

Don't start a restaurant - lots of startup parallels - petewarden
http://www.rimag.com/article/CA6699502.html?rssid=272

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inglorian
The article describes the new fast-casual restaurant style, which sounds a lot
like a modern startup in its ethos:

>>Bill Kim’s [fast-casual] restaurant...“We’re going to serve really good,
vibrant flavors. It’s going to be $15. [Customers are] going to be in and out.
I’m not going to serve dessert or drinks..."

In other words, make what people want, make it really damn good, and strip
away everything else. We know this works for startups, but I wonder if it will
work as well for (higher-end) restaurants, which generally try to sell an
atmosphere and experience.

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cschneid
If you think about it, there's a class of restaurants that does something like
this. What I'm thinking of is a local burrito place that is a little grungy,
the employees quick and efficient (but not very polite), and with damn good
food.

They've stripped everything that wasn't the core product, and they have a line
out the door every day, all day. Even their branding has been word of mouth, I
don't know if I've ever seen a real advertisement for them.

I'm sure this kind of restaurant exists in practically every city.

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catch23
but sometimes even the really good authentic places do poorly because of
location. I'm not sure how it would apply to internet startups. I have a
friend who owns an authentic chinese restaurant in south beach florida. He
says he makes most of his money selling fried rice by the 5-gallon bucket and
lipton hot tea. There weren't enough residents in the area to appreciate high
quality authentic chinese food (they don't normally serve kung pao chicken)

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cschneid
The mexican place I was talking about is certainly not "authentic", but it's
near a university, and serve delicious food (but not really mexican). I don't
think slavish attention to old-world detail is the path to a successful
restaurant, so much as just making something good and accessible. Think of it
as usability. Sure their potato burrito isn't really very mexican at all
(really, not at all), but it's good, adjustable spice level, and an easy word-
of-mouth sales instrument.

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abalashov
If "fast-casual" is actually an industry trend, that makes me very sad. I like
the full dining experience; it's pretty much the only reason I'd willingly go
out to eat.

If there's no "experience" to the act of doing so, what's left is in most
cases a commodity that can be made, or reasonably emulated, at home or
wherever without all the trouble.

I think there's some startup parallels in that too.

Doing business with a vendor is often valuable when the vendor offers truly
substantive core competencies and a breadth of experience spanning a problem
domain, not just because the vendor has a competitively priced deliverable to
sell you.

