Most do not. Part three (Part One, Part Two) of Kevin Alexander's excellent series at Thrillist:
THERE'S A MASSIVE RESTAURANT INDUSTRY BUBBLE, AND IT'S ABOUT TO BURST
AS SOON AS HE WALKED THROUGH THE DOOR, Matt Semmelhack knew it was over. He'd been away from his San Francisco restaurant AQ for less than a week, but when he got back, it just felt different. It went beyond the usual concerns of the modern restaurateur. "I wasn't worried the lights were properly dim, or the regulars were in the right booths," he says. Instead, Semmelhack was just looking at his staff -- people he hangs out with on weekends, people whose livelihoods he supplies, some of his closest friends -- and all he could see was the money each one of them was costing him, flashing in front of him like a video-game score. "I knew right then," he says, "we had to shut it all down."
Semmelhack is not the only restaurateur looking to duck and cover. The American restaurant business is a bubble, and that bubble is bursting. I've arrived at this conclusion after spending a year traveling around the country and talking to chefs, restaurant owners, and other industry folk for this series. In part one, I talked about how the Good Food Revival Movement™ created colonies of similar, hip restaurants in cities all over the country. In the series' second story, I discussed how a shortage of cooks -- driven by a combination of the restaurant bubble, shifts in immigration, and a surge of millennials -- is permanently altering the way a restaurant's back of the house has to operate in order to survive.
This, the final story, is simple: I want you to understand why America's Golden Age of Restaurants is coming to an end.
So true - Bellingham has a high churn rate when it comes to dining. Lots of franchises and most of these have decent track record but the cool little hole-in-the-wall places are opening and closing all the time. Reading our local business journal is pretty depressing.
How do you make a million dollars in food service? Start with ten million and open a restaurant.
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