B. Creppel

There are a couple of things I would like to say before I really start this post. First, I have never blogged before and feel strange even typing the words “post” and “blogged” so I beg of you to be patient with me.  Second, this might sound crazy but I don’t like restaurants. Ok, now release the bewildered look from your face and let me explain. While many people have at one time in their life or another worked in the service industry I am lucky enough (insert sarcasm) to be in the service industry at a whole other level.  I am pretty sure I’m going to regret saying this since I know Beriss is going to bombard me with questions, but my mom (who is chained to her business) owns a restaurant. While my Mom gets the brunt of the work I have the joys of managing, waitressing, bartending, cooking, hiring, making deposits, dealing with paperwork, dealing with employees, and dealing with customers more often then I like to admit. Therefore, hanging out at restaurants in my spare time looking at how and why they work is not exactly ideal in my eyes. Yet, I do feel as if I have the ability to look at the restaurants from a different perspective than most due to my family’s restaurant. Now if your eyes are the eyes of a restaurant owner, then here is a virtual hug and my empathy for you and I am not a hugger.

Now, the goal of this project is to continue the work a previous class began looking at why the restaurants on Restaurant Row in Mid City are successful and how new developments may affect these businesses. I find the first part of this question difficult since there are so many factors that contribute to the success of any business. Location! Location! Location is believed by many people to be of the utmost importance. While I agree that location is a factor of a restaurant, I do not feel that it alone is the “making” or “breaking” factor. When thinking about the project I have asked myself many questions on why a restaurant might succeed or fail, but one has stuck out, “What makes a restaurant on one side of a street a success and a restaurant directly across from it a failure?” If location is of such great importance could a single lane street really have that much affect? Yet, I have seen it happen in different areas throughout the city and it goes to show that the single factor of location is not the only contribution, but many factors are involved and many times are much more complex than we would imagine. We must look at all of the factors affecting the success of the restaurants in the study such as: atmosphere, cleanliness, service, food, cost, and of course location are a few examples.

With the list of “ideals” for a restaurant we have to remain open to other factors affecting the results. Could a restaurant be successful because it is the only one of its kind in the city, or because it has been and will continue to be the neighborhood restaurant where everyone actually knows your name? Sorry that there are actually more questions in here than answers, but I feel there is not necessarily a concrete answer or an answer at all. Sure, I can speculate, but the reality of it is the only concrete answer I can give in regards to my own family’s restaurant is that it succeeds because that’s what the P&L reports say.

This is the part where I realize that I said nothing about the restaurants I was assigned! The two restaurants my partner Emily and I were assigned are Katie’s and The Ruby Slipper and I will be writing much more about them in my second ever blog.