At one point there was a novelty to it. Serving something a little better than your normal globs of meat. But what we ended up with were cornfed hipsters willing to forego a vinyl purchase or a day at the thrift store.
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There's a massive restaurant industry bubble, and it's about to burst
- Thread starter Vanillalite
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Lord_Byron28
Member
Out here in Nova, there are barely any local places. Everything is chain restaraunts. I love travelling and visiting all the local food places as they are usually really good but Northern Virginia doesn't have much in the way of signature and quality local food as a lot of the US does.
Park Slope has a local density of people and strollers that supports these places and their limited seating.
It's not unheard of, look at Paris.
GoldenEye 007
Member
terrible
At that point you are doing it to shove smoke up your own ass.
Nope. Spending hours cooking meat bones is labor.
Do you have free drink refills?
CornBurrito
Member
Why?
*Books trip to asia*
poppedcollar69
Member
That's cause, speaking from experience, working in the food service industry is a fucking nightmare, especially for non corporate restaurants
If these chic restaurants can't find a way to make it work without putting their own staff through a figurative meat grinder, then fuck em
TheLostBigBoss
Banned
There is a reason you don't see many successful "small" restaurants.
It's expensive with a high failure rate, and stuff like online reviews and social media doesn't help when one bad experience can be echoed and spread like wild fire.
entremet
Member
I remember tons of fancy pants Vegas restuarants shuttering at the time.
The biggest reason is diversity of offerings. Also local places can be more chef driven instead of focus group driven, like the big chains.
The price gap between local and chain is going to grow as full automation becomes the norm in the chain restaurant kitchens.
NealMcCauley
Member
Yeah, the first thing I thought of after reading that was the episode of Frasier where he and Niles opened a restaurant.
SynthFetish
Member
Except automating a kitchen job is going to be incredibly difficult if not impossible for decades. Even relatively dumb mechanical tasks like washing dishes still require constant human supervision.
I don't see how anyone hopes to automate something as involved as baking pastries or perfectly cooking a setak.
fancy/"hipster" food trucks are interesting. their food can be of really high quality, and pretty expensive.. but it's still coming out of a truck. you don't really get service, and they aren't providing you with a place to sit a lot of the time. you're just out on the damn street. if i'm gonna spend ~20 bucks on some food i at least want a table and a waiter and some refillable beverages.
I agree it is difficult, but we aren't talking about baking pastries and perfect steaks. We are talking Applebees and Olive Gardens where they boil a bag of noodles or microwave a frozen piece of meat. She will still need people to "managers" to occasionally deal with issues and to fix when things break or the process messes up.
Dr. Zoidberg
Member
I used to work for a company that created/sold restaurant Point-of-Sale and back office software. I dealt with a LOT of new restaurants and it is a very tough business. Usually when a small local place opens it is a "dream job" for the chef or owner, probably similar to how a lot of us would like to open our own retro game store or arcade, but there's usually not a solid, realistic business plan. For the vast majority of places the life expectancy is between 6 months and 2 years. The increases in more upscale "me-too" offerings has only exacerbated this problem. The glut of copycats is also affecting restaurants that know what they are doing because it dilutes the customer pool. Since profit-margins are usually thin even at a well-managed independent, it's a dangerous situation.
I don't get why washing dishes hasn't been automated yet. Seems like the easiest most obvious thing that could be automated.
CornBurrito
Member
Diversity of offerings is nice if I am craving something different. But that isn't a reason to exclusively shop local.
And is there anything inherently bad about a place being focus group driven?
I have an automated dish washer in my home. Tho you gotta manually put the dishes in it.
Cooking a steak actually seems pretty easy to automate. Some places already use sous vide to remove a lot of the labor from the process.
Small local places for me though they also seem to be slowly dying because of shit big franchises with a DJ that everyone thinks it's soooooo cool.
Speaking of big franchises Starbucks need to go away. There used to be one in a street corner, now there are like three on one street. Wtf
Yea, same. So what is that guy talking about. I guess you need someone to load/unload the dishwasher? I don't see why a robot couldn't do that though.
entremet
Member
Nothing bad about it. It just leads to homogeneity. As long as you're aware what you're incentivizing, that's fine.
Think outcomes. This isn't about a moral choice here. Also, it doesn't mean supporting mediocrity. There are many terrible independently owned restuarants.
My issue with chains, and I do love some chains, is that lack of adventure and diversity. They play it safe. Eating out is not cheap and if I want to eat out, I want to try something different. Something that may have gone through multiple revision through the guiding of an expert chef.
There's a reason why some of the most popular vacation destinations are known for their diversity of offerings in this scale. I love having those in my locale, without needing to take a vacation.
So, how do I ensure I get more of those? I patronize them.
Zelenogorsk
Banned
As long as Little Caesars stays open I'll be happy.
Where in NOVA are you looking? There's good local places all over the place, they just tend to be ethnic.
balladofwindfishes
Member
In the span of 4 years I've watched not one, not two, but three "gastro-pubs" open and close in the same location by me.
At some point one of them would maybe realize it's a bad location or that there's no need for the 13th or whatever gastro-pub in the city. Nobody stopped and thought "hey, this exact resturant didn't work out the last two times... maybe we should try something else? Nah! I want to own my hip trendy restaurant!"
At some point one of them would maybe realize it's a bad location or that there's no need for the 13th or whatever gastro-pub in the city. Nobody stopped and thought "hey, this exact resturant didn't work out the last two times... maybe we should try something else? Nah! I want to own my hip trendy restaurant!"
CornBurrito
Member
Tbh I tend to just cook at home, and if I'm not I just grab fast food. Only time I eat out is with family and they tend to eat at fancy places that charge 8 dollars for baked potatoes and other asinine shit.
If I want to open a Korean BBQ restaurant and there's already four other Korean BBQ restaurants in the area because it's hot right now then chefs who make really good Korean BBQ will be expensive, and I'll need chefs who make really good Korean BBQ because I'm competing with four similar restaurants.
Let's be honest, modern dishwashers are still pretty dumb compared to a human. You need a human to pre-scrape, load /unload, and quality check to make sure it hasn't left food stuck on some items. It's also still dumb enough that some things are not safe to put in the dishwasher and have to be done by hand. All the dishwasher can really handle is scrubbing dishes that are not already that dirty to begin with. And even with that limited job, they are slower than a human.
In theory a sufficiently advanced robot could do any of the jobs. But we are still a long ways off from having robots that can do that job cheaper than a human being paid minimum wage.
I've always wondered about this living in san francisco. The restaurant prices just aren't sustainable and it confuses my wife (from Tokyo) and I when we can go ton Tokyo, where the average price is similar but they actually have cheap options. Like $4 for an entire filling meal kind of cheap. I guess the rich pool here is just too big for anyone to try to cater to those of us who don't want to spend a fortune. We've gotten a lot better at cooking as a result.
BigJonsson
Member
Tons of copycat type places in Toronto
It's been wings, burgers, ramen, frozen yogurt, korean bbq, seafood boil etc....
It's been wings, burgers, ramen, frozen yogurt, korean bbq, seafood boil etc....
The truth. Friend showed me her new favorite dumpling and noodle shop that opened in the US recently. $9 for a plate of 8 fucking dumplings. I laughed and laughed (in Taiwan dumplings cost about 15 cents each, or $1.20 for 8). US food is ridiculously priced. And US restaurants pay their staff less than they do here.
You can't just put filthy dishes in a dish-washing machine, particularly not at a commercial scale. Gunk will very quickly accumulate in the machine's drain/filter will get clogged and you'll be screwed. Someone has to be there to inspect and scrape all the dishwear clean before it goes in. Not to mention that a relatively large part of a dish-washer's job is actually returning dishes and cookware to where it belongs, not just setting it on a rack and having someone else sort through it.
There's also the additional problem that many items are too big or awkwardly shaped to go through a dish machine or that they have to be hand-washed because of how they're made.
Laieon
Member
Eh, it depends on what you're getting though. I live in Korea and while Korean food is cheap (especially if you're eating with others), "foreign" food can definitely get pricey pretty quickly. Went to an American breakfast place yesterday with my girlfriend and we spent about $40 for something that was pretty much the equivalent of the sampler at Denny's.
TarpitCarnivore
Member
Where I am new spots are opening every week it feels like. Sooo many copy cat style places too. Either gastro pub bistro bars or coal fired pizza. We're getting coffee shops like crazy too (and most ain't good).
GoldenEye 007
Member
If there are already four Korean BBQ places in the same area, it stands to reason it probably isn't the best idea to open yet another one. Especially if doing so would force you to raise labor costs as high as you're suggesting for the skilled chefs. Seems very risky given the already established and existing competition.
Unless the other four are booming and can't handle demand and there truly actually is room in the market for another place like that. Then again, what if the fad dies in a year and people move on to something else specialized. Like frozen yogurt or something.
Oppo
Member
in Ontario there is. i go to a place in Toronto that is 100% locally grown food all the time. can't even get non local booze there. a chalkboard lists all the source farms for that days food on the inside wall.
Automating steak would be so easy.
Clockwork5
Member
I am quite grateful I have been able to maintain a nice job at a quality, family owned fine dining restaurant.
I helped open the place and have been GM/Sommelier for 5 years. I know it won't last forever, though....
I helped open the place and have been GM/Sommelier for 5 years. I know it won't last forever, though....
Some of the Best food I've ever had was in Thailand. And it was amazingly cheap.
The night markets were damm good. And the small restaurants people opened at the front of their houses, for nice quick noodle dishes. I pretty much stuck to street food. As they have to guarantee fresh food. The only time my missus feel sick was when we ate at a 'fancy restaurant. Suspected reheated chicken in her curry.
Hahaha. At my work they used to have food trucks come in and it was a popular novel experience for a few weeks but after about one visit you get tired of paying 10-15 for a small shitty meal that takes a half hour to get so everyone stopped going
So they stopped bringing in so many and started emailing us for our opinion on why nobody goes
People are clueless as hell.
Nobody has time for your expensive slow bullshit just cause you think it's cute
balladofwindfishes
Member
The food trucks that used to come around my old work building were fine. 7-9 dollars for a meal that was ready in 5 minutes or so and was comparable with similar restaurant portions and price.
And yea, we had generic 15 dollar for a tiny plate trucks as well, but nobody went to those. Everyone flocked to the ones that had fair prices and big portions and were fast. I don't think food trucks are necessarily a fad or need to die. There's just a ton of people who smell "easy" money jumping in and failing, but the good trucks still seem to manage just fine.
And yea, we had generic 15 dollar for a tiny plate trucks as well, but nobody went to those. Everyone flocked to the ones that had fair prices and big portions and were fast. I don't think food trucks are necessarily a fad or need to die. There's just a ton of people who smell "easy" money jumping in and failing, but the good trucks still seem to manage just fine.
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