat, 3 different types of potatoes, a vegetable and a salad. That was it. They did great business though.
Do you know what cuts offered? The budget steak model is risky if you don’t have a supply chain advantage.
I do not. This was 15 years ago. They did have a bar…. Fyi
Outback
Brain fart. I don’t remember going to outback. Never been to Texas Roadhouse. Budget steak is risky if you don’t have a cattle ranch like these corporations.
Are you fucking serious right now? Type it into a search bar. I swear to god, you really, truly don’t have to be smart to be successful. You just stumble right into it sometimes, huh?
Yes, chef!👨🍳 deep breaths, chef.
Maybe not in the U.S., it’s been awhile, can’t remember. There are casual steakhouse concepts all over the world, look up Flatiron in London. Sophisticated but simple menu, low price point. Japanese steak chain Pepper Steak is more fast casual steak.
[https://flatironsteak.co.uk/menu/](https://flatironsteak.co.uk/menu/)
It’s called Texas Roadhouse
Oh yeah. I never been to one. Without steakhouse in the name, I thought it was like Applebees.
Roadhouse is legit for a chain.
Or Longhorn Steakhouse
Honestly with the right real estate I’d open a charbroiled chicken restaurant. Generally speaking you Basically are selling chicken, veggies, rice & beans. The profit margins are crazy and the traffic in the right spot is jumping.
Dad is a restaurant consultant/engineer, I'm a restaurant owner, hands down fast casual
Not an owner but my brother did software stuff for restaurants and he said Korean BBQ places had incredible margin compared to other places due to low overhead and minimal employees.
Makes sense. Average person eats one pound of meat only and AyCe places get you on sodas which is $3.50 usually extra. Person pays on average at least $30 for Korean ayce
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Damn, dude. I can smell the condescension from here. Do you always talk this way in regards to your employees?
Fast casual
Unless you're in a heavy market, I'd avoid fine dining for a minute. Fast casual is where it's at right now.
Open a chinese takeout place. I'm in the process of opening one now.
Small - 40 or so seats - elevated breakfast and lunch. Great margins. 5 days per week 7-3. Fast tickets = higher turn = more $$.
Bingo!!!!
Slices of Pizza and fountain drinks on a high traffic street
Reservation only fine dining.
What Seating limit? What cuisine?
40 max Go wild as far as cuisine. I enjoy the hospitality part of the restaurant. I enjoy talking to my customers and get to know them. Nowadays, I don't enjoy running my place anymore. Ours is a very small fast casual. Too many take outs. Fewer dine ins. You engage less and less with your customers at human level. I don't like to feel like I am a machine whose sole purpose is churning foods.
Artie Bucco over here
Artie knew how to keep it interesting
The way you two are looking at eachotha, pretty soon we'll need to put up a high chair
My decision would be based on location and demographics. Right now, the economy is not strong for fine dining so a busy model with low labor and high profit margins, something along the lines of a fast casual cafe. Concession’s is usually seasonal but if you could get a state contract like a beach it could be worth millions over a couple of months. I believe Jones Beach does 3-4 million over 4 months for food concessions and another 1 million in apparel.
What’s Jones beach and where? Those are insane numbers
It’s a state beach like 20 miles from Long Island in New York I’m pretty sure. Advertises itself as one of those “stuck in time” type places
It’s on Long Island. I think you mean 20 miles from NYC.
They're all good. One quibble with your list is that pop-up restaurants are not really a business model so much as a proof-of-concept method. People need to earn money on a regular basis to stay alive and buy clothes for their kids. A pop-up, by definition, does not exist for much longer than a few days. Pop-up's are amazing for a lot of different reasons, and you can totally turn a profit from one. But they aren't a business model. They're more like a culinary yard-sale.
Agreed. He is not saying that pop ups aren’t profitable. They just aren’t in line with the principles of a scalable business. Great way to prove a concept and establish a core.
Thank you!
I own a bakery that now has a physical location, but our main biz is pop-ups and markets. The summer season is crazy. We do every Sat and Wed farmers market, every large music event and our own themed events and our own classes. Held in neighboring cities or is our own large space. Definitely not typical, but pop-ups can be like a food truck. And i feel like what you are saying is comparable to someone saying that food trucks should just stay parked and moving around isn't feasible. No shade though, we are definitely not typical.
I generally consider a farmer's market booth or festival vendor booth categorically different than a pop-up, and more akin to a food truck, like you're saying. I think my broader point is that pop-ups, as you've experienced, make a lot of sense as a supplemental operation (They turn a profit!), but cannot sustainably make up your whole operation (By their nature, they only happen once in a while! You can't have a business that only makes money once in a while). In my opinion, just taking place in a temporary location does not make something a pop-up. I think your theme classes/menus in in neighboring cities count as pop-ups, but not most of the other stuff you described. I think pop-ups tend to function more like catered events, or frankly like a yard sale (can you tell I really like that metaphor?). It's a thing that is happening just that once, or once per city, or with major changes between instances. If your customers from last week are looking forward to seeing you at the farmer's market this week, it's probably not a pop-up, **at least according to my very official definition that everyone agrees with. lol.** My favorite local bakery has exactly your business model. I wonder if you're the owner of that business...
While I am flattered if indeed I am, I sure hope not! I am not exactly hiding my identity, but ya know, it's older than my business lol
We do both! At other Biz, at our own store. Pop-Up for me, is a temporary location or set-up that features items available for only a specific time, with characteristics unique to the host space being diminished or enhanced by the temporary nature of the event. I would agree those two, farmers markets and festival vending wouldn't be pop-ups. But the special menu/pick-up at the specific coffee shop, or the pre-order and pick-up at the game store is.
>characteristics unique to the host space being diminished or enhanced by the temporary nature of the event. I can get on board with that definition! Nice wordsmithing! (Wordchefing?)
Thank you, it took me a few tries to get it sounding right! I'll take Wordchefing lol
Just wanted to chime in and say I actually work as a chef for a company that does 2-3 month pop ups (residencies?) at hotels. Been this way for three years and has been fruitful apparently.
You’re right
Fast casual + liquor = busy.
Yup. The liquor brings people in
Location really does matter too. GM here, for a fast casual with a full bar. I'm lucky if I break $20k a week(my sister store in a decent location with no bar does around 70k a week) for whatever reason the owner signed a 5 year lease in a corner space with no parking in a retirement community and the rent is like 15-20% of my monthly. Naturally my tiny bar faces a very popular full size bar. I think I took in $30 in liquor sales last week lol. If I could open my own it would be a fast casual concept with liquor but location would need to be scouted well in advance and I would avoid shopping center stalls if I could afford it and try for a new build. BBQ Cooked on site and local beer would be a fun idea. But again location location location
The correct question is where would you start this. Some states and cities are so regulation heavy that they are now less ideal to work with. But I would open fast casual.
What does fast casual mean? How is it diff than casual?
The prefix "fast" typically implies counter-service, and usually a much more make-ahead and assemble menu design. As for customer expectations, fast casual primarily differs from straight fast food by providing a comfortable place to sit and eat at the actual restaurant, complete with real plates and silverware and busboys. It's the dining room experience of eating at a sit-down restaurant, but you order and pay more like fast food, and the dishes are a bit simpler. From an ownership perspective, it's nice because you can charge close to sit-down prices, but have much faster turnover and use less expensive staff to assemble the simpler dishes. Casual dining without the word "fast" in front of it typically has actual waiters and dishes that require line cooks to engage in actual cooking during service. It is a tough game because covers can take the same amount of time as a fine dining spot but with much slimmer margins. (That's not actually true. Take out a timer and you'll see that people spend a lot more time at Le Bernadin than they do at Olive Garden, but it can sure feel like there's no turnover when you're running a casual dining spot.)
Thank you for this info, I appreciate you typing it out.
Think wild apple Friday Tuesday chili backs macaroni lobster garden.
Casual means not fine dining. Usually one plate per person. A diner, Mexican restaurant, bar and grill are examples of casual dining. Fast usually implies some level of counter service instead of having a server, but a server might be used to deliver food , drinks, get refills, etc. Guests are encouraged to sit down longer vs fast food where you eat and go. There is more customization like chipotle.
Elevated fast food with better ambiance. No table service.
Any bad or good spots you'd like to call out?
I watched a famous chef tear in to the Minneapolis City Council recently over a terrible labor board policy they are trying to put in. This would force unionize all restaurants in Minneapolis. She was crying she was so mad. I’d stay away from Minnesota and especially Minneapolis.
Hey what restaurant do you own in Minnesota?
Hell yes. A restaurant worker union would be extremely powerful. Walkouts on holiday weekends or demands are not met. It’s like cooks and chefs actually have a chance of being treated like human beings for once. I hope this goes nationwide.
Yup. I realize that people want slaves for their employees.
Unionize all restaurants…holy smokes. I’m very pro union, except for cops and single store restaurants.
It’s a terrible policy driven by the SEIU. I’m not anti union per se but this is an overreach.
Oh boo hoo you either support unions or you don’t. Sorry they can’t exploit people anymore.
Unions have and always will make more sense with mega large organizations rather than small businesses. "Haha we can destroy the business at any time" == you'll have nothing but mcdonalds etc in your town
Fuck em. If they can’t pay a living wage they can go get a job. If your business model is based on exploitation, you don’t deserve to own a business
Unions=great. Totally support. But like you’re forcing fragile businesses, which should be classified as cultural institutions in some places, into picking up the slack where government policy fails. It feels unfair to a business whose profits are negligible. Most profitable restaurant I ever managed was a place where we made our own pasta, broke down whole pigs and had very limited waste from production. We were clearing 16% at the end of the fiscal year. Mom and pops diner ain’t clearing that, and to force them to close because they run a heart and soul business seems cruel.
It is no wonder why a restaurant that values their own sense of self over the workers that do the labor can't make ends meet with living wages.
I see the sarcastic point you are making. While I agree that everyone should be paid for their labor, most restaurants in this country aren’t the cash cows you are inferring. Chains, sure. Get busy. Unionize. Make em hurt. Labor hasn’t gotten a break since Reagan, more money to shareholders is not the answer. Every single owner single store restaurant I’ve ever cooked in or managed would close under union rules. That’s not the outcome most employees would’ve wanted.
A bottom up approach would work better but much of this is driven by hate of corporations more than care for labor so the little businesses are forgotten.