Why all my restaurants would fail

Years ago, I used to travel up and down the west coast for business. My expense account led me to some of the best restaurants in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and, of course, Seattle. Restaurant Speedo, Le Dome, Canlis – I devoured them all. The more I dined, the more I fell in love with good food.

In 1998, when I created my business plan to launch several online magazines, Seattle DINING! being one of them, I was determined to live my passions. And with Seattle DINING! I met multiple chefs along the way, each with some great tips for cooking, which I would take home and apply in the kitchen. Eventually my cooking skills rose above Martha Stewart's (this is not hard to do) and I was making meals at home that were often better than I could find at many local restaurants. And my mind wandered… Maybe I should just cash everything in and open my own restaurant… My dreams of opening a restaurant went something like this…

Broadview Breakfast House

I’ve always believed more people would eat breakfast out if they had better choices. I’ve had some terrible breakfasts in Seattle, to the point that I make breakfast at home five days a week now. The other two I’m fasting. But my breakfast house would solve all that. I am aware of a breakfast chain in Seattle that touts ‘fresh organic’ ingredients. When I ask, I am bewildered to find one, possibly two of all the ingredients being used on any given day to actually be organic.

But not at my place. We’d have at least 90% of the menu organic and instead of running a board of what was organic that day, we’d run a shorter board of what was not organic.

Only problem is, it’s a breakfast house. Kitchen staff needs to be in place about 4 a.m. for the morning prep. There’d be real trouble trying to locate dependable staff since 4 a.m. is when many food service workers are just getting home from a night on the town.

Fail.

Pig Stye-el: A Place for Ribs

Rib joints in the Seattle area come and go. I’m sure you’ve had your favorites over the years. Caveman, Betty Sue’s Urban BBQ, Porters… The list goes on and on. For the most part, pork is cheap if you go for the cheap stuff. No one I know of ever touts Heritage pork. Heritage breeds include Duroc, Berkshire, and Red Wattle - names you just never see come up on a menu unless you’re in a five-star restaurant. But five-star restaurants don’t typically offer fall off the bone ribs.

But we would. Heritage, fall-off-the-bone goodness. The lines would be long to get in. Not just out the door, but around the block.

Now, of course this quality comes at a cost. I’d be paying about $20 for a rack of 14 ribs. If I 4x the cost of my food to run the show and pay the staff, you’ll be paying about $32 per person to eat at my joint. But you will because I’ve got a way of cooking them like no one else does and because of that you will return again and again.

Instead of smoking or baking my ribs, I brine them in apple juice, salt, and a secret ingredient in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Then I rub them, vacuum pack them, and let them marinate in yet another refrigerator for 12 hours. Following that, I place 4 vacuum packs (4 ribs per package) into 8-quart containers each and sous vide them for 12 hours.

I don’t have to have a smoker going, annoying my neighbors, and the succulent ribs simply rock after their 48-hour process. You will NOT need extra sauce!

During the planning stage, our brain trust determined how much refrigeration would be needed to satiate that line of customers around the block – day after day. And then we determined how much counter space we needed to hold all those 8-quart containers. Then we budgeted for all those sous vide devices.

All in, with replacement costs, this idea went right up in flames.

Grass-Fed: A Steak House

Sure, downtown has its Metropolitan Grill, there’s John Howie Steak over in Bellevue and up in Greenwood we’ve got the Flint Creek Cattle Company. But none of these outlets offer 100% grass-fed beef across the entire menu.

But we will.

I won’t put anything into my body at home that was corn fed, so why would I serve you a lesser option? As you might imagine, it comes at a cost.

During the planning sessions we decided the only place to have this location was downtown because only well-financed business people with fat expense accounts could afford to eat with us. Have you checked out the rent prices downtown lately?

We’d have to hire the best servers, kitchen staff, and admin people in the city to make this fly. And to find them we’d have to use a headhunter or two to woo some of these folks away from where they already work. And because of the high rate of turnover in the industry we’d have to go back to the well again and again and pay each time.

And our staff would enjoy benefits like a paid parking spots, or at least a monthly bus pass. Whatever it takes to get them into the city to work on time every day.

Have you checked out the price of grass-fed beef? It’s currently running at $25 a pound for rib eye, and higher for cuts like tenderloin. And because of the exorbitant expenses, we’ll have to 8x the cost of the food to turn a profit, so a rib eye steak is going to run about $200 before your starch and veggie side dishes. As is standard, the latter two will be upcharged.

We think the idea of a 48 oz Porter House steak is ridiculous. No one should eat all that meat in one sitting. But some folks just gotta have it. And at $725 they will get it. We’d encourage all families of four or more to order one and get plates for sharing.

Fail #3.

Tom Mehren/April 2020