471–480 of 498 posts
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There's always a way to make healthy profits without dealing in immoral and despicable practices.
It's not immoral to sell someone a drink that they want to have with their meal.
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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…
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…
As a counterpoint, SF has some of the strictest zoning in the country. It has very few chains, from my experience. Most places where I know the owners, they are just normal people scratching out their existence.
I suspect some of these prices are generously rounded up. I think there is a very good possibility that the author doesn't actually track costs down to that level. They are probably looking at their overall costs and extrapolating downwards to the one item. Possibly a good review of their spending could save them a lot of money. Yes, I realise it is Ottawa and CDN, but I lived in Ottawa for over 10 years and these pr…
"I think there is a very good possibility that the author doesn't actually track costs down to that level." That's pretty much the most important job of a restaurateur, especially one trying to figure out how to keep the lights on. I would be very surprised if they didn't have extremely accurate figures here. Do you have knowledge of restaurant economics that this piece is missing? The article specifically calls out…
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You can't know these costs have not risen by guesswork. You have to actually look into the business and their P&L statements. And I was responding to a line of "if at all". Dismissing depreciation is a serious mistake. All buildings deteriorate, become obsolete, become inefficient and maladapted to modern conditions, and simply "wear out" over time. It's pretty obvious if you look at a city and notice that there aren…
> Dismissing depreciation is a serious mistake. ... > The generally accepted rule is buildings have a 30 year life. I think you are saying "there are substantial costs" again. It only works as an argument about rising costs if backed up by "and the real costs to the landlord caused by depreciation have actually risen". Do you have anything to back that up? I think most people take the view that landlords have general…
I lost money every year in it, and finally gave it up before it crushed me.
Sure, I stink as a businessman. But that's also my point. It ain't an easy business to make money in.
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> All that profit margin is ending up in landlords' pockets. The landlord's costs go up, too.
> The landlord's costs go up, too. Not if you've owned the place for a long time and seen rent and value appreciation.
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It's not immoral to sell someone a drink that they want to have with their meal.
It's been proven what the dangers of alcohol are. Practically the only benefits are monetary for the seller.
There are non-drink culinary uses for it too. The wholesale banning of alcohol misses the point a lot of the time. I had a friend who taught cake decorating and it's common to mix high concentration alcohol with coloured dust to paint on sugar flowers because it's a great solvent, evaporates quickly, and doesn't soak into the sugar. No one eats this part of the cake. But in some countries with Islamic students they were so unwilling to be anywhere near alcohol they used water. Perhaps I'm mistaken but I thought the original intent of those commands was regarding intoxication (which I don't fully disagree with) so this seems odd to me.
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A "bro culture" article written by a female entrepreneur who isn't from Silicon Valley… right. I think you need to check your prejudices. 1) plenty of restaurants don't sell alcohol, including it seems this one. she also had a point about how drinks aren't a great revenue generator given the price you can expect to charge in a fast-casual setting vs. the costs (higher than grocery stores) 2) how is the restauranteur'…
A woman can just as easily write a bro-culture article as a man, and you don't have to have worked in Silicon Valley to pick up on the culture. It's splashed all over the internet. If the article reads like bro culture, that's a valid observation, irrespective of the gender or background of the author.
But why are people bringing in gender into the critique of this article in the first place? The points could just have easily been made without mentioning gender and gender pejoratives. What insight does it contribute that the other points in the comment does not already bring up?
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“Pubs that do food” is the kind of thing I’m talking about! :) It starts with Sunday lunches, and slips into weeknights. It starts with order at the bar, and slips into little “reserved for diners” signs on most of the tables. It starts with the barman working the sandwich toaster and slides into teenagers in white blouses and knee length black skirts with name tags saying “trainee” asking you to wait to be seated as…
I'd think the Rovers Return would count, no? They do the odd hotpot, and they do event catering, but other than that it's pretty much just drinks and darts ;)
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Ref 3: 1. Prices in USD 2. Quotes Philly Mag. (Philladelphia?) 3. Mentions how generous tipping is required to help servers survive Yeah, of course one would assume it’s about US. I’m honestly very surprised if it isn’t.
Prices are in Canadian dollars, but I didn't know this until I looked up the restaurant. $11 felt kinda high for a döner, even a really good one. But that works out to ~7€ which is a little high for Germany, but not that much higher.
The article reads very different when the location is known. Tourism is significant effected. City shopping is significant effected. People who work in expensive offices is exactly those that often have the option to work at home. All the talk about margins feel like distraction of the fact that restaurants at central shopping streets are going to suffer. It is thus questionable if the article has anything to say about the industry as a whole.