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Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

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Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#291

Post by kebman »

pbourke wrote: post #212
stock_toaster wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe food trucks will just become more pervasive. They _were_ pretty common in portland for a while, but not sure how many of them will survive. ;_;

This will no doubt be an unpopular opinion, but I’m not a fan of food trucks as an everyday dining experience. Not super impressed with the average food quality, and the “stand around waiting for 20 minutes” experience is also not ideal. Crowded food truck clusters are super annoying to me. For the odd meal at a festival or park or whatnot - sure. But every day? not so much.

"Crowded food truck clusters are super annoying to me." This tells me that there is indeed a market for food trucks. If this annoys you, then nothing is stopping you from shopping somewhere else. :) The alternative would be to get real estate close to these clusters and open up a "real" and high quality restaurant. Though my guess is, in these clusters, people are busy, they're not looking to sit down, and just want a snack while on the move to some other point of interest. I see these kinds of trucks in tourist-heavy areas, or in shopping areas, so that should give you a clue. The patrons are only looking for a quick snack, and not a Michelin star experience.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#292

Post by m_mueller »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #203
toohotatopic wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too large shouldn't be a problem. Every large space can be trimmed down to a small space. If there are too many vacant shops in an area, and there would be a market for smaller shops, I would assume that tenants add walls and rent out the smaller space. Even if that walled-off space is unused, tenants would make more money than not renting out at all.

That's assuming the zoning allows the space to be subdivided.

I think you may have boiled the problem down to its essence. Search for Japanese vs. US zoning laws to see the two extremes. European countries tend to be somewhere in the middle. Same pattern can be observed with restaurant sizes and their variety.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#293

Post by smabie »

Causality1 wrote: post #273
kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I don't see how you can call it price-fixing given that we are talking of an industry with thousands and thousands of isolated players. But even going with the sentiment behind your claim, it's not unfair to say that if you like the restaurant eating experience it is in your benefit that it remains profitable enough for people to open restaurants.

Any agreement between competing sellers to maintain prices at a certain level is price fixing. That's the dictionary definition. Any restaurant or group of restaurants who heed her call to collectively raise prices to create a higher profit margin are engaged in price fixing. Perhaps morally justifiable price fixing, but they're still opting-out of competing with each other on price. I'll pay higher prices for restau…

Her writing that restaurants should raise prices and another restaurant owner reading it and deciding that's a good idea doesn't constitute price fixings, as there is no agreement or dialogue in place. She's merely putting out information that is being read and acted upon by someone else. For it to be price fixing, her and the other restaurant owner would need to mutually come to some agreement to both raise prices.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#294

Post by _ph_ »

smabie wrote: post #286
_ph_ wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most customers who have a glass of wine or beer with their dinner don't qualify as addicted. Also, the restaurants make the same (or even more profit) when selling alcohol-free beverages with their food.

Yeah, but I don't generally sit down and drink 3 cokes in one sitting. Alcohol is a great money maker because there's a large standard deviation to how many drinks a given person might order. It would be very rare for a customer to drink 3 cokes with dinner but not uncommon for someone to order 3 beers.

When I am out in larger groups, the number of drinks varies little with what was ordered, be it beer, alcohol-free beer or other beverages. This is one medium to large sized glass of beverage for a lunch and several in the evening. Coke might be an exception, but it is very rare, that someone orders coke in a restaurant. Usually you have fruit juices of many variations, often as a "Schorle", that is fruit juice mixed with sparkling water. Or just water. And the prices differ only little between a glass of beer and of juice.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#295

Post by kebman »

vnorilo wrote: post #248
walterbell wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great restaurants are like art, in the eyes of patrons and creators. They will continue to find each other among the robotic masses.

True, and even if the meal is not "Tate modern", even a workday lunch can make me feel that someone actually cared and reinvigorate my soul in the middle of work. Most of the time I will choose to pay a premium in time or money instead of cheapest/convenient-est.

Plot twist: Tate Modern is all about the industrialization of art.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#296

Post by topranks »

Tomte wrote: post #213
sleavey wrote: post #197

Something's up. In Germany in a normal city I can get a döner the same size as the one in the photo for €3 ($3.50?). It's not sourdough nor high quality protein but that can't explain the $7.50 difference. Edit: as the commenter below reminded me, it's actually more like €4-5 but my point stands.

That's uncommonly cheap. East Germany somewhere? Those Döner prices are usually found in Berlin itself. I live in a cheap part of Germany, and our Döners have gone up from 4.50 or 4.70 Euros to about 5 Euros everywhere. But let's not forget that even 5 Euros is an insane price for that much meat. It works out because (a) the meat isn't great to begin with and (b) Dönerstuben are hotbeds for tax evasion. Many many Dön…

Dönerstuben

What a word.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#297

Post by deathgrips »

alexashka wrote: post #180
supernova87a wrote: post #137

I'll make another observation about the landscape of restaurants. You may notice that in Europe, Asia, the demographics of restaurants are noticeably different from the US. There are far more hole-in-the-wall mom-and-pop restaurants in those places compared to the US, running a small and seemingly profit-thin but subsistence restaurant for the neighborhood. Think of a suburban neighborhood in Madrid or Rome, where a…

I want small restaurants as much as I want shoe makers instead of automated Nike factories. The way forward is not by enabling people who can serve 500 people/day to exist when we can have a robot serving 5,000. We want automation, we want people doing what they choose to do because we've automated away things they had to do, such as work for a living. The way to get there is more automation. Restaurant cooks/servers…

Right now restaurant work is too complicated for robots to do it as accurately and quickly as humans. There are hundreds of micro-skills that a prep and line cook needs to perform very well in a restaurant and most of those are specific to the individual restaurant. Mcdonalds will be the first to be automated since they serve the same stuff at every location in America, but expect regular restaurants to be the last places to be automated.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#298

Post by amelius »

jerome-jh wrote: post #274
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #215

I really dislike the way in which this article has been written - it reads as the typical piece from the "bro culture" that massively ignores the rest of the world. Besides this, which is not the point... 1) most restaurants in US and high-end Europe that survive and thrive do so by having big margins on alcohol. Their margins are not single-digits. (edit: just saw other comments mentioning this). 2) Many restaurateu…

Having a restaurant is like owning your production tool. The invested capital allows you to make a revenue. High margin is not required since there is little investment to do, except refreshing the furniture every 2 years. They do, however, have a serious problem with the pandemic, unless they turn to pick up meals or delivery.

Delivery market is already spoiled by Uber eats etc. which act like gatekeepers and take a huge margin.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#299

Post by deathgrips »

gambiting wrote: post #254
kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are not able to recruit then that pretty much proves you are underpaying, right? If you pay market price for devs you would not have trouble recruiting, well, devs.

Yes, seems obvious, right. But every time I tell HR that we have to pay more or we won't find candidates it's always the same - "that's the standard industry pay, there's nothing wrong with it, we've done our research and programmers in comparable positions are paid this much or less"

Sounds like your company is dying if people who don't understand labor market economics are overruling managers on hiring decisions.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#300

Post by deathgrips »

zhoujianfu wrote: post #224
kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the passion argument is that valuable. For a LOT of people programming is their passion. Yet they command some of the highest salaries. The labor market doesn't care about passion. It will settle where it needs to based on demand and supply.

I think he's saying the passion factor will increase the supply. I think the same thing happens some with programming, it's just a lot fewer people have the passion (and ability?) than for cooking food. The same thing happens with teachers, nurses, firemen, police... I think the reason they generally don't make more money is many people have a passion for doing those jobs (ask ten kids what they want to be when they…

>The same thing happens with teachers, nurses, firemen, police

Maybe there's something different going on there since government salaries don't respond normally to market supply and demand. Perhaps a better way to track the true value of those jobs is by looking at private sector counterparts, such as security contractors or teachers at private schools.

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