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My friends and I have a saying: "boring makes money". That it's really hard to pull off the success of a Facebook, etc. but it's only moderately hard to do cons

My friends and I have a saying: "boring makes money". That it's really hard to pull off the success of a Facebook, etc. but it's only moderately hard to do consulting and spin off some kind of related product as a service, or micro SAAS. I'm curious what the "boring" food venture is? - trucks? - catering? - middle brow family style Italian? I'm aware of a couple of food businesses that rent kitchen space in the morning/evening from restaurants to make prepared paleo/keto meals that are then distributed through gyms/fitness centers (genius resource utilization). There's also a really interesting little business in the Outer Banks that sells you a metal pot full of uncooked seafood that you then put on the stove for an hour and let steam at your beach house. It costs something like $100 and I'm pretty sure it's about 50% profit for them. There's always room for cleverness.

gyardley 9y ago
While good advice in general, I'm not sure this applies in the Portland restaurant market. Renard was pretty boring - good French food, but the same food you've eaten at a dozen other French restaurants - and that, for me, was its problem. So many more interesting places to go! The cautious thing to do in the Portland restaurant market, as far as I can tell, is to do periodic pop-ups or a food cart and try to build up your repeat clientele to the point where you can justify a brick and mortar location of your own.
evan_ 9y ago
I think "boring" in the food service industry is something like, buy a Domino's franchise and hire a manager– and then never go near the place.
- gm-conspiracy 9y ago
  Maybe a Subway franchise, but having employees that require self-provided functional vehicles, of which the business owner is liable in the event of an accident during working hours, seems "stressful".
  - marak830 9y ago
    I hope you're joking about the whole stressful thing there. If you own the business, of course it's going to be stressful, on top of that, you are talking about a sect of hospitality that hires untrained and junior staff with sharp objects, hot surfaces and dangerous chemicles. There isn't much about that, that I can consider not stressful haha
- sharemywin 9y ago
  Don't fool yourself. "hire a manger" is insanely challenging. Also, your going to need 2-3 assistants(vacations, lunch,days off etc) and what happens when he threatens to quit. Also, you don't walk in day one and start making money hand over fist. The reason franchises work is because they vet 99% of the owners.
- greedo 9y ago
  Most franchise owners work long long hours inside the restaurant. The idea of a hands-off owner is a non-starter.
  - bduerst 9y ago
    Yep, and they own & work multiple franchise locations. The margins are insanely thin that you'd be lucky to support yourself and a GM at every location.
johan_larson 9y ago
Are there boringly profitable restaurants? My impression is restaurants are always skating on the edge of bankruptcy. It's wildly competitive because everybody thinks they can run a restaurant (and a hefty number of them actually can), there is significant regulation because of food safety issues, and the labour force is ill-paid and therefore not entirely reliable.
- Mariehane 9y ago
  I'd really like to know this as well. I have the same impression, but recently someone here on HN, who had experience owning a restaurant, wrote that the opposite is true.
  - johan_larson 9y ago
    Well, here's one account of running a coffee shop that gets into the actual economics a bit: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/a_fine_whine/2005/12/bitter_brew.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/a_fine_whine/2005/12/bitt...
    - namdnay 9y ago
      Slightly off-topic, but this article reinforced the impression that there is a serious shortage of decent pastry bakers in the US. The guy was paying $1.25 wholesale for croissants? The consumer price in France is around $1.05-$1.25, and that's a country with very high labour costs. It's an interesting dilemma - Croissants have a shelf life of a few max, so they can't be imported. I'm guessing immigration rules + cost of expatriation would make it hard to fly in french boulangers-patissiers? Then I guess the money would be in opening "viennoiserie schools" in the US...
      - ido 9y ago
        I always wondered why pita bread is so stale/bad in middle-eastern restaurants in Germany and Austria, being that baking pita bread is not that difficult (almost every falafel/shawarma place in Israel have decent pita bread and they can't all be genius bakers).
gadders 9y ago
Dunkin' Donuts? "Tony would pick one of his hardworking employees and sell him a franchise, loaning him the money through a 10-year mortgage. He’d work out the math so the former worker could make a decent salary in addition to covering all his costs, including making his note payments with interest to Andrade. After busting his butt for 10 years, the former employee would own an investment that today is worth $1 million or more." https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2014/09/17/the-secret-world-dunkin-donuts-franchise-kings/pb2UmxauJrZv08wcBig6CO/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2014/09/17/the-secret-w...
CloudYeller 9y ago
The one and only surefire way to make money hand over fist in the food business is authentic American Southern-style fried chicken & BBQ in China, made by actual Americans living there. You could start an empire rivaling KFC if you do it right.
- gm-conspiracy 9y ago
  This is very interesting. I had a coworker who would frequently visit Vietnam and come back with all sorts of KFC stories. Very popular.
  - contingencies 9y ago
    I live in China and am starting a food venture - http://infinite-food.com/ http://infinite-food.com/ If I'm not mistaken the most recent annual general report from Yum! China who manage KFC and Pizza Hut show a significant slowdown in KFC business. This may be the end of the novelty binge and the beginnings of health consciousness in the Chinese middle class.
- flachsechs 9y ago
  > American Southern-style fried chicken & BBQ this will make a killing even in the US, anywhere but the south. people just can't seem to do this very well anywhere else, for whatever reason.
  - glup 9y ago
    I've noticed this about BBQ at Bay Area places--liquid smoke and a broiler. I suspect doing it right requires a degree of patience and sustained labor (meat must be tended all day long) that I've only seen at $50+ per head places in cities, and few people are willing to pay that for BBQ. Also IIRC wood fires are harder to permit.
    - marak830 9y ago
      You know, I have been really tempted to go over there (us), and start a business doing that - with a mandatory 3 day previous r eservation system. (Also I'd get to travel around and try all those amazing smoking houses in the us!)
Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
From limited personal experience (I chair a community-owned deli/cafe - that's deli in the British English, gourmet food sense): "Boring" is getting the location right. If you're competing with 50 other restaurants, you've got to be special. If you're the only one in town, and the demographics are right, you're sorted.
deadmetheny 9y ago
I own a food truck, and I can say it's definitely not a 'boring' food venture, although it's definitely a lot cheaper than starting a physical location. You have to ensure that you can get decent parking spots for lunches, book good evening events or be willing to deal with drunkards on weekends, and be able to put out a good quality product quickly and efficiently. Getting the truck built out and going through inspections is nowhere near as expensive as doing so in a storefront, and you can run a much leaner crew (ours is me, my partner, one employee, and occasionally our spouses helping if needed - and I still have a day job on top of this). We're doing fairly well for ourselves - nobody's getting rich, but it's fun and the income is enough to keep us from wanting to shut down, so I guess we're doing something right.
- marak830 9y ago
  Hey, do you blog about it? I'd love to hear more about food truck operators, I was stuck in restaurants all my time haha.
  - deadmetheny 9y ago
    As of now, I do not. Also, I feel my perspective would be a bit less interesting since my partner is chef rather than myself (I'm more the client-side interface, as it were)
ska 9y ago
I'm curious what the "boring" food venture is? Perhaps things like a mid range franchise in a underserved city. Or a low end franchise with a captive audience (highway service, travel intersections). Industrial cafeterias.
- Kuiper 9y ago
  Or a low end franchise with a captive audience (highway service, travel intersections). Low-end franchise with captive audience seems to be a winning combination, and sometimes you can even get a captive audience with low rent: One example of a McDonalds franchise that was reportedly doing quite well is a small rural town (population ~1500) whose biggest feature was the nearby prison (population ~2000), got a significant amount of its traffic from travelers coming to visit inmates. Location kept rent (and labor) costs quite low. On the other end of the cost spectrum, you have airport eateries, which are high-cost real estate that more than make up for it in volume. Fast food franchise are especially advantaged (compared to other types of eateries) in airport venues, partly because there are a ton of airport-related restrictions (all dangerous utensils like knives have to be tethered to cooking stations, lack of gas lines at many airports) that tend to affect them less due to the way they handle food prep. And fast food's best features (convenience, low turnaround time) is at a premium for folks in airport terminals, such that they're willing to pay inflated prices for low-end food.
marak830 9y ago
I wrote a few responses, then I deleted each one. The more I think about it, the more I realise that there really isn't any low hanging fruit in hospitality. A few examples: Food truck: a proper food truck can be ran quite well, but so, so many are ran badly. If you are just reselling prepackaged food to labourers, at first you can make a good sale, but anyone making their own(at a good quality point), can undercut you. (Side note: yes, you can undercut prepackaged food if you control the production from start to finish, the difficult point is quality and consistency). Cafe: good coffee, good food and a good price point will get you a stable customer base - but this isn't low ha ginger fruit, you will be there 12+ hours per day and using your own time to offset wages. Bistro(low end restaurant): high output and middling quality will get you a high turnover, but again, you are at a huge risk of being cut out by a slightly higher price point and exceptionally better quality restaurant (or even a one chef show, I've seen that before - more later). High end restaurant: you need exceptional quality, which means(ibitaly) high turnover until you find the right staff, then paying more than your competition for those staff members (I have many times sniped good chef's from other restaurants). Also you need an amazing head chef to do this - many will say they can, very very few can actually follow through with this. Goverent contacts (or private) for such as hospitals: good luck, to beat their rates you need to hire under current min wage and/or cut corners somewhere - it's a race to the bottom, as quality is never a consideration compared to the books. As for cleverness, I have seen that work. Infact the best example is a small restaurant I saw once(and spent a lot of time talking to the owner), it was a 30 seat, one sitting restaurant with a set menu. You had to book two days in advance, the chef/owner purchased everything that day and they charged quite a lot. Imho this is how restaurants should be, and he was quite successful (for someone who only worked 3 days a week in his retirement). But that's not low hanging fruit, he was a 40 year experienced chef who has probably forgotten more about food than I'll ever hope to know. Long winded I know, but I hope that gives you an idea about trying to be clever in an industry that is probably one of the most cutthroat around.
- somecontext 9y ago
  > As for cleverness, I have seen that work. [...] But that's not low hanging fruit, he was a 40 year experienced chef who has probably forgotten more about food than I'll ever hope to know. Do you think you can say anything more about this restaurant? I don't have any questions in particular, just curious about any anecdotes or interesting things you may have learned. Thanks.

gyardley 9y ago

While good advice in general, I'm not sure this applies in the Portland restaurant market. Renard was pretty boring - good French food, but the same food you've eaten at a dozen other French restaurants - and that, for me, was its problem. So many more interesting places to go! The cautious thing to do in the Portland restaurant market, as far as I can tell, is to do periodic pop-ups or a food cart and try to build up your repeat clientele to the point where you can justify a brick and mortar location of your own.

evan_ 9y ago

I think "boring" in the food service industry is something like, buy a Domino's franchise and hire a manager– and then never go near the place.

gm-conspiracy 9y ago
Maybe a Subway franchise, but having employees that require self-provided functional vehicles, of which the business owner is liable in the event of an accident during working hours, seems "stressful".
- marak830 9y ago
  I hope you're joking about the whole stressful thing there. If you own the business, of course it's going to be stressful, on top of that, you are talking about a sect of hospitality that hires untrained and junior staff with sharp objects, hot surfaces and dangerous chemicles. There isn't much about that, that I can consider not stressful haha
sharemywin 9y ago
Don't fool yourself. "hire a manger" is insanely challenging. Also, your going to need 2-3 assistants(vacations, lunch,days off etc) and what happens when he threatens to quit. Also, you don't walk in day one and start making money hand over fist. The reason franchises work is because they vet 99% of the owners.
greedo 9y ago
Most franchise owners work long long hours inside the restaurant. The idea of a hands-off owner is a non-starter.
- bduerst 9y ago
  Yep, and they own & work multiple franchise locations. The margins are insanely thin that you'd be lucky to support yourself and a GM at every location.

johan_larson 9y ago

Are there boringly profitable restaurants? My impression is restaurants are always skating on the edge of bankruptcy. It's wildly competitive because everybody thinks they can run a restaurant (and a hefty number of them actually can), there is significant regulation because of food safety issues, and the labour force is ill-paid and therefore not entirely reliable.

Mariehane 9y ago
I'd really like to know this as well. I have the same impression, but recently someone here on HN, who had experience owning a restaurant, wrote that the opposite is true.
- johan_larson 9y ago
  Well, here's one account of running a coffee shop that gets into the actual economics a bit: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/a_fine_whine/2005/12/bitter_brew.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/a_fine_whine/2005/12/bitt...
  - namdnay 9y ago
    Slightly off-topic, but this article reinforced the impression that there is a serious shortage of decent pastry bakers in the US. The guy was paying $1.25 wholesale for croissants? The consumer price in France is around $1.05-$1.25, and that's a country with very high labour costs. It's an interesting dilemma - Croissants have a shelf life of a few max, so they can't be imported. I'm guessing immigration rules + cost of expatriation would make it hard to fly in french boulangers-patissiers? Then I guess the money would be in opening "viennoiserie schools" in the US...
    - ido 9y ago
      I always wondered why pita bread is so stale/bad in middle-eastern restaurants in Germany and Austria, being that baking pita bread is not that difficult (almost every falafel/shawarma place in Israel have decent pita bread and they can't all be genius bakers).

gadders 9y ago

Dunkin' Donuts? "Tony would pick one of his hardworking employees and sell him a franchise, loaning him the money through a 10-year mortgage. He’d work out the math so the former worker could make a decent salary in addition to covering all his costs, including making his note payments with interest to Andrade. After busting his butt for 10 years, the former employee would own an investment that today is worth $1 million or more." https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2014/09/17/the-secret-world-dunkin-donuts-franchise-kings/pb2UmxauJrZv08wcBig6CO/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2014/09/17/the-secret-w...

CloudYeller 9y ago

The one and only surefire way to make money hand over fist in the food business is authentic American Southern-style fried chicken & BBQ in China, made by actual Americans living there. You could start an empire rivaling KFC if you do it right.

gm-conspiracy 9y ago
This is very interesting. I had a coworker who would frequently visit Vietnam and come back with all sorts of KFC stories. Very popular.
- contingencies 9y ago
  I live in China and am starting a food venture - http://infinite-food.com/ http://infinite-food.com/ If I'm not mistaken the most recent annual general report from Yum! China who manage KFC and Pizza Hut show a significant slowdown in KFC business. This may be the end of the novelty binge and the beginnings of health consciousness in the Chinese middle class.
flachsechs 9y ago
> American Southern-style fried chicken & BBQ this will make a killing even in the US, anywhere but the south. people just can't seem to do this very well anywhere else, for whatever reason.
- glup 9y ago
  I've noticed this about BBQ at Bay Area places--liquid smoke and a broiler. I suspect doing it right requires a degree of patience and sustained labor (meat must be tended all day long) that I've only seen at $50+ per head places in cities, and few people are willing to pay that for BBQ. Also IIRC wood fires are harder to permit.
  - marak830 9y ago
    You know, I have been really tempted to go over there (us), and start a business doing that - with a mandatory 3 day previous r eservation system. (Also I'd get to travel around and try all those amazing smoking houses in the us!)

Doctor_Fegg 9y ago

From limited personal experience (I chair a community-owned deli/cafe - that's deli in the British English, gourmet food sense): "Boring" is getting the location right. If you're competing with 50 other restaurants, you've got to be special. If you're the only one in town, and the demographics are right, you're sorted.

deadmetheny 9y ago

I own a food truck, and I can say it's definitely not a 'boring' food venture, although it's definitely a lot cheaper than starting a physical location. You have to ensure that you can get decent parking spots for lunches, book good evening events or be willing to deal with drunkards on weekends, and be able to put out a good quality product quickly and efficiently. Getting the truck built out and going through inspections is nowhere near as expensive as doing so in a storefront, and you can run a much leaner crew (ours is me, my partner, one employee, and occasionally our spouses helping if needed - and I still have a day job on top of this). We're doing fairly well for ourselves - nobody's getting rich, but it's fun and the income is enough to keep us from wanting to shut down, so I guess we're doing something right.

marak830 9y ago
Hey, do you blog about it? I'd love to hear more about food truck operators, I was stuck in restaurants all my time haha.
- deadmetheny 9y ago
  As of now, I do not. Also, I feel my perspective would be a bit less interesting since my partner is chef rather than myself (I'm more the client-side interface, as it were)

ska 9y ago

I'm curious what the "boring" food venture is? Perhaps things like a mid range franchise in a underserved city. Or a low end franchise with a captive audience (highway service, travel intersections). Industrial cafeterias.

Kuiper 9y ago
Or a low end franchise with a captive audience (highway service, travel intersections). Low-end franchise with captive audience seems to be a winning combination, and sometimes you can even get a captive audience with low rent: One example of a McDonalds franchise that was reportedly doing quite well is a small rural town (population ~1500) whose biggest feature was the nearby prison (population ~2000), got a significant amount of its traffic from travelers coming to visit inmates. Location kept rent (and labor) costs quite low. On the other end of the cost spectrum, you have airport eateries, which are high-cost real estate that more than make up for it in volume. Fast food franchise are especially advantaged (compared to other types of eateries) in airport venues, partly because there are a ton of airport-related restrictions (all dangerous utensils like knives have to be tethered to cooking stations, lack of gas lines at many airports) that tend to affect them less due to the way they handle food prep. And fast food's best features (convenience, low turnaround time) is at a premium for folks in airport terminals, such that they're willing to pay inflated prices for low-end food.

marak830 9y ago

I wrote a few responses, then I deleted each one. The more I think about it, the more I realise that there really isn't any low hanging fruit in hospitality. A few examples: Food truck: a proper food truck can be ran quite well, but so, so many are ran badly. If you are just reselling prepackaged food to labourers, at first you can make a good sale, but anyone making their own(at a good quality point), can undercut you. (Side note: yes, you can undercut prepackaged food if you control the production from start to finish, the difficult point is quality and consistency). Cafe: good coffee, good food and a good price point will get you a stable customer base - but this isn't low ha ginger fruit, you will be there 12+ hours per day and using your own time to offset wages. Bistro(low end restaurant): high output and middling quality will get you a high turnover, but again, you are at a huge risk of being cut out by a slightly higher price point and exceptionally better quality restaurant (or even a one chef show, I've seen that before - more later). High end restaurant: you need exceptional quality, which means(ibitaly) high turnover until you find the right staff, then paying more than your competition for those staff members (I have many times sniped good chef's from other restaurants). Also you need an amazing head chef to do this - many will say they can, very very few can actually follow through with this. Goverent contacts (or private) for such as hospitals: good luck, to beat their rates you need to hire under current min wage and/or cut corners somewhere - it's a race to the bottom, as quality is never a consideration compared to the books. As for cleverness, I have seen that work. Infact the best example is a small restaurant I saw once(and spent a lot of time talking to the owner), it was a 30 seat, one sitting restaurant with a set menu. You had to book two days in advance, the chef/owner purchased everything that day and they charged quite a lot. Imho this is how restaurants should be, and he was quite successful (for someone who only worked 3 days a week in his retirement). But that's not low hanging fruit, he was a 40 year experienced chef who has probably forgotten more about food than I'll ever hope to know. Long winded I know, but I hope that gives you an idea about trying to be clever in an industry that is probably one of the most cutthroat around.

somecontext 9y ago
> As for cleverness, I have seen that work. [...] But that's not low hanging fruit, he was a 40 year experienced chef who has probably forgotten more about food than I'll ever hope to know. Do you think you can say anything more about this restaurant? I don't have any questions in particular, just curious about any anecdotes or interesting things you may have learned. Thanks.