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How I Built a Barbecue Restaurant in Brooklyn: The Toll of Owning Your Business

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Re: How I Built a Barbecue Restaurant in Brooklyn: The Toll of Owning Your Business

#21

Post by archagon »

davidw wrote: post #12
TheBiv wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from the south and method #1 is done by almost every non-chain BBQ restaurant. Method #2 is done by almost every chain BBQ restaurant. Method #1 BY FAR produces the most fanfare. Notable #1 is LA-Barbeque, and Franklin BBQ in Austin and the wait is typically 2-5 hours and all of the BBQ is sold out before lunch.

I was really blown away to discover just how regional barbecue is - from a book by an economist of all things: http://www.amazon.com/Economist-Gets-Lunch-Everyday-Foodies-... Where I'm from in Oregon, there are a few places, but they're few and far between, and I doubt the quality measures up to areas where there is more knowledge and competition between establishments. Indeed, I have to admit to having had absolutel…

I've been traveling for a while, and it's pretty surprising how regional most freshly-prepared foods are. Pizza, bagels, barbecue, baguettes, pastries, breads, even produce — all vary drastically in quality depending on the region. Something about having a concentrated pool of talent and competition in one area, I suppose.

Re: How I Built a Barbecue Restaurant in Brooklyn: The Toll of Owning Your Business

#23

Post by nkurz »

venomsnake wrote: post #6

A little side question - I love Serious Eats but after their last redesign there is no paging. So you just cannot browse to a certain point in time and then continue from there. Am I missing something obvious?

I don't think you are missing anything, but it's interesting how different people have different ways of using the web.

I don't think I've ever wanted a web page to be split into pages, and I've always presumed it's done only to have more spaces for ad placement. I always go out of my way to submit links to a single page version, and although I've sometimes worried this might be depriving the destination site of revenue, I've never really considered that readers might prefer a paginated version.

If I wanted to continue reading something after a pause, I'd leave the page open in a tab (or more commonly, separate window), keeping it scrolled to the position I stopped reading. If I had to reopen it again, I'd scroll quickly through with the trackpad or space bar until I saw something unfamiliar, much in the way that I would visually scan to find my place in a magazine article.

How do you use the pagination to help you continue? By remembering the page number and clicking on it, by bookmarking the link to a specific page, or something else?

Edit to clarify: I agree with 'zipperg' below, and I'm not suggesting that infinite scroll is anything other than a usability nightmare. Instead, I'm expressing my strong preference for true-single page articles such as this one over both pagination and automated loading. Unless I'm the one missing something and this page is autoloading the main content so well that I'm not bothered by it? (I'm less dogmatic about user comments --- hiding them can often be a good thing)

Re: How I Built a Barbecue Restaurant in Brooklyn: The Toll of Owning Your Business

#24

Post by [deleted] »

samsolomon wrote: post #13
davidw wrote: post #7

How do BBQ restaurants work? The two methods I can think of are: 1) you run out when you run out and that's it for the day 2) you keep stuff warm. I'd expect that to dry it out. I've heard some of the famous ones in the south use method #1. Real BBQ is smoking stuff at low temperatures (not too far from 100C) for a long time - briskets can take 12+ hours or longer. So you can't just throw an extra one on when the cus…

I live in Mobile, AL. Meat Boss, the best barbecue place I've eaten by far, follows method number 1. Additionally, they are only open for sandwiches from 11am until 2pm (or they run out) three days a week. Racks of ribs and pork butts can be ordered a day in advance and picked up Monday through Saturday. Edit: A write up about the joint. http://dixiedining.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/bama-brisket-tha...

[deleted]

Re: How I Built a Barbecue Restaurant in Brooklyn: The Toll of Owning Your Business

#26

Post by ezl »

weinzierl wrote: post #11
bredman wrote: post #5

The one constant that seems to come up in all these founder stories is that you better love what you're doing. There's no guarantee that your new business will be successful or profitable but it seems inevitable you will sink nearly all your time, energy, and money into it. You better be feel rewarded by the journey because that's all you can count on.

That's true. The only founder story I can think of that doesn't fit into the pattern is Scott Adams'. Here's the counterargument: When I was a commercial loan officer for a large bank, my boss taught us that you should never make a loan to someone who is following his passion. [...] My boss, who had been a commercial lender for over 30 years, said that the best loan customer is someone who has no passion whatsoever,…

I actually side entirely with Scott Adams. I feel like it's a really cliche and popular thing to say "Do what you love and success will follow", but it seems like objectively bad advice to pick your profession based on your passion.

We're all passionate about a lot of things that simply aren't commercially viable.

I sell rental application software for a living. It's necessary, a part of the industry, and not something I'm particularly passionate about in subject matter. I AM passionate about doing the absolute best job by a mile and providing the incontestably, incontrovertibly, unambiguously best option on the market for our customers.

Almost EVERYTHING I do (and the awesome people on my team do) has nothing specifically to do with rental application software. Rental application software is just a widget that we sell that has commercial value and therefore pays the bills.

What we do is: software delivery, customer service, operations, listening to our customers, and a bunch of other stuff that is immediately translatable to . But we do the absolute best in industry at those things.

So I'm not really passionate necessarily about "what I do" in the way people thing (rental application software), but we're really passionate about "what I do" in the way that I think of it (running the best damn business).

Rental application software is just this tiny, tiny, tiny kernel of a thing makes it easy to classify what we do into an industry or subject bucket -- but for what we deliver, what we think about, what we REALLY DO, that tiny kernel occupies less than 5% of our thoughts.

I have on more than one occasion heard founders (maybe in the process of pitching for investment dollars) say things like:

> "This is my life's work. I'm passionate about _____"

Where ________ is something like:

    - accounting software
    - restaurant POS systems
    - online coupons
etc...

If they are saying that to convince someone you're all in on it, I get it. I've pitched/sold before. And don't get me wrong, those are important things for someone to do. It's just not really necessary or important to me that those are things that the founder is deeply passionate about.

Yes, I would MUCH rather invest in someone who is truly passionate about that boring thing. But:

1. If it's true, that person is probably awful boring (or alternatively, I have been blessed with really awesome and interesting friends!), and

2. Coupling your financial future to the commercial viability of "what you're passionate about" still strikes me as terrible advice, though admittedly feel-good advice that resonates with a generation of people accustomed to excess disposable income and who consequently have had the ability to pursue passions.

Re: How I Built a Barbecue Restaurant in Brooklyn: The Toll of Owning Your Business

#27

Post by zippergz »

nkurz wrote: post #23
venomsnake wrote: post #6

A little side question - I love Serious Eats but after their last redesign there is no paging. So you just cannot browse to a certain point in time and then continue from there. Am I missing something obvious?

I don't think you are missing anything, but it's interesting how different people have different ways of using the web. I don't think I've ever wanted a web page to be split into pages, and I've always presumed it's done only to have more spaces for ad placement. I always go out of my way to submit links to a single page version, and although I've sometimes worried this might be depriving the destination site of reve…

I hate it when individual articles are broken into pages for no good reason, but I like pagination for main/index pages.

The biggest problem I've had with this kind of scrolling is when something happens that makes the next "page" fail to load for whatever reason. Usually the only thing that can be done in that case is to reload the whole thing, and then tediously scroll back to where you were. It's gotten better in recent implementations, but it still happens from time to time.

It's also annoying when I need to catch up after a long time away (or if it's a site I haven't read before). Depending on the site and what else I have going on at the time, I might read a given site over the course of days or weeks. I do usually leave the tab or window open, but sometimes it gets closed or reloaded for one reason or another. And again, as you say, you can scroll to the first unfamiliar thing, but when it's the equivalent of 10 or 20 pages back, that's a pain. And it's even worse when the "it won't load anymore" problem happens.

It's a usability tradeoff, but I have had many more frustrating experiences with infinite scrolling over the past few years than I ever had with paginated indices in the 20+ years I've been using the web.

Re: How I Built a Barbecue Restaurant in Brooklyn: The Toll of Owning Your Business

#28

Post by joshu »

NaOH wrote: post #20

I’ve worked in the food industry for quite a while, 16 years I think, often in kitchens but sometimes in other areas. About 20 months ago I launched my own food business. I’m the only employee. The few products I sell should be served fresh, so I go to the kitchen 364 days a year to prepare and deliver fresh goods. In some ways I can relate to Tyson Ho, in others I can’t, the difference being only how our work is sim…

What do you make? Where can I get it?

Re: How I Built a Barbecue Restaurant in Brooklyn: The Toll of Owning Your Business

#29

Post by joshu »

It kills me that restaurants add all the value to the area but lose almost all of it to rent.

I wish I could design a town or something. Big tax break to landlords who house good restaurante long-term or or otherwise allow the restaurant to be profitable. Or maybe the town owns the town center or something.

Re: How I Built a Barbecue Restaurant in Brooklyn: The Toll of Owning Your Business

#30

Post by waterlesscloud »

joshu wrote: post #29

It kills me that restaurants add all the value to the area but lose almost all of it to rent. I wish I could design a town or something. Big tax break to landlords who house good restaurante long-term or or otherwise allow the restaurant to be profitable. Or maybe the town owns the town center or something.

Or the restaurant owns the building.

Yeah, maybe not practical in SF, but elsewhere it works well.

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