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Re point 1, there has been a major change in pubs in the U.K.

All are trying to migrate into dining, as the margins on alcohol have fallen. Those that didn’t become restaurants have basically gone bust. There are no longer any normal classic pubs in England!

I know a couple that tried to rejuvenate a failing “free house” in a tourist hotspot and failed. Passing the spot recently I saw it is now a pub restaurant like all the rest.

I also once talked with the owner bartender of a very trendy micro brewery pub. The beer was their hook but the money came from food and the stables converted into b&b.

It doesn’t invalidate your point at all, I’m just adding detail to a very varied landscape.

> There are no longer any normal classic pubs in England!

A slight exaggeration, no? Whilst it's uncommon to find a pub that doesn't do food, I can think of several not far from me. (just outside Brighton).

And "a pub that does food" is still quite far from being a restaurant. Some only do food on Sundays, some have limited menus run by guest kitchens and some get the food cooked by a nearby takeaway with whom they partner.

“Pubs that do food” is the kind of thing I’m talking about! :)

It starts with Sunday lunches, and slips into weeknights.

It starts with order at the bar, and slips into little “reserved for diners” signs on most of the tables.

It starts with the barman working the sandwich toaster and slides into teenagers in white blouses and knee length black skirts with name tags saying “trainee” asking you to wait to be seated as you enter.

Pubs used to be adult domains where people went to drink and chat in the evenings. Now pubs put playgrounds and bouncy castles in the car park to bring in families to dine.

Of course there might be some classic true pubs left? Perhaps someone should make an app ... arrrgh!

When I was very young, in the late 1980s, my parents regularly took me to two different pubs. Both had outdoor equipment (slides, climbing frame, sandpit etc) for children. One served food in the "lounge bar".

When I visit London, it's not difficult to find a pub with no children and no food.

Things have changed, but you are exaggerating it.

Yes let’s get back to the good old days where the men went to the pub and any bloody women could go to the saloon bar .... arrrgh!

My own local pub doesn’t do food, and (was) incredibly popular. CAMRA has a good guide to these places!

I'd think the Rovers Return would count, no? They do the odd hotpot, and they do event catering, but other than that it's pretty much just drinks and darts ;)

> it's pretty much just drinks and darts ;)

   And drama!!

That's fascinating, because I've seen almost the exact opposite where I am (west coast USA). A lot of places where I am have transformed into take-out only or take-out + on-demand booze. Or even just take-out booze, with cocktail kits. The places that were mainly food (my favorite brunch place that I'd take everyone to who visits went belly up in early April) have all either closed down or tried to innovate to sell their food or alcohol as a pick up or delivery service. Semi high-end establishments that sold no food have innovated to sell these elaborate cocktail packages that will probably at least keep the lights on until this is over. At least, that's what I hope.

He meant the trend over the last 5-10 years has been for pubs to become restaurants, not over the last month or two.

I once worked in a central London pub that wasn't doing very well - however they had the lease on all 5 floors, including the landlord's apartment at the top.

They opened one of the staff rooms on the second floor as a hostel dorm with a couple of beds, filled them no problem. By the time I left the entire building, apart from the bar itself on the ground floor, was hostel beds. £20-£30/ppn, 90 beds, nearly always 100% occupancy - a license to print money!

Sadly Covid19 will have crushed them I suspect.

Just to chime in here on point on there being no normal classic pubs. It is the case many pubs have become family friendly, but only where families are going. Places where families dont go, the old man pubs still exist in great numbers. The classic no windows 'bunker' as it where.

Its easy to see the extinction of the classic pub, but in more poverty stricken areas in the UK the bunker is still prevalent.

Yup - plenty of flat-roofed pubs still out there.

My local does not do food. But you can bring it in. So that is simply not true.

However, I do know some pubs that have mainly tried to become restaurants.

We once tried to run a small cafe/restaurant, with only about 8-10 tables. And it ultimately failed. After a few months we ended funneling the business to booze and coffee, with as fast a turnover as possible, which was not what the initial place was about. We were an original organic veggie food outlet. Raw ingredients were expensive.

This shattered previous dreams about running my own. But given a cheap ground rent, I might be tempted to give it a go again, but not really for profit. Totally and utterly fried me, very long days, mostly spent at the sink. Not glamorous at all. The co-owners ultimately had to trade up ethics and risk their homes.

We might have done better if deliveroo had been about then.

A "bro culture" article written by a female entrepreneur who isn't from Silicon Valley… right. I think you need to check your prejudices.

1) plenty of restaurants don't sell alcohol, including it seems this one. she also had a point about how drinks aren't a great revenue generator given the price you can expect to charge in a fast-casual setting vs. the costs (higher than grocery stores)

2) how is the restauranteur's motivation relevant?

3) her restaurant isn't in the USA so I'm not sure how you can call it US-centric.

Ref 3:

1. Prices in USD

2. Quotes Philly Mag. (Philladelphia?)

3. Mentions how generous tipping is required to help servers survive

Yeah, of course one would assume it’s about US. I’m honestly very surprised if it isn’t.

Canada also uses (their own) dollars. (As do Australia and NZ among others.)

Some people use this knowledge to weasel out of bets.

Prices are in Canadian dollars, but I didn't know this until I looked up the restaurant. $11 felt kinda high for a döner, even a really good one. But that works out to ~7€ which is a little high for Germany, but not that much higher.

That definitely explains a lot; I thought $10/lb for the type of meat they were describing was kind of crazy (for someone complaining about margins, anyway). ~$6.30 USD/lb feels far more sane.

Location location location. The restaurant is in the middle of the main shopping street in the middle of the city, on a street called "bank", in the part called center town. We can make an educated guess that the rent is not exactly going to be cheap.

The article reads very different when the location is known. Tourism is significant effected. City shopping is significant effected. People who work in expensive offices is exactly those that often have the option to work at home. All the talk about margins feel like distraction of the fact that restaurants at central shopping streets are going to suffer. It is thus questionable if the article has anything to say about the industry as a whole.

Here in Austria, a Döner is usually 2.50-3.50€. I would be surprised if it were more expensive in Germany (expect for tourist traps)

It is in Ottawa, Ontario. In reality, the things people claim are US only often are true in Canada as well.

how about this?

https://medium.com/@joelleparenteau/wolfing-it-down-f703a3cf...

"We are looking for people who love food and crave the experience of working in a restaurant that operates more like a tech startup — after all, that’s my background and we are backed by the Shopify founders."

who craves the experience of working in a restaurant? wtf is wrong with that woman? it's a job and they enjoy it if the boss treats them fair, they get along with their colleagues and the customers are friendly. "crave", "love", ... that vocabulary is already sickening and pretentious in this context.

I crave the experience of working in a restaurant. I did full-stack back-of-house in busy kitchens and it sure beat sitting around pushing buttons all day. I just haven't been able to afford to do it for the past ten years because building web sites pays so much better.

> I crave the experience of working in a restaurant. I did full-stack back-of-house in busy kitchens and it sure beat sitting around pushing buttons all day. I just haven't been able to afford to do it for the past ten years because building web sites pays so much better.

Same, I'm an ex-founder in Fintech, I've worked for big multi-national corps, and have a background in Health Sciences. And the satisfaction you get the rare times things are 'good' in Kitchens is perhaps the most satisfying things I've even experienced in my entire Life. The comradery amongst your fellow cooks can be petty deep, my old team still keeps in touch with another during Corona and we're trying to help where ever we can. Its a sense of community that extends beyond one's Team, too. I personally have met lots of owners and cooks during these shutdowns and we often have conversations about the business and Life.

By contrast, I don't know my neighbors, and barely talk to my house mates.

The taxing part is the high stress, low pay, long hours, and a very precarious Life over all due to the widespread alcohol/drug abuse.

I've had to save up to come out of retirement from cooking after my time in Europe, too; I took it pretty far this time, I got to interview at SpaceX, did a week a the Mars Desert Research Station and worked at Kimbal Musk's flagship restaurant this last run.

So, while I wish I was at SpaceX right now the realities don't allow it and won't for an undetermined time, so upon reflection I'm pretty satisfied with my culinary career and think that I have done all I could and gone further then I realistically thought I ever could.

@Maxwell: Let me know you want to collaborate, I'd like to be able to work with someone who wants to return to the Kitchen.

> the satisfaction you get the rare times things are 'good' in Kitchens is perhaps the most satisfying things I've even experienced in my entire Life

Feeding people great food, the right food, is an amazing feeling.

For me shipping solid code for multinationals (transportation and insurance) was rewarding as well, but the effect was less visceral, more diffuse.

I'm an ex-founder too, relocation/mobility-tech (video chat moving estimates). I now work on accessible legaltech and access to justice projects.

> By contrast, I don't know my neighbors, and barely talk to my house mates.

I felt this elsewhere in the U.S. (Chicago, Vegas, Bay Area, NYC) but I'm now blessed to have amazing neighbors, tenets, and family myself here in Maine, and am able to direct most of my time into building socially impactful software with continuous technical learning.

> The taxing part is the high stress, low pay, long hours, and a very precarious Life over all due to the widespread alcohol/drug abuse.

My partner and I met at a restaurant that fostered a community, preserved a way of life. It made a million a year and spent a bit more. No longer in business. We've been iterating on a financial model for something similar for one day but aren't there yet.

> I've...

Definitely cool story. Interested in Mars Desert Research Station from the standpoint of increasing Terrestrial habitability, i.e. remote villages.

Feel free to message on AngelList or Twitter.

I worked in restaurants and bakeries for years. Certainly they have their issues, but the environment is a lot more enjoyable than a sitting at a desk in a generic office.

A woman can just as easily write a bro-culture article as a man, and you don't have to have worked in Silicon Valley to pick up on the culture. It's splashed all over the internet.

If the article reads like bro culture, that's a valid observation, irrespective of the gender or background of the author.

I would have replied the same thing. Thanks.

It really depend on definition. Bro-culture when used a pejorative is usually an reference to the supposed male privilege, and then we have to deal with the question of a woman can have that male privilege and what that would then mean.

But why are people bringing in gender into the critique of this article in the first place? The points could just have easily been made without mentioning gender and gender pejoratives. What insight does it contribute that the other points in the comment does not already bring up?

"Bro culture" presumably meant something at one point; now it just means "I don't like something but I'm not thinking clearly enough to articulate why"

US restaurants ask me to pay their tax and their personnel separately, and are still expensive. I get it that cheap fastfoods operate on slim margins but I have a very hard time believing the decent restaurants do. I read the article hoping to find what the hell costs 50-70 USD + tax + waiter wages (aka “20% tip that you’re a monster if you don’t pay”), found no such thing.

Just because things are itemized on a bill doesn't make the total any higher.

In fact, I would argue that I would much prefer an itemized bill to a black box total. It's much easier to sneak in extra charges if everything is rolled into a single total.

Perhaps what you mean is that you don't like having to keep in mind that all your prices don't include tax and tip, which is so common in the US, that everyone just instinctively knows it. To the point that if you try to include everything into the price, people will consider your prices too high.

It's very difficult to shift public habit.

You can say that, but there are enough hints that you'd be wrong:

- Tip habits differ a lot; various online debates and movie references show that there are "assholes" that don't tip (or don't tip well enough?). From this pov serving in a restaurant is more akin to playing music in the subway than working a regular job. This is, IMO, not how things should be.

- "if you try to include everything into the price, people will consider your prices too high": this right here tells you that people are not as rational as you paint them to be. Theoretically, the bill is the same whether you include & itemize all things, or not. In practice though, because the bills do not include everything, they can get higher than they otherwise would. Humans are strange and not always rational beasts - that's why prices like "$1999" exist. Because (false) impressions matter. So no, it's not easier to sneak in extra charges by presenting full price on the menu - it's quite the opposite.

> it reads as the typical piece from the "bro culture" that massively ignores the rest of the world.

Why should articles need to be generalized to the world? It certainly fits the Canadian and US markets. You can't have comprehensive coverage of everything and everyone in an article.

To be honest I thought in many ways it was pretty spot on for the UK as well. The company I work for has a brand tracking product that looks at the casual dining sector[1] from the perspective of consumers: https://savanta.com/product/brandvue-eating-out/.

You can easily find problems around a lot of the points raised in this post in our dataset. If you cut too much around areas like food quality and service your NPS is going to slide, and if not turned around it becomes a leading indicator that the end is looming (e.g., Jamie's Italian).

We obviously don't track independent restaurants - chains only - but you can certainly see the effects of high rent and absolutely swingeing business rates[2] coupled with heavy downward pressure on prices across the whole sector.

[1] This isn't just restaurant chains: it includes pubs, cafes, fast food, etc.

[2] These are nothing short of an outrage in many parts of the UK. Local government will often complain about their moribund high streets, but do little to help their cause. The reality is that with costs as high as they are, and the convenience of online and delivery, it's extremely difficult for any kind of outlet to make money on the British high street.

High Street rents are incredibly high. I'm in one of the poorest UK cities, but even here - with (literally) every other shop empty - rents are phenomenal.

But then property owners are accruing financial value through property price rises, they don't need to have leasees, they're still making money.

I don't understand why the Council isn't super harsh on property maintenance (absent landlords let their properties bring down the appearance of an area); and why the gov. don't levy high taxes for empty commercial properties. IMO high-street properties that are empty should be a heavy loss on landlords.

When their title is "Why Restaurants Are So Fucked" instead of "Why Restaurants In America Are So Fucked" is why.

I think one is expected to understand the context oneself or else the first time one's spouse says "There aren't any eggs" one may receive a terrific fright at the thought of the impending doom of all sexual reproduction on the planet.

the 'context onself' is americans talking about america. got it.

The issue here is that the vast majority of American articles make no effort to convey the fact they are talking about America.

The internet is a _global_ space and there's very little effort required to make the distinction.

I would argue that the writers of these articles are the ones not understanding the "context of oneself" given how they think their readership is entirely American.

So now should every article written in the Atlanta Journal Constitution published on the internet mention that they are talking about Atlanta in the headline?

Perhaps because the author (and restaurant) are Canadian?

Maybe just adjust to title to avoid generalization. "Why Restaurants Are So Fucked in the US". Showing awareness goes a long way.

Neither the author nor the restaurant are American; even the example they use is Doner Kebab, a term that's not widely in use in America. What awareness exactly would the author be showing by adding a random country's name to her article title?

2) is the correct answer. Most restaurateurs in Canada (and probably the US) are simply unsophisticated. Most of the restaurants I've worked for and/or run are basically money printing machines (I've been lucky and feel I'm pretty good now) while a few crashed and burned hard (and it was always pretty obvious they would).

The example in the article has many, many things wrong with it.

The general rule that I've seen in the handful of UK establishments in which I've chef'd, is that food should be priced by ~tripling the cost of the raw ingredients. It's a pretty inexact science for anywhere small ish with a frequently changing menu - but it doesn't matter.

Alcohol also has a big markup, don't get me wrong, but it's not alone. And if you want to know the biggest "free profit" in a restaraunt - it's postmix soft drinks and tea/coffee.

Simply 3x-ing COGS might 'work', but you're leaving a lot of money on the table.

> And if you want to know the biggest "free profit" in a restaraunt - it's postmix soft drinks and tea/coffee.

No, soft drinks lose you money because it's often a replacement for more expensive alcoholic drinks. The typical soft drink here is $3, even a $6 beer will net me more gross profit than the total price of the soft drink. That's why craft sodas, kombuchas, home-made mocktails and the like are de rigueur nowadays...

Tea/coffee is 'free profit' in the sense it's usually an addition at the end of the meal and not everyone will order a digestif.

> The example in the article has many, many things wrong with it.

Agreed. The author of the article seems to lack some basic business skills. I realize that if you're making an artisan sandwich at home you might want to use the best possible ingredients (the artisan sourdough she talks about, etc), but you can't expect to build a viable restaurant business where you are spending so much on raw materials.

If I was making myself the ultimate burger I might use wagyu beef that cost over $10 a pound and some artisan cheese, pasture-raised bacon, etc, but I wouldn't try to create a fast casual restaurant and expect to make a profit using those ingredients.

Yup, her food cost is out of control and her fixed costs are way too high meaning her sales are low. That's just a a failure of her concept...

0) I kind of wonder how anything that reads as a typical piece from a certain culture could not be criticized for massively ignoring the rest of the world.

1) In France most restaurants sell the same desserts that they buy from the same wholesale Metro that's open only to food professionals. They buy it less than a euro and sell it more than five, with a bit of an english cream they buy by liters.

2) Not sure what's your source, but I suppose running a tobacco shop would be far easier. I have yet to know one restaurant owner who has 0 experience as either a waiter or a cook.

3) Basically you're saying that doing 0 business activity is "not too bad", when you still have to pay the rent. Just because you've spoke with a couple of owners in Italy and Japan.

4) You can be good, but paying for a 10k/month rent + furlough and making absolutely 0 business activity after throwing away your stocks can kill your business even if you're a "good restaurateur".

But maybe Simone is right: if COVID killed your business then it's because you're not "good enough".

I've yet to read such a both senseless and self sufficient comment on hn.

Nice culture, nice inclusiveness, maybe one day you grow a heart.

Somebody had to say this.

> But maybe Simone is right: if COVID killed your business then it's because you're not "good enough".

Individuals are supposed to save at least 6 months expenses in case they lose their job or there's an unexpected large expense.

But for restaurants it's fine to have so little money that you go bankrupt with a month or two of no business? We're not talking about multinationals, there are lots of reasons why you might need to close a restaurant for a significant period of time or pay for expenses.

Is everyone who writes an article about anything suppose to be an expert from a worldwide perspective?

I believe the article is talking about a Canadian restaurant though much of it would apply to the US.

Good restaurateurs will manage to find a way, IMHO.

That’s literally what the article is about. More importantly many restaurants cant sell alcohol. Sounds like you and the article are talking about two very different things.

Having a restaurant is like owning your production tool. The invested capital allows you to make a revenue. High margin is not required since there is little investment to do, except refreshing the furniture every 2 years.

They do, however, have a serious problem with the pandemic, unless they turn to pick up meals or delivery.

Delivery market is already spoiled by Uber eats etc. which act like gatekeepers and take a huge margin.