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I was under the impression that restaurants tend to operate on very thin margins. Is this not actually the case, or is The Melt expected to be an exception, or

• hugh3 15y ago
  If you're clever about it, the markup on a grilled cheese sandwich can be enormous. Fifty cents worth of bread and cheese sells for eight bucks if you make it look fancy enough. Simple menu, assembly-line cheese-grilling, minimal cleaning and packaging, and simplified payment system and you can serve a lot of people in one lunch hour. As long as they can keep the customers rolling in (which is just a matter of (a) marketing and (b) making good grilled cheeses) it's a licence to print money.
• cromulent 15y ago
  Gross margins tend to be good, around 30% I believe. However, there's a lot of overheads and payroll, and volume can vary considerably.
• jonknee 15y ago
  They want to sell grilled cheese at scale. That's where the big money is. Not one location, not ten, but hundreds. With five hundred locations, it doesn't take a large monthly profit per store to add up to a lot of money.
  • fleitz 15y ago
    This business as others have pointed out is not about selling grilled cheese, it's about proving the market and perfecting the system. They'll likely go after big fast food chains which is why they sell a similar product made in a similar way. Oh knows maybe it will be a runaway success but I have a feeling it will be moderately successful return the fund and the cream will be selling the system to everyone else.