That is so true. NYC too.
I gotta start doing this more consistentlyā¦
I think the lower cost of living in LA is also good for restaurants. Servers and line cooks can live decently on their incomes. Thatās only possible in SF for people whoāve been there long enough to have well below-market controlled rents. The result is high turnover and constant attempts to figure out how to get by with less service staff.
Iām positive the line cooks would disagree with you
I sadly agree. I think maybe it is not as hard for line cooks around here v. San Francisco, but still very difficult based on their relatively meager salaries r.e. cost of living here.
I was talking with a line cook just the other night and the lower cost of living in LA was one of the reasons she and her boyfriend, both fresh out of culinary school, decided to move there instead of to NY or SF. The main reason was that they thought it was a more exciting food town, but thatās due in large part to the lower cost of starting and running restaurants. Baroo, Guerrilla Tacos, Papilles: not gonna happen in SF.
Industry people who lose their apartments in SF often have to move. From talking to industry people in LA, many of them end up there.
That sounds insane, but if you serve 200 people a night, and each pay $100, thatās $600,000 a month, so seems affordable if you are a place like Republique right?
Isnāt Trestle literally the same format as Papilles for $2 less (3 courses for $35 versus Papilles $37)?
re: Winsome: ā¦but the owner spent three months getting the rights to reproduce the painting which is the pattern for the wallpaper!
My partner is a line cook and the living aināt easy. As for the main topic, I donāt know if Iāve noticed a marked increase in dining out costs, at least compared with all the other factors that are involved (rents, wages, food prices, etc.). Then again, I donāt dine out too often, and especially not at high-end places. Iām thankful L.A. has a wide variety of delicious dining options and cuisines across price ranges.
Huh, Trestle is similar to Papilles. I wonder if itās as good? Too bad thereās no board in SF like this one.
I only use that double space as a point of reference. Vince is a clothing store. I also heard the old Halās space is going for over $200G - itās a huge space for this neighborhood. Abbot Kinney is past insane right now but an example of what so many businesses - eateries or otherwise - are up against.
Not really, when you consider wages for the 30+ employees they seem to have at any one given time, utilities (how much do they pay in credit-card processing fees alone?), insurance, etcā¦ And, of course, there are taxes to be paidā¦
Obviously, youāve never owned or operated a restaurant. Or even any kind of real business for that matter.
lol
Cool, believe whatever you want, Iāll keep using the money I make from my business to buy all the meals you see constant pictures of.
The reality is, of course, that restaurants are vanity projects of wealthy patrons, and their conglomerates (i.e. restaurant groups).
$100,000/rent doesnāt matter to a group of people with hundreds of millions in the bank that each put a few mill into a general fund just to start hip restaurants. These places donāt make money anyway, they arenāt designed to, other than maybe for the staff, the chef, or whatever. The actual business losses as eaten by the wealthy patrons, so these cutesy jocular discussions about insane rent prices in Venice are nothing more than pointless amusement.
I assume everyone knows thatā¦ but for those readers that didnāt, there you go.
additionally, many restaurant leases are ten year, triple net leases, with a PERSONAL guarantee.
not every landlord will accept less than that.
Way cheaper than Seattle! From low-end to high-end.
Man, life is sweet as a landlord.
Yeah, that does suck. Wonder why the SF people didnāt come over from CH?