

Save Bistro Elan - revorad
http://paulgraham.com/saveelan.html

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thaumaturgy
...wait, you mean cool startups that are getting lots of help & attention &
funding actually need a place to eat? Gee, it's a shame nobody's as interested
in providing support to _those_ businesses
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2609076>).

It's unlikely that this business can be saved; if they're anything like most
such small shops, they've been struggling for a long time without any of the
kind of support that sexy YC startups receive. They likely have razor-thin
margins and not a lot of money in the bank; getting their rent raised on them
is just the straw breaking their back. They'll "pivot", but only as much as
their meager resources will allow.

I've seen way too many good small businesses just completely fall over lately,
but since they don't offer the kind of investment opportunity that the next
Google does, nobody cares.

...unless it happens to be _their_ favorite little sandwich shop.

~~~
dstein
How long until pg starts up FoodCombinator to help restaurant entrepreneurs
disrupt the food industry?

~~~
tzs
I once spent some time thinking about a way to help restaurant entrepreneurs
(and make some money off of them). I didn't think of the analogy to
YCombinator, but it is kind of the same idea. Here's my idea.

You build a restaurant, with a special kitchen. The kitchen is split into 4 or
so separate work area, each fully equipped and with room for a chef and his
assistants to work. There is one shared pantry and shared big walk in
refrigerator. Each of the separate work areas has its own smaller pantry and
fridge.

Each of the separate work areas is run by a separate chef, who leases the spot
from you. There is a single menu, with a section for each chef's dishes, and
the menu makes sure to prominently name the chefs.

You handle front of house. You also handle the wine, and maybe you also run a
bar. You also keep the shared pantry and fridge stocked with all the
ingredients that should be found in any fine restaurant's kitchen. (The
individual chefs deal with stocking any speciality ingredients they need).
Decor, advertising, and basically everything else other than composing the
menu and cooking the food is handled by you.

The chefs set the prices in their section of the menu. You handle all the
money, calculating each chef's share and paying them. You deal with the
accounting, taxes, and all that.

The idea here is that a young, talented chef who doesn't yet have the
resources to go out and open a restaurant can lease a spot in your food
incubator, where all he has to worry about is covering 1/4th of a menu with
fine food and building up a following. When he's well known and people are
coming in just to eat his food, he can go off and start his own restaurant
(perhaps with an investment from you--you've had a chance to see how he is as
a chef, and to see at least some of his management skills by watching him
manage his assistants).

Note also that this is a good place for the diners. When you are going out
with someone, and you want Italian and they want Mexican, why argue about it?
Go to the food incubator and one of you can order from the Italian chef's part
of the menu and one from the Mexican chef's part of the menu. Think of it as
essentially the fine dining or gourmet equivalent of the food court.

The beauty of this is that there are ALWAYS going to be young chefs who want
to get out from being an anonymous sous chef at someone else's restaurant and
move up to their own place, and so there should always be chefs eager to lease
a spot at your food incubator to get that started. If they succeed, great! If
they fail, there's someone else to take their place--and since you are making
your money out of leasing space to them, you make money in either case. (On
top of what you are getting for the wine and bar).

~~~
bartonfink
Sounds like a really intriguing idea. I thought of one hurdle you didn't
address, though. It's not a showstopper, but since this is your idea, I'm
curious whether you think it needs to be addressed and, if so, how you'd go
about it. Isn't part of the experience at a nice restaurant that you have a
wait staff that knows the menu inside and out and can make recommendations? If
you effectively have 4 menus that are all changing relatively frequently, it
seems like you're asking a tremendous amount of the wait staff, which is
either going to drive up your labor cost or make it nearly impossible to find
waiters? After all, if you're able to familiarize yourself with 16 new menus a
year to the point that you know how every dish is prepared and what
compliments what, you can probably do something with more social standing. Do
you see this as a problem?

~~~
tzs
Good question. I think the menus from each chef would be relatively small,
showcasing their top 2 or 3 dishes, so it would not be like the waiters need
to learn 4 restaurant's worth of menus.

Also, since the purpose of the restaurant is to showcase the chefs, and the
clientele is going to largely be foodies, perhaps information on preparation
and such would be included on the menu.

It might be good to have the chefs come out during service and meet the
customers. After all, as I said, the chefs are there to build their
reputations, and the customers are likely to be foodies. If the chefs can
build up good will with them, they are likely to get more buzz and more good
blog write ups when they eventually go off and open their own place.

------
djm
_There are probably quite a few regulars at Bistro Elan who could buy the
building and become their new landlord_

PG: Have you considered buying it yourself? I'm assuming that you are one of
those regulars and can probably afford it. You said the business was doing
well in another comment so I assume they could continue paying you rent at
their current rate.

------
dagw
On the one hand I get that losing your favorite restaurant kind of sucks, but
on the other hand is it really worthwhile to artificially keep alive a company
that cannot survive on its own. Also if the place is as good as pg seems to
indicate then the people involved will no doubt find a new kitchen to call
home and will be serving the food you love in short order. I mean my favorite
Japanese place has closed down twice in recent times, but the head chef, and
the reason the places where awesome, is still cooking.

~~~
pg
It's doing fine as a business. The landlord is trying to take advantage of
them by raising the rent dramatically. Restaurants aren't very mobile.

~~~
dagw
_Restaurants aren't very mobile._

Depends on what defines a restaurant, is it the building or the people. While
the building itself isn't mobile, the people who run the restaurant certainly
are. If the manager, head chef, sous chef, maitre d', and a few other key
people where to close up shop at their current location and set up a new place
serving the same food a couple of blocks down the road, wouldn't that count as
mobile. Sure it will cost a bit of cash upfront, but if they can negotiate a
better deal on the rent, they'll quickly make that back.

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rbanffy
I am not familiar with restaurant prices in California, but theirs seem low.
Can't a raise in prices compensate for the rent? Would that make them less
competitive compared to surrounding places? For how long until those places
have to raise prices too?

<http://www.bistroelan.com/Bistro_Elan/Dinner_menu.html>

Also, can they expand and start serving dinner at the Birch St location,
partly subsidizing the operation at the California Avenue place?

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rbanffy
Would there be a way for those regulars to pool their resources into a non-
profit that would keep the place alive?

~~~
ltamake
Was thinking about this. Sort of a "donation fund" to save the restaurant.

~~~
rbanffy
Maybe there is already a non-profit willing to preserve such things. I don't
live nearby (in fact, I live in another country) so I can't really say how
meaningful the restaurant is to the history of Palo Alto (I'll take pg's word)
and its preservation may really interest some already existing entity.

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aaronblohowiak
For a tastier and more intimate (literally mom and pop) experience, I prefer
le petit bistro on el camino.

------
staunch
Maybe some of the PayPal Mafia could "take care" of the problem. I mean, ya
know, buy the building or something.

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aarghh
This is Kepler's all over again.

~~~
rbanffy
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%27s_Books>

------
thisuser
The logical conclusion of the intuition to save this restaurant from rentiers
is that all of the FIRE industries should be owned by the community that
enables them, not private hands of a few psychopaths.

~~~
shii
Psychopaths?

