Restaurant

“Because there were a bunch of providers that were building something more horizontal, where you could be a restaurant, or a coffee shop, or a flower shop, or a picture of a small retail business, and we felt like our unique edge, because we had gotten a sense …”

“The truth is that restaurants can't be successful serving lunch.”

“The restaurant has to tell a complete story, and if it doesn't tell a complete story, then it doesn't work. And right behind that is that it's got to be fun.”

“Restaurants became another form of cultural currency. It was something that if you were a cultured, sophisticated person, you need to know about restaurants. You need to talk about it.”

“I used to have the same theory about restaurants. If it wasn't packed from the day I opened the door, we're gonna fail.”

“Restaurants are a very hot, very, very hot niche right now because they are especially fragmented And can really use this. Now, you can't go too small, they won't have the budget, but as you go up,”

“We then, on top of that, spent, you know, millions of dollars buying national TV campaigns to tell people to order, whether it's on us or our competitors because restaurants have on average, 17 days of cash on hand.”

“China has a lot of restaurants, you know, six, over seven million restaurants, you know, versus what we have here in the U.S. At about a million restaurants in, in comparison, for example.”

“If you looked in, in, in America, in the last 60 years, I think there's only a couple years where the number of restaurants in the current year Didn't exceed that in the previous year.”

“It used to be that in the, you know, these are rough numbers, but in the 19 fifties when the government was measuring this, we would spend in this country, in America, maybe 75 to 80 cents on the dollar on groceries versus restaurants. In present day, you know…”

“Rough math, you know, for every dollar of food that if you and I bought inside of a restaurant, you know, from the cost structure, you're gonna have 30% of that in the food and the packaging. You're gonna have 30% of it in the rent. You're gonna have 30% of it…”

“I think it makes a ton of sense. The implementation of the idea is what, is what's difficult, right? And you know, restaurants that have very limited seating and very long seatings, you know, the opportunity cost for a cancellation is very high, you know, vers…”

“And ultimately we decided to not take any revenue share from these restaurants for a month.”

“I bifurcate them only because I believe hospitality is more than restaurants. Restaurants is simply the medium through which I fell in love with hospitality.”

“You go to a restaurant, it might be packed, but the margins are thin, and you go to a yoga studio, and it might be packed, but it's just, the capacity is limited. You can only fit a certain number of people in, and they're really hard businesses, unless it's a…”

“Restaurants suck as a business. You know, 10% operating margins. You're working morning, afternoon, and night. You're open on weekends. There's no let up.”

“You know, in 2013, only about 10 to 15% of restaurants offered their own delivery.”

“I don't think you can succeed financially unless you are willing to be as creative in pursuit of making money as you are in pursuit of the experience you're building for people.”

“It doesn't take that much more work to run a fifteen million dollar a year restaurant than it does a five million dollar a year restaurant.”

“The fashion of restaurants is not dissimilar to the fashion of jeans, right? Like, we want skinny jeans, then fat jeans, then skinny jeans, then fat jeans, and it kind of the pendulum shifts back and forth. I think for a little while there, restaurants started…”

“I don't believe there should be a dress code in a restaurant. I think that you're there to invite people as they are”

“So for selling to restaurants really, it's all about Walking in. So, like, you can call, you can email all you want, and people say cold calling is hard. People say emailing people is hard. Try walking into a restaurant, pretending like, you know, the chef, an…”

“Restaurants and sports agencies, bad businesses.”

“Today a friend just sent me a chart showing the recovery of restaurants post-COVID, and LA is 50% behind on the recovery per store location versus the national average.”

“The average restaurant is operating at like one 30% staff turnover. By the end of 10 months, you're like practically your entire staff is new.”

“Because some businesses are deadly to your money, restaurants being one of them, and you should avoid them at all costs.”

“The reason the numbers don't lie is that the average small business in the US sells for around 800,000 dollars. The average restaurant That goes for about a 198,000.”

“60% fail in the first year, and 80% fail after four years.”

“So anyone who's sold into a restaurant knows going door to door does not work.”

“The big mistake that restaurants even still before owner make is nobody tells the guest why they should order directly from the restaurant in their own interests. They all say it's better for the restaurant order directly. And while that resonates with 10% of …”

“When you look at the economics of a restaurant, when you look at the fixed costs, the variable costs, The margin on getting incremental business is very, very high because you're already paying the staff and their overhead.”

“So first, I think there's going to be a trend where people are going to continue to be afraid to go into restaurants for some time, and I think small restaurants are going to have a really tough time making it.”

“Yeah, once they reopen, Then your capacity of 24 may go down to 12, and it's tough to get by when you only have seating of 12, but more so, I think there's going to be a trend where people are going to continue to be afraid to go into restaurants for some time…”

“We found that when you have those layers, you insulate yourself from turnover, because managers are lasting five months. So if I sold you as a restaurant today, odds are you're not going to be there. Our champion's gone, and I have to sell you again in three t…”

“Prices are going to be changing at restaurants. I'm like, I'm convinced, and I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of smart people, and everyone is also with me that the way that the pricing is working right now, it just doesn't make sense.”

“So with margins becoming thinner and thinner in the restaurant industry, we find our original strategy of delivery becoming highly unsustainable with delivery apps like Uber and DoorDash taking margins specifically in the city up to 50%.”

“He knew that restaurants wouldn't survive. They had less than 30 days of cash. And, you know, that's less than 30 days of cash when they actually are running at full speed.”

“There's something about hospitality that forces consumers into a different mental model than they are using for other Entertainment categories. And I think it's the intimacy of it. I think it's the legacy and the history of hospitality. Restaurants in people's…”

“It's just when we've done a lot with Kyle from owner that, and they've got thousands of small restaurants, phone is zero there. The owner will never, the owner is working. You can text, like they do a lot. They do in person and text, but phones is zero, right?…”

“If you go into the average restaurant, you'll be shocked how many individual products run that restaurant. It's upwards of 20, 30, 40 sometimes.”

“I don't think restaurants typically should have a website. Not only should they not do SEO, but I don't know that they should have a website because if you think about the buyer journey for a person looking for food, They don't typically go to a website.”

“I've got point of sale, I've got payments, I've got a loan, I've got online ordering, I've got scheduling, I've got inventory, I've got gift cards, loyalty, a website, and all this stuff has to integrate in some way to the point of sale, because that's the cen…”

“Most restaurants don't optimize yield. They don't know, like, how do you maximize the right guests in the tables? Like, you know, you think an airline or you think a hotel, they're optimizing yield all the time. Restaurants don't have no ability to do that.”

“We went and studied some previous recessions and what you see is restaurants are largely very resilient because people love to go out to eat.”

“It is quite literally partially the nature of how a restaurant must operate to serve you great food.”

“Anyone who's worked in restaurants for long enough, for sure, you have to learn how to take an aggressive beatdown as what can I learn from this? And it's not personal.”

“The average small business in the U.S. Sells for around 800,000 dollars. The average restaurant goes for a 198,000 dollars.”

“60% fail in the first year, and 80% fail after four.”

“On average, restaurants can expect net margins of three to five percent.”

“I feel like it's tough to compete with businesses where people are doing it for passion. I believe the same in restaurants. Very hard to make money.”

“I think there are going to be a bunch of interesting voice services for everything from restaurants to HVAC companies to dental reception that are just like answer the phone.”

“Restaurants are no longer growing in the United States, right? It's like we're over retail, we're over restaurant. And so the growth of the units of restaurants is now in stadiums. It's in convenience stores. EV charging stations. It's not going to be the net …”

“I work with a lot of restaurants, and those that are loaded up with debt can't focus on operations, and those loaded up with equity investors also are distracted from finding opportunities with their operations.”

“There was a restaurant that I think ended up losing seven million dollars because the chef got into arguments with people.”

“That means that the next 10 years, you know, very easily, you know, hopefully in our lifetime, Restaurants are just going to go for, you know, a lot of restaurants are going to go from you walk in and there's just like a bunch of people who are sort of disgrun…”

“One of the first buckets where people start saving is they're going less to restaurants. That's definitely what you have seen in previous recessions is That the share of out of home food has actually declined, whereas the share of food that you consume inside …”

“I've attempted it and failed a bunch of times.”

“We're still grappling with 36. I think after many years of struggle, I think we've been able to get it from 36 to 32.”

“90% around that of restaurants failed within the first year and around 96% within 18 months. And the biggest reason you won't believe is not necessarily lack of passion or getting into it for glamorous reasons. It's undercapitalization.”

“In general, I think people go to restaurants for the overall experience. Celebrity can probably pull you in for the launch, can probably pull you in for hosting the right tables, getting initially the buzz going. That buzz will last as much as the first or sec…”