Hacker News Reader

Comment by gilrain | Hacker News Reader

They live in a community. If they raise prices such that their friends and neighbors can not afford to eat there, they will become social pariahs. It would be very difficult to do, and it would alienate the very people they probably wanted to be serving.

If you’re a restaurateur, you probably don’t even live near that restaurant. But this advice is tantamount to: tell your friends and everyone who helped you get where you are that they’re too poor for you, now.

View on HN

It’s called supply and demand. If there is a 5 hour wait, there’s a problem: no local will wait 5 hours for a burger so you exclude them anyway. Price is the best mechanism to address supply and demand.

Thats not a solution for the problem though, if your goal is to keep your old customer base. It is only a solution if you view your restaurant as an investment instead of a passion. The counter example from the article is Paiche.

edit: To give another example, I have a kebab shop in my neighborhood who will not take any orders by phone let alone online. They dont have flyers or a web presence. Its a small street faced window run by an immigrant family who keeps the booth open throughout the day, from 11 to 11 longer or shorter depending on when they are out for the day. Most of the time the place is empty but during mealtimes there is regularly a line for half an hour. For the area, this is extremely well. And they sit right next to two other kebab shops, a pizza place and two asian places with mostly no line, literally the street down in 3 minute walking distance.

The reasonable thing would be to close the shop in the afternoon and take orders in advance, but thats not what they want for their shop. They want to talk and be a place where people meet, despite them not having any tables and not serving any drinks except a tea on the house from time to time.

And their food is absolutely amazing. Home made sauce and bread, it is worth the wait or to eat at 4pm in the afternoon. They dont let them self get rushed and it is always an amazing meal.

All the successful restaurants I've experienced chose to give preferential treatment to locals and regulars. That's because they often give the place the charme that makes it special in the first place. And that the business is rather cyclical, and you don't want to end up without tourists AND local all hating you.

At the point where you're running 20 tables or more for three rounds every night (plus mabybe 2x lunch) you stop caring about making more money. Because if money were that important, you would have gone into investment banker, not chef.

Plus restaurants tend to get into and out of favour. IT'

And everyone hates tourist. Seriously: if you work anywhere close to tourists, you will hate work because it's full of tourists. Then you take a vacation and start hating yourself.

Provide a locals only card that gives reduced pricing, could even have a locals only day once a week.

Ten minutes later a "locals only" card goes on eBay.

To what end?

The whole idea is that non-locals are probably going to buy 1 burger per year or perhaps lifetime.

These kind of people don't fiddle with ebay and paying a random guy just to get 25% off of a burger that they will use once.

Doesn’t matter. It’s still rate limited.

To who?

Someone that is only going to go there once or twice? Then it won't cause a problem.

Someone that isn't a local, but goes to the place over and over anyway? Consider them an honorary local.

Check ID address, ban people caught reselling, etc.

Get creative you're now a destination restaurant and can charge $50+ a burger. Or go out of business I guess.

I wonder if you could switch the 'locals only' card for just requiring proof of address on a driving license or utility bill. Might still be a problem with locals offering 'burger tours' - you pay me $10, I buy the burgers for $5 because they'd charge you $20, everyone is happy (except the restaurant).

There's no need to go that deep.

Imagine you were taking a trip to Dallas. You're taking PTO, paying for flight/hotel, and so on.

Are you really going to waste time buying a local's 30% off card on ebay that you will use once a year? Maybe once in your life? No way.

Even if you did, what is the result? A handful of people hustled you for a few bucks, but still generated profit for your restaurant.

But then the local doesn't get the discount burger, and the out of towner gets to use it once.

Presumably it would also expire, so it would be that locals loss rather than the restaurants.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com