June 29, 2018 Restaurant/Bar News
If you’ve ever thought it was overambitious of Pret a Manger to open three locations in such close proximity—Broadway/Thomas, Church/Park Place, and W. Broadway/Chambers—well, the company apparently reached a similar conclusion. When Milo emailed to ask why the one on Chambers was closed yesterday, I reached out to the media reps. The answer: “After opening a record number of shops in the U.S. last year, we’ve had a good look at the estate and felt it necessary to close three New York locations whose rents made them unlikely to be profitable. I’d like to thank our amazing teams in these shops for their hard work, and of course our lovely customers for their support too. I’m pleased to say we have found roles for teams in nearby shops. We look forward to opening our next NYC location in the fall, taking our total shop count in the US to 92.”
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For better or worse, the trend for restaurants to offer food prepared in central commissaries will continue. This is an unintended side effect of the recent wage mandates by NYC.
Not to mention that the wage mandates will also lead to more self-service restaurants, at a wide variety of price points.
http://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/dining/san-francisco-restaurants-service.html
“Restaurateurs who say they can no longer find or afford servers are figuring out how to do without them. And so in this city of staggering wealth, you can eat like a gourmand [sic], with real stemware and ceramic plates. But first you’ll have to go get your own silverware.
“’Souvla was the beginning of this whole new onslaught of things that in every single way look like a full-service restaurant — nice décor; good wine list; tasty, healthy foods. It’s much more chef- and ingredient-driven,’ said Gwyneth Borden, the executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association. ‘But it’s ‘take a number and go to a table.’ ‘
“She regularly hears from restaurateurs considering the model, who want to create the Souvla of Mexican, the Souvla of Italian. (Souvla is apparently to Bay Area restaurants what Uber is to gig-economy start-ups.)”
See also table.skift.com/2018/01/22/restaurant-megatrends-2018-fine-casual-is-the-new-fast-casual
I guess that’s the problem with interfering with market pricing.
It all seems honorable and fair at first but in the end more people suffer.
In this case all the servers who would be employed but no longer are
Von Mises: “Economics does not say that isolated government interference with the prices of only one commodity or a few commodities is unfair, bad, or unfeasible. It says that such interference produces results contrary to its purpose, that it makes conditions worse, not better, from the point of view of the government and those backing its interference.”
So disappointed, one of my favorites. The food is fresh and delicious.
Please. Don’t tell me paying servers $10 to $15 an hour is the reason
restaurants are closing in Tribeca. I’ve lived here since 1972.
The shelf life of restaurants in this neighborhood runs about two years, and that’s long before people were being paid a living wage.
It is often not the owners that drive change, but consumers. As an owner of a company that sells American produced products and not cheaper imports, I always chuckle when people lecture me about the need to pay workers living wages and then allow their own buying choices be governed solely by price, blissfully ignoring their own hypocrisy.