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How do you guys plan to strategically and operationally adjust as you expand in to markets that far removed from economics and social drivers of SF?

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We can't wait to be in markets removed from the economics of SF! San Francisco has the highest costs of running a restaurant (labor, rent, food) and consequently, hurts our margins.

In other areas removed from social drivers, we'll spend less time on our viral social media presence and more on grassroots marketing and community engagement.

It's our thought that if we can make it (twice) in SF, we can make it in other areas where the unit economics are so much better.

In these other areas, will you pay your employees a living wage?

Absolutely - we've always paid a premium for our employees, even in SF, and we will continue to do so!

The tradeoff is that many folks in SF who would eat at places like this are fairly inelastic (if not completely ignorant) to pricing of meals. So while your costs are high here, you have a population that can order an $X dollar bowl of mac and cheese without thinking twice. Places like that are few and far between in the US.

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