Eric Crampton emails me:
Why don't we see more of this? I went to the only Ethiopian restaurant in New Zealand last night. It runs one day a week – Mondays – in a Burmese restaurant that otherwise was closed on Mondays.
http://offsettingbehaviour.blogspot.com/2010/02/one-day-week-restaurant.html
I can understand that this kind of arrangements would have risks for the host restaurant. Ideally, you'd want it from a non-competing cuisine style. But this is the first instance of it I've ever seen. Have I just not been paying attention? The story from the Dominion Post on how the place opened is very nice. The woman running the Burmese restaurant was an immigrant from Burma who later started volunteering with an NGO that helped new migrants acclimatize. She met a guy there who wanted to open an Ethiopean restaurant but had no capital; her restaurant was closed Mondays.
The other 6 days a week the Ethiopean restauranteur drives a cab.
never heard of a restaurant only being open 1 day a week.
I used to go to a place that was a breakfast-lunch sort of diner during the day and a nice small Italian restaurant in the evening. The diner owner just rented it out to an Italian chef who wanted his own spot without a lot of the hassles. It worked pretty well, allowing for minor decor issues.
I guess one big obstacle is trusting the renter to keep things clean, not abuse equipment, etc.
This type of arrangement is not uncommon in my neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Mission Street Food in San Francisco started by running a cart/truck one night a week, then rented out a nearby Chinese restaurant kitchen one night a week, expanded to two or three nights a week, and is now looking for funding to get its own location.
Most retailers would probably use their shutdown day to perform maintenance. Also, it’s probably cheaper and more profitable to expand an existing business than to rent the place out for one day a week.
The case of ice cream shops being shut down in the winter is weirder, though.
There is a two-day a week one in the Mission distict of San Francisco.
When I lived in Chicago, I used to order breakfast from a place that rented the kitchen from a pizza joint that was only open afternoons/eves. Along with the other issues cited above (competing cuisines, downtime used to clean/maintain, etc.) could there also be a problem with insurance clauses permitting this kind of arrangment?
In Los Angeles and San Diego it is common for restaurants to turn into night clubs after 9 PM. Not quite the same.
This is less common, it seems, because of regulation of liquor license.
It is easy to start serving food if you have a night club license, but if you are a restaurant with a liquor license there are all kinds of absurd requirements (e.g. half your revenue most come from food) that are enforced with stiff fines and/or reductions in hours.
http://daviswiki.org/Thai_Dynamite
There is a fish and chips place in Worcester, MA that is only open on Fridays and Ash Wednesday.
there are an infinite number of restaurants that are never open, so in the limit this is common.
Lima, Peru now has two Indian restaurants, but two years ago when there were none one of the two Thai restaurants turned itself into an Indian restaurant one day per week.
Continuous mathematics fallacy humor! Who doesn’t love that!?!
This is a great idea for the customers. Until, of course, the lawyers and insurers get involved.
I can’t imagine the liability nightmares they would dream up. What if the place burns down on a Monday? Health department violations — who is to blame? What if the Monday people are making illegal hires?
Turning over your entire place of business to others once per week is a lot different than renting out an unused bicycle.
Tutto Bene came to mind immediately.
Delicious saltenas and sopa de mani.
Either do take out or come before noon. It’s around noon that the guy starts playing his Andean-inspired Hotel California amplified so loudly that conversation becomes difficult to impossible.
“In Los Angeles and San Diego it is common for restaurants to turn into night clubs after 9 PM. Not quite the same.”
Also true in DC, particularly with Ethiopiam restaurants in Adams Morgan.
Seems this is more common with “ethnic” restaurants. Not sure what that means.
@IWantCookieNow I always wonder about all these ice cream shops in Boston that don’t actively fashion themselves as coffeehouses as well–at least during the non-summer months. Instead they close or stay open with almost no traffic while the coffeeshop down the street is packed.
Tutto Bene has the same ownership; the owner is a Bolivian immigrant. Read the Washington Post Review: http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/restaurants/Tutto-Bene,1090824.html
Kavanagh’s, a pizza place in Glover Park, had someone else using the kitchen (and the rest of the premises) to offer a Salvadorean breakfast for a while.
Either that the primary restaurant is unable to attract enough demand to sustain a seven day a week operation. Or that it’s assets are so unspecialized that another food can be prepared using them.
Or, a third possibility, the primary restaurant owner is willing to work 6 days a week, but not seven, no matter how much demand there is, and doesn’t trust an outside chef to maintain quality. Good chefs are often obsessive about quality and a bit control freakish, my brother’s one. Plus, at a restaurant, there’s a lot of opportunities for the staff to steal stuff unless the manager keeps a close eye on it. Restaurant owning is not for people who like a lot of leisure time.
There are a few italian ice cream parlors in Munich that close in the winter and the italian owners spend this time in year in rome or neapel. During that time they rent out their shop to the “Nürnberger Lebkuchen”-company that sells German gingerbread which is traditionally only consumed around christmas. So at least in Germany the ice cream idea works.
This is quite an interesting concept and it’s very nice of the owner to allow someone else with a different menu to use her restaurant in the day it was supposed to be closed. I’m sure that the bar equipment is pretty much the same for both cuisines.
The same question to u guys..
Maybe it is a good idea but still not sure…
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