Slashdot Mirror
How Delivery Apps May Put Your Favorite Restaurant Out of Business (newyorker.com)
In a piece this month, The New Yorker argues that online food discovery and delivery platforms are bad for restaurants. From the report: In recent years, online platforms like Uber Eats, Seamless, and GrubHub (which merged with Seamless, in 2013) have turned delivery from a small segment of the restaurant industry, dominated by pizza, to a booming new source of sales for food establishments of all stripes. When the average consumer logs in to the Caviar app to order a Mulberry & Vine salad for the office or a grain bowl on the way home from work, she might reasonably assume that her order is benefitting the restaurant's bottom line. But Gauthier, like many other restaurant owners I've spoken to in recent months, paints a more complicated picture. "We know for a fact that as delivery increases, our profitability decreases," she said. For each order that Mulberry & Vine sends out, between twenty and forty per cent of the revenue goes to third-party platforms and couriers. (Gauthier initially had her own couriers on staff, but, as delivery volumes grew, coordinating them became unmanageable.) Calculating an order's exact profitability is tricky, Gauthier said, but she estimated that in the past three years Mulberry & Vine's over-all profit margin has shrunk by a third, and that the only obvious contributing factor is the shift toward delivery.
Reading this article will give you a good feel for how dependent restaurants are on beer/liquor sales to stay afloat.
Delivery of food with no high-margin drinks wrecks that model. In a world where you can order any combination of items alone, each item has to be priced reasonably.
"between twenty and forty per cent of the revenue goes to third-party platforms and couriers. (Gauthier initially had her own couriers on staff, but, as delivery volumes grew, coordinating them became unmanageable.)
that the only obvious contributing factor is the shift toward delivery."
So they decided to pay 20-40% to have other people co-ordinate, and now they are complaining.
each item has to be priced reasonably
Can't quite see what's the downside here.
As long as there's no collusion between competitors in the delivery chain (helloooo Visa vs MasterCard, competing networks my ass), it's a clear win for the customers. Food can't (yet...) be DRMed, so no ink cartridge refill schemes.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
It seems obvious to me that if delivery isn't profitable, your business shouldn't be offering it.
"Enjoy our fantastic food in a friendly atmosphere tailored for your enjoyment."
A real restaurant is a different business than someone hauling food down the street in a cardboard box on a bicycle. Just like a movie theatre is a different business than a video rental shop.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
I think that most of a restaurant's profit comes from serving drinks. Home delivery really cuts into this high profit item.
Or charge a realistic markup for delivery. Call it a “Seamless surcharge” and set it to match the real cost. I would also like to see a takeout discount for not using up valuable dining space.
...but volume is better, they seem to be saying.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Note i am not making any kind of moral judgement here. If what most consumers want is 'prepared food delivered to your door' and you are in the food service industry you'd better figure out how to meet that demand or you will be left behind by someone who does. Alternatively maybe you can carve out a niche space for yourself for people who still want to 'go somewhere' but a niche means exactly that, a small market where only a few of the best can thrive.
That said I understand the trepidation the middle tear restaurateur probably feels right now. Its not just the costs of delivery. Its the other higher margin up sells like, that second beer or another cocktail your wait staff convinces the customer, he'd enjoy it and after all he is celebrating! Or the the $6 2oz cheese cake in a cup that is decadent but not two decadent and hey girl your deserve it!
You loose the opportunity to make a lot of those sales with deliver and take out. My assumption is most restaurant dishes are not loss leaders but at least at a lot of the places I tend to each there is clearly more margin on some of those ancillaries than on the main plate items. Given a competitive market place you might not have the pricing power to raise tab on main plates either. You are competing with the places that have decided not to follow the new trend in the mean time, at least for the traditional portion of the business. Ultimately you might be re-aligning in the right way but that can mean some short term pain. Lots of restaurants are more or less hand to mouth, they may not be able to weather the changes at all and those that can might not be able to afford a misstep.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Everyone should really read this article to know the kind of bullshit that these apps are inserting into the restaurant business. You may love the convenience, but they're 0-value adding middlemen that are sucking the restaurant dry: http://tribecacitizen.com/2016...
Seamless, for example, not only takes a commission on every purchase (even if you would just call up the restaurant on an ongoing basis, and not being a new customer) -- the telephone numbers you sometimes see for a restaurant are actually Seamless's number, piped through their system to the restaurant. And they monitor transactions to make sure they're getting their cut.
Technology is great and all, but you should realize the ways that people use it to take advantage of those who aren't the masters of it.
As long as there's no collusion ...
or obstruction
I will order food to go on occasion; but I am just as happy picking it up myself as opposed to having some third party deliver it.
I find human interaction interesting and enjoyable, most of the time... but maybe I'm in the minority. Plus my experience with a lot of these dot-com-two-point-oh businesses has left a bad impression with me, given how poorly they treat their employees - so I'm not motivated to contribute to those businesses' survival.
#DeleteChrome
Increase the delivery fee?
"I think it’s a far bigger problem than a lot of operators realize,” she told me. “I think we are losing money on delivery orders, or, best-case scenario, breaking even.”
You are selling two products: food and the delivery thereof. Being a restaurant for a while, the economics of food should be known already. If delivery is costing you more than it makes you, then you need to charge more for it. I don't see how all of these people are so confused.
It is possible that because your delivery fees are greater than a competitor's that you would lose a sale, and that's bad, but The New York we didn't even imply that. In fact, the only reason it could find that dripping deliveries altogether would be a bad idea was comparing it to crack, revenue they can't afford to lose. And yet it isn't actually making them marginal revenue?
Restrauntation is notorious for almost always failing; not being profitable. I think some of that is because the owners don't understand how this money stuff works.
I think that the point is that "reasonable" prices will cause a lot of customers to balk.
If the alcohol sales essentially subsidize the food sales, then raising the prices for those food items may cause a lot of patrons to choose other places. I have a feeling that this is pretty likely to be a problem since already prices are rather high, and portions are already ridiculously large in order to justify the high prices. The actual raw ingredient costs are very low, it's facilities, utilities, labor, and probably marketing that take a lot of the revenue. Restaurants have to serve the oversized portions because that allows them to reach the price point where it's not a loss.
When I look at my local Mexican restaurant market, the quality difference between fairly low-end food and fairly high-end food is not really all that extreme. It's enough that I generally prefer the higher-end places (they do a better job of not overcooking things and having the final dish not be as greasy) but the biggest differences are in the facilities, lower-end places are often in former-fast-food locales and the dining rooms are pretty rough. The low end places don't serve alcohol. While their prices are lower than the high-end places, they're really all that much lower. I could see the high-end place having to raise prices fairly substantially if alcohol sales don't help support the restaurant.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I had a favourite ramen restaurant. Every time we went there, we had to line up for 5 or 10 minutes, due to it's popularity and lack of space.
Last time we went there, there was no queue, at a time when it's usually jam packed. We thought we were so lucky. Straight away we noticed Uber eats orders going out the door. The service had gone from 5-10 minutes, to 15-20 minutes. The food was cold when it came out. Seemed pretty clear that the priority was going to deliveries, at the expense of customers in the restaurant. Never going back.
When the GF decides that ordering in is a 'date' and suitable I might begin to worry. In the meantime she likes to go out to eat without the daughter and it is a special occasion, I don't see our favorite Chinese place suffering, or the steak house down the road serving everything ala-car for 50 years now. Fast food joints don't want you there already as evinced by the drive though. I also don't like eating cold food so I much prefer it at the table in the restaurant vs cold delivered to my house.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Or make the food for delivery in a cheaper place than a high-rent kitchen of the original restaurant. Find some non-retail place a few blocks away from the restaurant and set up the delivery kitchen there. Maybe even do some prep for the restaurant kitchen there too. Rent will be cheaper and will allow you to create more delivery meals. This would lower the per meal costs and increase the profitability.
The problem is that online makes a commodity out of everything. The delivery services are positioning themselves as middlemen and will make the restaurants essentially anonymous and interchangeable. With commoditization comes price pressure. Intuitively you'd think that the competition would create a meritocracy where restaurants can attract customers with quality, but like with everything else online, there are going to be a small number of "winners" who take the top spots, and a long tail of "losers", all alike. Nobody wants to order from the second best. That's why there's Google and some niche search engines. That's why there's Facebook and some niche social network sites. That's why there is Amazon and some niche postal services. Oops, too soon?
Why is that a racket? The customer is getting a valuable service and the restaurant owner is getting customers they'd otherwise not have. Stupid restaurant owners that don't understand this is the problem
Wouldn’t it be simpler to just stop offering takeout.
If your customers want takeout, and you don't offer it, then they go elsewhere and you go bankrupt.
One Chinese restaurant in my area went the opposite direction: They stopped offering sit down meals. Your options are takeout or delivery. They vacated their retail space, and expanded the kitchen in their house. Mom and dad cook, and the kids do the deliveries.
Am I somehow missing the high priced drink options that keep the #4 Value meal at $5.75 USD? Most of the overhead is in staffing and rent, so anything that lowers those substantially is a huge win.
You mean stop offering delivery.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
It seems obvious to me that if delivery isn't profitable, your business shouldn't be offering it.
If it is "obvious" to you, then you should try to learn more about how businesses work.
Takeout is marginally profitable. But it doesn't generate enough net profit to cover fixed costs such as rent. If you stop offering takeout, you will lose those orders, and the marginal profit, and your overall net profit will fall.
"Enjoy our fantastic food in a friendly atmosphere tailored for your enjoyment."
Good luck with that. When I order takeout, it is because I don't have the time to either cook or sit and wait in a restaurant. I am looking for good quick food, not "ambiance".
Most of the overhead is in staffing and rent, so anything that lowers those substantially is a huge win.
What are you thinking?
Do you imagine that when a restaurant turns into a delivery service they don't need to rent a location near their customers, they can instead opt to locate their facilities in a low-rent section of town simply drive longer to deliver your food?
What staffing is eliminated? For every minimum wage worker that used to sweep the dining area, bus tables and clean the bathrooms a restaurant will likely need a team of "gig economy" drivers to hand-deliver your order.
Ken
I would also like to see a takeout discount for not using up valuable dining space.
They already have that. It is called "not tipping".
You are expected to tip a server or a deliverer. But if you place a phone order, and pick it up yourself, no tip is expected.
If the delivery providers are charging too much, hire a fuckin' delivery driver. Jesus. $80 a day will buy you one.
You are assuming that only one driver is needed. Unlikely. Driving an order to a customer takes longer than carrying an eat-in order from the kitchen to a table, and many restaurants have more than one person even for that.
You can't win.
You can't break even.
You can't even quit the game.
As long as there's no collusion ...
or obstruction
Can one get delivery from McDonald's ?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Wouldn’t it be simpler to just stop offering takeout.
Restaurants should get out of any business that actually costs them money instead of making money.
If take-out orders are subsidized by dine-in customers, the restaurant is cutting it's own throat by offering take-out service.
If your customers don't want a sit-down meal and prefer take-out, then either find a way to offer take-out profitably, or close your doors. It is a cliché on TV to see restaurants that are mis-managed "circle the bowl" for years, eating up all the owners savings as they insist their clearly failing business model can work, they just need to take another cash advance from a credit card to make payroll...
Ken
If your customers want takeout, and you don't offer it, then they go elsewhere and you go bankrupt.
If all your customers demand take-out, and you lose money on each take-out meal, you still go bankrupt.
Ken
This is part of the long-going trend of millennial's moving away from casual dinning, to saving money for splurging on Instagram worthy "experience" dinning. Practically all casual dinning chains have been experiencing declining in-store traffic for the past decade. As in any competitive industry, they must adapt to the consumers ever-chaning preferences or risk being left in the dust. In NYC we have started seeing the rise of the delivery-only establishments. The delivery apps allow them to advertise and sell their products without the expense of a "storefront," which is heavily reliant on liquor/drinks sales for profitability
For delivery meals, they don't have to pay for the place where the table sits, the china, the plates, flowers, lighting, heating, busboy, maître d'hotel, reservations, cleaning dishes etc.
They can do all that in a container on a parking lot.
Like that episode of South Park, internet apps do not help much to the local kitchens except for letting users discover new restaurants. Yelp, and let me assume TripAdvisor too, is known to ransom restaurants that do not pay, and what I would tell the most profitable delivery management house in my area takes around 15% of the bill. Note that the 15% does not generally include the delivery service. Some of the delivery people tell me that the restaurant prefers if you use the restaurant web page.
I would also like to see a takeout discount for not using up valuable dining space.
All that unused "valuable dining space" has no value if the restaurant isn't busy. If the restaurant is packed and your takeout meal ADDs to the revenue, we have something to talk about, but all the packaging, condiments, and delivery add to the cost, and likely far exceed your imagined "savings" from not occupying a table in the dining room, using reusable silverware/plates, etc. Lets not forget the college students that work as waitresses and waiters that need tip money you aren't giving them to help meet school expenses when you have take-out.
Ken
Most restursnts don’t offer takeout.
Bullcrap. Nearly all restaurants offer takeout. They may not advertise or promote it, but if you call them and ask if they can box up an order to go, very few will decline the order. Chinese, burger, and pizza joints get most of their orders takeout. Even high end restaurants typically have 20% or more takeout.
The gig economy is simply a sidestep of regulation. We're fools if we ignore it, but we're screwing people if we don't use it. I can take a cab, pay more, wait longer, and get taken for a longer drive to raise the rate, but at least the cabby makes a passable wage. Alternatively, I can take a rideshare, pay less, get there quicker, not get screwed, but I'm screwing the driver over.
Airbnb is screwing over hotels and neighbors.
Restaurant delivery services screw over restaurants.
Grumble.
Delivery is unquestionably an added-value service.
Prices should reflect that.
If delivery is affecting margins negatively, it is not priced correctly. At the very least, it should end up revenue-neutral.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If delivery detracts from it, don't do it.
Many restaurants are notoriously poorly managed. That's why they go out of business so fast even though they appear to be popular. Those that have a better handle on their expenses and cash flow will spot the loses and act to cut them off quickly.
Also, know your business. If a part of what you are selling is atmosphere, then sending the food out doesn't fit your plan. Don't do it.
Have gnu, will travel.
that's what made Uber & Lyft work. Cabby work has been the domain of immigrants for decades because of how they're abused. They're usually in lease arrangements with the owner of the car and/or token that effectively pays them less than minimum wage. It was easy to look the other way at Uber/Lyft's worker abuse because it was significantly less than what most cab companies do to their drivers.
Missing from this conversation though was the crazy, out there notion of not letting _any_ company abuse workers. The working class lacks solidarity though. If we were smart we're realize that when one of us suffers we all do...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You forgot to add investing additional kitchen equipment, and increased investment in raw food, since both have to keep ample ingredients at each location.
Put simply, if your current restaurant is losing money, open a second restaurant! That was the previous poster's basic suggestion.
Ken
declining wages are. Inflation for me is about 3% (that's real inflation, e.g. the % my expenses go up each year, it doesn't help me that the price of a $100k sports car only went up $1000 this year when food goes up 3%). Meanwhile my pay goes up 2% a year on average (and I'm one of the lucky ones).
I eat out less and less often because I can't afford to. Meanwhile the restaurants prices have gone up because they have fewer patrons who can afford it. So an OK Chinese buffet that used to be $10 + tip is now $25 + tip. The gyro place where I get a gyro + fries is now $15+ tip. I can't spend $20-$30 bucks on one meal.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Movie Theatre
========
Get dressed up
Fight traffic, or pay transit/taxi, to get there
Pay for parking if you take car
Stand in line to get tickets
Grossly overpay for popcorn and pop
Fight traffic, or pay transit/taxi, to get home
Watch At Home
=========
Go to local grocery store to get decently priced popcorn and pop
Watch Netflix movie at home on largescreen TV
similarly...
Dine Out
=====
Get dressed up
Fight traffic, or pay transit/taxi (recommended), to get there
Pay for parking if you take car (not recommended)
Stand in line to get seated
Grossly overpay for alcohol
Fight traffic, or pay transit/taxi (recommended), to get home
Dine At Home
=========
Go to local local liquor store to get decently priced wine
Eat at home
It costs a lot less, doesn't take as long, and in the case of eating at home, you don't have to pay transit/taxi or risk being caught and charged with DUI for having some wine with your meal.
And just like movie theatres, restaurants require physical retail space, which costs a lot of money in areas that customers are likely to flock to.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
The McDonald's by me delivers through uber eats
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
If smaller independent restaurants can't stay afloat, then it will destroy all diversity in the restaurant industry. That's a big downside.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
That doesn't sound like it is up to health code. I'd think twice about eating there.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
That article is garbage.. anyone who knows anything about running a restaurant knows that if your food cost is over 30% you are never going to make it in the business... That breakdown they had for the noodle dish's food cost was like 50%...
Most restaurants fails because the people that own them don't have a clue on how to properly run one...
> Food can't (yet...) be DRMed, so no ink cartridge refill schemes. https://news.nationalgeographi...
You'll end up getting sick more often if you cripple your immune system by living in a bubble.
It's also a good way to develop immune system deficiencies, like allergies.
You can deliver out of a kitchen. Restaurants are set up for a whole host of environmental (and regulatory) costs. Servers, cutlery, decoration, doors, salting the winter walkway, tables, front cash, and all of the square footage to house patrons, including bathrooms and hvac.
No surprise that delivery services cut restaurant profits. There's no up-selling, no tips, and I'll bet no liquor.
And then we will all have to dine at The Taco Bell.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
"Gauthier initially had her own couriers on staff, but, as delivery volumes grew, coordinating them became unmanageable"
Sounds like you overreached and grew so big you couldn't get the same profitability percentage anyway...
Try this... go back to your own couriers, and only accepting the same percentage of orders as you used to. Or hiring a fleet manager to sort out your in-house deliveries, saving you a huge percentage for a single wage.
But I guess you wouldn't do either of those as you know it has little to do with anything - business changes, either adapt or get shut out. And, to be honest, of all the business failures I've ever seen, you can see them for a long time lingering and building up on the balance sheet and being ignored.
If delivery costs too much... stop delivery. If the profitability is dropping, find another profit. If the food is good, to the point that you couldn't manage the deliveries, it should be easy.
Or, alternatively, take the profits you're getting and embrace the delivery culture. What's costing you most money? I would guess your premises. I've yet to see one but I see no problem with a food delivery business listed on those kinds of sites that has no physical restaurant presence you can visit. Literally operate as a food preparation and delivery company via those apps, with token presence wherever you need to prove catchment.
The Internet kills a lot of businesses, but almost always through providing a better service. You can't fight against that, only evolve and embrace it.
I could honestly and seriously live the rest of my live without having to visit a single shop, takeaway restaurant (maybe a proper sit-down restaurant for family meals etc.), supplier, provider, hell I could even book someone to cut to my house to cut my hair if I wanted. And the beauty is that such facilities provide me with MORE opportunity to get out and do other things much more classed as leisure (e.g. lounge in a nice restaurant) than before... it's optimisation of your life.
I have actually found it cheaper and much more convenient for me to pre-book a guy to drive to my workplace, change my car tyre with a model I choose online down to the exact specifications and brand, and bill me for that than it is to find a garage that's open after work hours, book it in, knock back all the upsell, take it there, wait while they do it, then drive home.
Time is money, now more than ever. And with food, especially, it's quicker and easier to take some buttons on the way home knowing by the time you get there your pre-paid food will arrive within minutes of you getting in (or even beat you there!). You can't compete against such things, but you could make an awful lot of money pre-empting and embracing them.
Friend, it's legal to pay waiters like a buck an hour. Staffing isn't a big drain.
In takeout, you don't compete against other restaurants. You compete against kitchens. Running a restaurant is expensive for a whole lot of reasons that don't matter in takeout. Location, for one, is irrelevant if you just deliver. You don't need waitstaff. You don't need facilities for guests. You don't need to redecorate a couple of times each year to match the season. Sounds like the position that shopkeepers are in versus online shops, doesn't it? Then you should already know where this is going. Say bye bye to your favorite restaurant. Not offering takeout is not a solution. Offering takeout is not a solution. Restaurants will go the same way as high street shops. Most of the time you'll want to get takeout, because it's cheaper and more convenient, but when you want to go out, there won't be anywhere to go to. You can't window-shop at Amazon.
If all your customers demand take-out, and you lose money on each take-out meal, you still go bankrupt.
The restaurants don't "lose money on each take-out meal".
Businesses have variable costs, such as the ingredients and labor going into each order. They also have fixed costs, such as rent. The takeout orders generate more income than the variable costs, so they add to the total profit. But the problem is that they don't contribute enough profit to pay the rent at the end of the month.
If your customers switch from eat-in to takeout, you may go bankrupt unless you can cut costs, but if you refuse those orders, you will go bankrupt even faster.
If profits are down, the walk-in traffic must be down - presumably because some are taking delivery now. This is to be expected. You get into the delivery business precisely because, if you don't, someone else will. Then you'd just be left with the declining restaurant revenue that I suspect is the real problem here.
The delivery business doesn't require the seating area, wait staff, parking lot, etc. All of that and the storefront can go away. If you want to understand your business expenses, you need to separate the books and don't put anything on the delivery business' costs that it doesn't need. That 20-40% revenue that goes to the delivery costs is its equivalent of the storefront and wait staff. It shouldn't have to shoulder both.
Eventually, I think the seating area disappears and all you have is a delivery business.
This comes full circle when someone creates restaurant seating areas with drink service but no kitchens and facilitates easy ordering from any nearby delivery kitchens. This will allow groups a place to meet and dine while allowing the individuals to order from anywhere they want. The product of the dining rooms will be space, atmosphere, wait staff for drinks and cleanup, etc. There won't be as many seats in this system because most will prefer to have their food delivered to work, home, whatever park they are sitting in, etc.
The gig economy is perilously fast race to the bottom. At some point, there is going to be a massive market correction. This massive correction is going to result in the collapse of the social and economic fabric. Human beings can only take so much suffering before they rise up. History shows time and again that once the wealthy and corrupt have gone too far, chaos ensues.
No, its not, stop perpetuating this lie.
Good-bye
SO can i. I have a freezer full of prepared meals i made from scratch, all in sealed bags ready to drop in boiling water.. I still order delivery.....
Good-bye
Stop rebutting without a rebuttal.
It's because the restaurant can't charge me $4 per person for soft drinks.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The dollar an hour is only true in some states, and it is required that if their hourly wage + tips is less than minimum wage that the restaurant has to make up the difference to keep them at at least minimum wage. On the West coast, most states ignore tips in this calculation and require that all staff get paid at least minimum wage regardless of tips, so tips are actually an added on bonus to hourly wage instead of part of it.
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." [Thomas Jefferson]
Not a problem as long as you have your three seashells handy.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Accept the mainstream or abstain, thus ruining the enjoyment of "dining out" for millions of people who enjoy unique experiences.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The other day I ate at a restaurant and had a good meal. When I tried to cook it at home, a lawyer showed up and served me a cease and desist.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
A fair point that the wage varies quite a bit throughout the US. As for the wage needing to make up the difference in tips, I think my claim remains pretty plausible. I'd guesstimate that any given waiter would need to serve $30 worth of food per hour to make up the wage difference...which is unlikely to ever be a problem in the kinds of restaurants that people would want delivery from.
If they can't stay, then good food for eating out will become scarce and more expensive, after which the remaining restaurants can stay afloat.
Best thing an owner can do now is to sell his business, work for a hotel and wait for the prices to go up. Then buy back at a low price from the bankrupted new owner and resume business at a higher price, and with a reasonable profit margin.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
noooo.....
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
As long as you're willing to pay a reasonable price for the food I'm sure you can continue dining out.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
It's even worse that you don't properly check your signature...
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
I don't mod ACs.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
tier?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Most of the restaurants in my area are constantly busy and are clearly making plenty of money while the other retail around them suffers from reduced business. I welcome more competition that might cause them to offer better service and prices to attract my business. Right now it's a seller's market.
Because your too fucking lazy to cook.
Not to mention "It's", "too", "you", "lose", "eat". I'm guessing either ESL or a phone.
No, but I'm pretty sure the restaurant really is so scared that ALL the loser nobodies won't there.
The same way the restaurants do, cook it ahead of item and freeze it. Then reheat when ready to eat. You don't really think they're going to make your individual serving of lasagna on demand do you? You'd be waiting an hour at least for food.
Right on. Hearing restaurant owners bitch about labor costs is just tiring. What other business with similar revenues has such low labor costs? The only people in a restaurant that make any decent money are the cooks (sometimes) and management.
Servers and bartenders are paid solely from tips. The "wage" is next to nothing. The restaurant probably pays more for FICA than towards their tipped employees wages. Then there's hostesses, barbacks, bus boys, dishwashers, all of who make minimum wage and often even less if paid under the table.
High rent is the one thing that often really screws over restaurants. But luckily there's an answer for that on the delivery side: pick a location that's undesirable for a retailer, such as a second story spot, back of a strip mall, or some other slightly inconvenient location. The rent will be a LOT cheaper and the subpar location won't matter for a delivery business, so long as the drivers can reach the customers in a somewhat timely manner.
Many restaurant owners simply freak out whenever they see an expense anywhere. They don't even figure out if the expense is justified or even if it helps them make more money. They just start cutting any expense they possibly can, and then wonder why their restaurant is failing. Hint: if you cut costs by cutting food quality, customers soon notice and stop coming. The more people that do this, the more costs the restaurant owner then cuts, and the worse the customer experience, then the restaurant death spiral deepens.
If all your customers demand take-out, and you lose money on each take-out meal, you still go bankrupt.
The restaurants don't "lose money on each take-out meal".
There's a difference between profits in terms of dollars and profits in terms of margins. Lower margins are not the same as losing money. That reminds me of a Morris Chang quote from a few years ago that addresses this sometimes misguided focus on margins: “You Americans measure profitability by a ratio. There’s a problem with that. No banks accept deposits denominated in ratios. The way we [TSMC] measure profitability is in ‘tons of money’. You use the return on assets ratio if cash is scarce. But if there is actually a lot of cash, then that is causing you to economize on something that is abundant.”
That doesnt ring true. Food is not cooked on plates. Its cooked in cooking utensils and the transferred to a plate by the kitchen. Why wouldnt the kitchen just transfer it to a box instead of a plate. No need to involve waiters
**Life is too short to be serious**
Am I the only one who sees in this trend just a huge explosion of single-use containers going right to the landfill?
The McDonald's by me delivers through uber eats
And McDonald's, being a smart, well-run corporation, doesn't pay for the delivery - the customer does.
Ken
This means opening a second place with a second staffing. second lease to pay. That means extra cost. If you want to open a second business, because your kitchen can not handle any more customers, that might be a valid option. If your business does so well, opening a second restaurant wpuld make more money.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Funny how it doesn't apply in Canada, because the liquor laws are much tougher that few restaurants are licensed to serve. Basically, every licensed restaurant must have every server trained in alcohol handling (can't serve too much, and heaven help you if you serve a minor), and the courts have ruled that "hosts" are liable - if a drunk patron leaves and kills/injures someone, the restaurant or bar serving them is actually liable for damages as well.
So yes, there are licensed establishments, but most restaurants aren't licensed and thus can only serve non-alcoholic drinks (water, pop, etc).
And it turns out most restaurants don't bother screwing you over with drinks - sure maybe $1.50 for a pop is a bit pricey, but it's not so over the top (and the water's always free).
We don't have wildly expensive food prices either - in fact, apparently Vancouver is one of the cheapest places to eat out - just because there is so much competition.
The only places that really do overcharge are "fine dining" establishments, but those were already expensive from the get-go.
So delivery services are really an extension of the takeout model - and given some restaurants do nothing but takeout, they seem to do OK. The profits from drink sales really should be used to pay for services if you eat in - servers, dish washers, etc, but takeout doesn't incur any of that.
I see this hurting those specialty destination restaurants that make dining "an experience" by hoity-toity celebrity chefs and big names where you might drop $200 for a meal. The more run of the mill places serving the general public for lunch downtown and all that (i.e., lunch for $10-15 max), aren't going to suffer much, if at all - given takeout is a big part of their sales.
If delivery isn't profitable don't offer delivery is a great strategy in a stable and unchanging climate where people expect there to not be deliveries and instead choose to go to the restaurant and sit down. That is a silly assumption to make. With increase variance in delivery options many people are opting to do it causing you to lose customers.
Your answer is:
Offer delivery at the lower profit. - Potentially go bankrupt
Lose the customer altogether. - Potentially go bankrupt.
I went to the doctor and I said, "When I move my arm like this it hurts."
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
15 minutes sounds a little bit fast, but if you boil the pasta for 2-3 minutes to soften it and prepare the filling in a saucepan (at the same time, while preheating the oven) then you can assemble it and bake it for 5 minutes in a preheated oven for the suace to soak into the pasta and then use the grill for a minute or two to make the top crispy. I hate making bechamel sauce, so that would probably push it over the 15 minute line for me (unless I just topped it with cheese, which I probably would because I'm lazy, and a little bit of roquefort crumbled into the topping makes it so much nicer), but aside from that 15 minutes seems quite plausible.
I've never tried this with lasagne, but a pasta bake with similar ingredients is on my list of things I cook when I'm too lazy to spend more than about 10-15 minutes cooking.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yes, you are right, but there will be an overshoot. More restaurants go out of business than necessary because of the panic.
So then bankrupt restaurants will be on offer at a discount, making it more viable for the next owner to survive, because his acquisition costs for the restaurant are lower than that of others.
So the over-reaction to the lack of demand will create a (temporary) scarcity.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
And a 'fresh' Lasagne would only taste half as good as a freshly reheated one with extra cheese on top.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It seems obvious to me that if delivery isn't profitable, your business shouldn't be offering it.
Ahh, to live in such a simple world where everything is distinctly black and white. I'm jealous of you, my world has far too much grey in it.
In reality, restaurants are often at the mercy of these delivery companies for business. Because these app companies have gotten big enough that they can advertise on television, unless you pay them they'll redirect business to your competitors. At this point they can act like standover men demanding payment for no to minimal services under the threat of making your business harder to operate. Few people are smart or motivated enough to look around their local area for restaurants and take out when the Hungry House app will distil that information for them and offer "unbiased" reviews.
Its a case of damned if you do and damned if you don't. These app manufacturers saw how well these kind of standover tactics worked in the hotel industry and thought they could get another racket like that in other forms of hospitality.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
This is not 'insightfull' but just plain ignorant how most restaurants work.
Making food 'X' costs $5.
Sell in the restaurant for $5, no profit.
Sell another coke, beer for $3, reult is $2 profit.
Sell for take away, with no beer or other drink: zero profit.
Sure, it would make sense if low cost food deliveries would be forced to make the food prices 'transparent', but that is not how the restaurant business is run at the moment in developing countries like the USA.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Sure they have a loss per meal, but they make up for it in volume.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Small places can't keep up with ordering online. So if everyone orders online there are only large chains. You feel down the road if I want a more unique restaurant they will be willing to open one for me and have me dine there for the cost of a meal?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Only using instant lasagna noodles, which are disgusting in my experience.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Location will differ from street to street in many places. So not being on a road but in a back alley will not matter for delivery, but might matter for a walk in place. That will mean a big difference in rent.
The place you need to do the same amount will also be a lot smaller.
Example: I used to work for a delivery place several years ago, so numbers are from memory.
On a Sunday evening we delivered around 300 1 person pizza's. (standard in Belgium). between 18:00 and 21:00. We had a place that would seat 16 people (4 tables of 4) and those tables where empty all the time. To be able to do the same as a walk in, we would need around 50 tables easy. That means a restaurant that is 10 times as big at least. You would also need parking spaces for all those people . We had 12 mopeds for delivery and 3 cars. Instead of being on a main road, we where somewhere on a side road.
The disadvantage of not being on a main road is advertisement. People seeing your place on the way home helps a lot in sales. So we had to increase advertising. The best thing was folders in the mailbox. That was a LOT cheaper than having to pay for the more expensive location.
If we would deliver to a apartment building where we not yet had done advertising in the last two weeks, the delivery driver would stuff the mailboxes. Next 3 days sales to that building would increase.
PS: Do not make your folders too nice, because people will think it is expensive and won't order.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Every tine I see Americans talk about restaurants, I must think of the fact that fast food is not considered a restaurant in most of Europe, I am aware that technically it is. We also have a differnce between restaurant and brasserie in Belgium.
I go and eat at least 2 times in a restaurant per week. e.g. even if I go and pizza, I will go to a restaurant, not to Pizza Slut. I will go with a few friends, have some wine, coffee and what not. I am there for the company. All without the issue of cleaning it up.
This means getting at the restaurant at around 19:00, get the food at 19:30 or 20:00, be ready with eating at perhaps 21:00 or later. That is during a normal weekday. Once a month we go to some nice place where we will get at around 19:00 and leave at around 01:00 or so. Or if it is lunch arrive at 13:00 and leave at 16:00.
None of these places do delivery as the experience is not just the food, it is a social gathering.
Just like you could see movies at home, the reason I go to the cinema is not just the movie, but sharing the experience with friends.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The commonality between most of these 'gig' economy ideas is that they are predators. They are serving no one but themselves. If the economy has no way to naturally balance against these predators, then we are surely headed for the toilet.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
My second favorite Chinese-like restaurant was take out oriented back in the 70s. They had 8 seats total in the store, and it was a constant flow of takeout orders. They thrive to this day, despite being on one side of a busy street, on the wrong side of a busy intersection. No matter what time of day or what you order, they have it ready for you, no matter how fast you think you can get there. Damned good too.
OTOH, sports bars and steak houses should have no interest in delivery, it just makes no sense.
QSRs (McDonalds for instance, look it up) might be a delivery opportunity, but somehow waiting for the driver to get to me with old and cold fries isn't the least bit interesting. Pizza places that solved the hot and fresh problem do very well. In fact, I think pizza is well suited to delivery, and really much Asian style food also. Hamburgers and fries, not so much. Steak? Well, if the veggies are right.
Call me old fashioned, but I prefer fresh food. Even Mexican takeout sometimes leaves me cold. Pad Thai, though, that golds up well on the trip. Some restaurants may end up giving up on delivery.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You don't understand how allergies work, do you...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The commodity is information. Knowing the prices or benefits of all competitors.
It is ending up, in online retail, with prices largely becoming homogenized, fulfillment centralized to a few actual providers, and bargain/sales coming and going on an hourly basis. Targeted advertising designed to force a decision from you without adequate information to make an informed choice.
So you go to Amazon, keep looking at an item, and it never goes down in price UNLESS there is a promotion, usually along with a bunch of other items. Or you go to book air travel and find that when you go to actually pay the price went up due to 'demand'. In a few minutes. After you've set your order. For five seats. In high season. They know what they are doing to you, and an extra $12 per seat after you've spent a half hour finding just the right combination is good money.
The commodity is information.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Not in the states .... but eatsmart.ch is pretty much this
Hmm...if you are a waiter or more especially a bartender, and are not making very significantly above minimum wage, they you are not doing it right and should either find a job you are more suited to, or possibly try another establishment.
Granted, it has been a LONG time since I was in school and the industry, but I make significantly more $$ waiting and that really jumped up for bartending when I was in school.
Some people maybe just aren't personable and don't know how to schmooz customers for tips, but if you are good at it, you can make a lot of money for a young person.
If you get more into the high end restaurants, you can make up to 6 figures a year as part of the wait staff.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
2 times I have ordered takeout from a 1 star michelin restaurant without any problems. Very few restaurant refuse takeout. The only starred restaurent who refused me a takeout was because it say that he doesn't want to sell food that doesn't look as good as presented on a plate.
Most of the time takeout order are a bonus for restaurants because it doesn't take a seat in their dinning room and then they can sell one more serving to a customer.
Like said before very few restaurant promote that they can do takeout because for most people, takeout mean cheap and low quality, even if it's not true. Restaurant doesn't want that idea sticking in their customers head.
Besides, already restaurants are priced at a point that I can only go rarely for a 'treat' with the family. If they got more expensive due to this external price pressure, they would be unaffordable for most anyway.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Owning and operating a restaurant trying to forge its own way in the industry is hard enough as it is. No one will want to take the risk in an industry with only multinational players in it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
McDonald's has been delivering orders for a long time now.
Taco Bell and KFC just announced delivery via GrubHub.
That is exactly right, they're using the wrong model. The profitability should be in the food, not the drinks. TANSTAAFL is the standard warning against that model: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch (from back in the time that bars and pubs would advertise "free lunch!" salty as heck, then charge triple price for the drinks)
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Nope.
The drink is actually a high-priced option, the cup costs them more than the contents you put into it.
You'll also note that the menu at most fast-food is structured around a bunch of different menu options using ingredients from a set where very few if any of those ingredients is only used in a single menu item. Taco Bell is probably the perfect example, in that there's only about a dozen ingredients to make everything on their entire menu. Each menu item is simply a subset of those ingredients, perhaps with different processes applied (Gordita shell deep-fried to turn it into a Chalupa shell, for example) so that the actual cost to supply and operate the individual kitchens is very low.
Even traditional hamburger-joint fast food operates this way, the difference between a burger and a chicken sandwich is the choice of meat, and sometimes there are other chicken dishes that use the same source chicken filet so that it's not a single-menu-item ingredient.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It's an immune system response to something that isn't harming you (like peanuts) or an over-reaction to something (like bee venom). It's caused by a defective immune system.
Here's a definition for you https://www.merriam-webster.co...
This totally not a problem in densely populated Asian cities.
The food is cheap and the restaurants are thriving. In Asia, many of the apartment and condominium buildings have their residences atop businesses which reside on first and (sometimes) second floors. Many of those shops are restaurants, beverage, and household needs shops.
With literally a thousand residents residing in the housing above you, not to mention buildings across street or around the block, they have thousands of customers within walking distance.
The spread out nature in suburban America makes it difficult for this delivery model to work effectively and efficiently. The delivery life isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can be complicated to make life successful in less densely populated places.
You don't build up an immunity to what we call an allergy. Exposure tends to make it worse. You don't really want those antibodies to become active and generate the histamine response usually associated with allergies. Instead you suppress the inflammatory response if you can.
Not the same problem as the immune response associated with influenza, which we are willing to tolerate, even develop through immunization, to prevent off minimize an infection. Allergies aren't the same thing at all, as they are responses to otherwise innocuous substances, and the response is truly unwanted and unnecessary.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Immunotherapy to cure peanut allergies involves using peanut proteins to build tollerance and reprogram the immune system.
https://www.theguardian.com/au...
Not what I was getting at with my initial comment though. People with healthy immune systems don't tend to develop allergies.
To have a healthy immune system, you need to be exposed to a variety of things, both good and bad. Some things are genetic defects, most things aren't.
If parents sterilise everything their children touch,don't let them play outside, and wash them with antibacterial soap, they get sick more often.
Interesting. My allergic rhinitis is rooted in receptors that, in my case, accept Eastern White Pine and English Plantain pollen, causing a histamine response. There is no resistive or immunotherapy to diminish that. The best solution is to circumvent the response mechanism, using steroids for example to suppress the response. Exposing me to the allergens does not train my immune system to do anything differently. Peanut allergies are a different mechanism, apparently, and combination therapies seem to be effective.
No, you weren't really going there, but free allergies are actually treatable by exposure. That is similar to a technique used in homeopathy, which is fairly well discredited now.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Not checking your signature before saving it isn't lazy, it's stupid. ;)
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Do not worry, you are not alone.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
I don't get it. People have chosen 'take-out' from Chinese and Mexican restaurants (with NO drinks) for decades, and they found out how to make it work. I'm talking about good places with food worth eating, not just 'fast food' either.
So if everyone orders online
But that's not going to happen. People like going out.
The same way the restaurants do, cook it ahead of item and freeze it
UGH. Definitely not a "restaurant" I would consider going to.
The drink is actually a high-priced option, the cup costs them more than the contents you put into it.
When I was in college, the local 7-11 gave us pretty good deals on sodas. If you brought back the cup you bought from them at a previous visit, they'd sell you a 'refill' that was half-price. Half-priced drinks forever, since those cups never went bad.
2 times I have ordered takeout from a 1 star michelin restaurant without any problems. Very few restaurant refuse takeout.
I ordered takeout from The French Laundry once, and they still insisted I wear a dress jacket when I showed up to pick up the order.
(Sadly, the only true part of this story was the dress jacket requirement..)
Most restaurants fails because the people that own them don't have a clue on how to properly run one...
The restaurant business is extremely tough and competitive. Most fail within the first few years.
I would also like to see a takeout discount for not using up valuable dining space.
You already do, if you're using it the way everyone else does and not order drinks.
uh, genius, the tip doesn't go towards the rent and decor of the restaurant.
Yes it does. It absolutely does.
The rent and decor are paid because the restaurant gets free labor from the serving staff. They get free labor from the serving staff because the staff are paid by the 'tip' in restaurant.
You don't build up an immunity to what we call an allergy.
Sure you do. That's why I got allergy shots as a teenager -- I used to be fairly allergic to dust (well, dust mites) and pollen. Aggressive allergy shots trained my system and by my 20s the allergies were completely gone.
Bubbles lead to immune systems that can't handle anything you throw at it.
Jesus, no need to bite his head off.
Everything is a trade off. Maybe some things worked better in his home country, but they're outweighed by the other things that brought him here. Doesn't mean we should be hostile to foreign ideas just because that's not the way we do things. That hostility is weakness.
Not for me baby. Tried and failed. Even the military tried prick tests (damn, they called that a terrible name) and got me hospitalized. Moving to Arizona gave me almost exactly 7 years' respite, but I finally caught on to the new pollens.
Good for you. Which particular pollens were you most affected by?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The worst by far was dust mites (my mattress needed to be sealed in a special plastic). I think ragweed was another, besides that I wasn't told. :-D
One of the more difficult issues with immunotherapy is being able to administer the low doses of allergens in the absence of the environmental exposure to the allergens, which raise the response and fail the therapy. You know that dust mites are nearly impossible to eradicate, and mattress covers are not enough - you need to sterilize the bedding, including pillows, carpeting (which needs to be gone), bedclothes, actually the whole house. This is what causes much therapy to fail.
In Maine you do not eradicate pine pollen in season. It is ubiquitous. Too prevalent. You can reduce the exposure, but therapies are difficult in that environment.
Ragweed is a minor allergen for me, and again, ubiquitous in season, so treatments can only be efficacious out of season. That's limiting. But I did not have access to effective immunotherapy, so as an adult I managed to get through the sedating antihistamine era and on to steroidal treatments.
PS - it's not the mites themselves, mostly, but you should know that...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
PS - it's not the mites themselves, mostly, but you should know that...
Yes indeed, I was told (again, I was 10 years old pre-Internet. Didn't really do a lot of original research myself) that the problem was "dust mite droppings."
Well, it's proteins, whatever the source :/
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.