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Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

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Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#431

Post by bobthepanda »

toohotatopic wrote: post #201
bobthepanda wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live in Seattle, there is a lot of new dense neighborhoods going up. And many of these large apartments have ground-level retail, which is supposed to be that urban planning magic sauce for walkable neighborhoods. The problem is, most of these retail spaces are actually vacant, despite massive job and housing growth. But why? Because the retail spaces are simply too large. These spaces are big enough to seat…

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.

Kitchens need quite a lot (ventilation, gas hookups, water, electricity for the kitchen in the right places).

You can't just throw up some false walls and call it a day. Even if you could, your landlord's lease terms probably don't let you sublease like that.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#432

Post by mtrower »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #210

I'm starting to think commercial landlords need some competition from local governments. They could create a privately-run charter corporation that rents out small amounts of space to local businesses. Not rent control, but reasonable terms (3-6 month leases, instead of 10-year leases). There is too much NIMBYism and too many middlemen and archaic expectations in real estate for any mom and pop business to be viable.

Could you elaborate on how the NIMBY attitude is detrimental to mom-and-pop establishments? I thought generally the point was to protect such businesses from chain competitors.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#433

Post by greedo »

maxk42 wrote: post #119
sokoloff wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they “not worry about rent”? The local franchise pays rent to the parent company.

I have to point out that many if not most franchisees most own or lease the property independently of the parent company. Some parent companies own the property but most don't.

In the US, McDonalds Corporation owns all the land, and overall they own an incredible amount of the land and the buildings:

"The company owns about 45% of the land and 70% of the buildings at their 36,000+ locations (the rest is leased)."[1]

This article is from 2015, but I don't have any info that disputes it.

[1]https://blog.wallstreetsurvivor.com/2015/10/08/mcdonalds-bey...

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#434

Post by jlokier »

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"

Both statements are true at the same time.

So my answer to HR's answer is:

If we offer industry standard pay for games companies, we get industry standard hiring crisis and candidate quality, as seen at other games companies. Have you researched hiring success at other companies and not just salaries?

Experience suggests the answer to that from HR would be cultural inertia though, so it's not really them you'd need to persuade. It's a strategic decision for the company leaders, whether they think it's worth spending more to attract hires of the type who get better offers elsewhere.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#435

Post by jlokier »

gambiting wrote: post #239
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.

May I introduce you to the video games industry? While there are good paying jobs out there, I'd risk saying the vast majority of people working in games are hugely underpaid. At my first job I was literally told "yeah the pay is crap, but you get to work on big titles so it's fine". And it's not just demand and supply - we're having a very hard time recruiting for senior positions as there just aren't any candidates…

> there just aren't any [senior] candidates around

I think that statement is almost certainly false.

Offer better pay, conditions and interesting work that has career prospects for the people when they leave, and make it known you are doing this, and I think you will have plenty of interested, good candidates.

(Unless you make crappy games infested with 15s gameplay alternating with 30s brain-polluting ads, and that's for the people who paid for the "ad-free" feature. I jest not - I just turned down a recruiter for a games company looking for someone in a senior role, after I researched the company and the first few reviews I looked at showed the games fit the above description. I copied the reviews over to the recruiter and said this this is why I could not imagine myself working there in a salaried role.)

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#436

Post by ip26 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #259
ip26 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they haven't got it exactly right, but this shoe seems to fit rather well: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/11/27/the-paradox-o... In summary, lowering rents to market price lowers the value of the building and makes the project insolvent.

You can't "make something insolvent". A project is either solvent or it isn't. You can make a mistake about estimating solvency, but that's the fault of your poor estimation skills and your inability to read the situation accurately, not the situation itself. If a project isn't objectively solvent and banks are still lending on it, then the problem is higher up the food chain - a lending "market" based on moral hazar…

A project is either solvent or it isn't

If you read the link, the point is the project is able to pretend it is still solvent when it isn't anymore.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#437

Post by watwut »

barrkel wrote: post #423
watwut wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The robot restaurant is something completely different then restaurant for date or familly dinner. The robot restaurant is for lunch during work - you care about price and speed and nutrition. That is it. Self service checkout is fine. SittIng close to other people does not matter. For date, meetups with friends, celebration or filly dinner I want calmer, more intimate place.

Lunch during work is a great chance to add some joy to the middle of your day. You spend so much time at work, why not leaven it with something delightful? (I understand the expense arguments, but I think it's a false economy, without specific goals, and isn't worth much regard on software engineering salaries.)

Sometimes yes, other times you just want to eat. But even if you look for nice place, itis different.

Date, familly dinner, celebration and similar all take time. You are comfortable being there for two hours. With lunch, you want be shorted then that.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#438

Post by mtrower »

irrational wrote: post #179

>we’re so used to free garbage pick-up at home that I never anticipated having to pay for it What locales have free garbage pick-up at home? This is the first time I've heard of such a thing.

Anywhere I've lived in Wisconsin is free* residential, contractual for business. Basically what PhantomGremlin said, minus the mafia. I'd always assumed it was this way everywhere in the U.S.

Whereabouts do you live, and what is the situation there with residential waste and recycling?

* Of course, this is (presumably) funded by city taxes, so "free" means "I don't see the cost explicitly".

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#439

Post by jlokier »

scarface74 wrote: post #382
GlennS wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It boils down to supply and demand, though, right? I think the large number of people who love programming makes getting an "elite" programming job difficult. But, I think the vast majority of people think they'd hate or couldn't do programming, and so never consider it as a job despite how much demand there is for it. And that keeps our entry level wages safe.

There is an entire world of people who are willing to work for less and developing can be done remotely. Even ignoring that. Everything gets commoditized over time. How much does your typical PHP/Wordpress developer make now? Companies like make it easy for someone who doesn’t know anything about programming to make a decent website. There are companies now that make it easy to make a cut and paste iOS app.

PHP/Wordpress developer salaries are low by developer standards, but compare favourably with jobs in general (median income).

So PHP/Wordpress developer is still a great job from that point of view.

Re: Why Restaurants Are So Fucked

#440

Post by mark-r »

JackFr wrote: post #176
mark-r wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite is the landlords that refuse to lower their rents to attract tenants. They got a loan to buy the property, and the loan is backed by the revenue potential of the property. If rents decrease, the revenue potential also decreases and the lenders require the property owners to make up the difference. It produces a huge incentive for a property to go unrented at a high price rather than rented at a low price.

I’m familiar with the argument but I think people overstate the importance of unrented high price to refinancing. Banks (and CMBS investors) don’t simply look at market rent levels in isolation. They also look at percent vacant and length of tenancy. Except over the very short term, no one is being deceived.

Refinancing isn't the answer, because the borrowers will need to make up the difference between the old value and new value in cash. That's what makes this such a strong incentive, where it's worth it to leave a property unrented for a long time. If there's no refinancing, there's no reevaluation and no big lump of cash to be produced - everything just continues on as it did before.
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