Bourdain - Kitchen Confidential

TO WANT TO OWN a restaurant can be a strange and terrible affliction. What causes such a destructive urge in so many otherwise sensible people? Why would anyone who has worked hard, saved money, often been successful in other fields, want to pump their hard-earned cash down a hole that statistically, at least, will almost surely prove dry? Why venture into an industry with enormous fixed expenses (rent, electricity, gas, water, linen, maintenance, insurance, license fees, trash removal, etc.), with a notoriously transient and unstable workforce, and highly perishable inventory of assets? The chances of ever seeing a return on your investment are about one in five. What insidious spongiform bacteria so riddles the brains of men and women that they stand there on the tracks, watching the lights of the oncoming locomotive, knowing full well it will eventually run them over? After all these years in the business, I still don't know.

The easy answer, of course, is ego. The classic example is the retired dentist who was always told he threw a great dinner party. 'You should open a restaurant,' his friends tell him. And our dentist believes them. He wants to get in the business-not to make money, not really, but to swan about the dining room signing dinner checks like Rick in Casablanca. And he'll have plenty of chance to sign dinner checks-when the deadbeat friends who told him what a success he'd be in the restaurant business keep coming by looking for freebies. All these original geniuses will be more than happy to clog up the bar, sucking down free drinks, taking credit for this bold venture-until the place starts running into trouble, at which point they dematerialize, shaking their heads at their foolish dentist who just didn't seem up to the job.

Maybe the dentist is having a mid-life crisis. He figures the Bogie act will help pull the kind of chicks he could never get when he was yanking molars and scraping plaque. You see a lot of this ailment-perfectly reasonable, even shrewd businessmen, hitting their fifties, suddenly writing checks with their cock. And they are not entirely misguided in this; they probably will get laid. The restaurant business does have somewhat relaxed mores about casual sex, and there are a number of amiably round-heeled waitresses, most of them hopelessly untalented aspiring actresses for whom sexual congress with older, less attractive guys is not entirely unfamiliar.

Unsurprisingly, a retired dentist who starts a restaurant for the sex, or to be told he's marvelous, is totally unprepared for the realities of the business. He's completely blindsided when the place doesn't start making money immediately. Under-capitalized, uneducated about the arcane requirements of new grease traps, frequent refrigeration repairs, unforeseen equipment replacement, when business drops, or fails to improve, he panics, starts looking for the quick fix. He thrashes around in an escalating state of agitation, tinkering with concept, menu, various marketing schemes. As the end draws near, these ideas are replaced by more immediately practical ones: close on Sundays.

cut back staff.. shut down lunch. Naturally, as the operation becomes more schizophrenic-one week French, one week Italian-as the poor schmuck tries one thing after another like a rat trying to escape a burning building, the already elusive dining public begins to detect the unmistakable odor of uncertainty, fear and approaching death. And once that distinctive reek begins to waft into the dining room, he may as well layout petri-dishes of anthrax spores as bar snacks, because there is no way the joint is gonna bounce back. It's remarkable how long some of these neophytes hang on after the clouds of doom gather around the place, paying for deliveries COD as if magic will happen-one good weekend, a good review, something will somehow save them.

Like some unseen incubus, this evil cloud of failure can hang over a restaurant long after the operation has gone under, killing any who follow. The cumulative vibe of a history of failed restaurants can infect an address year after year, even in an otherwise bustling neighborhood. You can see it when passersby peer into the front window of the next operator; there's a scowl, a look of suspicion, as if they are afraid of contamination.

Of course there are many, many operators who do well in the restaurant business, who know what they're doing. They know from the get-go what they want, what they are capable of doing well, and exactly how much it's going to cost them at the outset. Most important, they have a fixed idea of how long they're willing to lose money before they pull the plug. Like professional gamblers, a slick restaurateur never changes his betting style. He doesn't bother with magic bullets, changing pricing strategies or menu concepts. With steely resolve, a pro, in the face of adversity, will suck it up and redouble his efforts to make the restaurant what he wanted and planned it to be all along-hoping that the great unwashed will eventually discover it, trust it, learn to love it. These guys know that when you hit the panic button and call in the consultants (read: unemployable chefs, failed restaurateurs who still like to eat for free), or start taking austerity measures like combining waiter/bartender functions on slow lunches-or worst of all, closing early-that they may as well close the doors for good: it's just good money after bad. A smart operator will, when he realizes things haven't worked out, fold up his tent and move on-before he's knocked out of the game for good. One disastrous restaurant venture can drag down an entire string of successful ones, as I have seen many times.

These knuckleheads are even less easy to explain than the novice owner with a hard-on for waitron nookie. Proven operators, guys with two or three or even more thriving restaurants, guys who've already beaten the odds, who have had and still have successful money-making joints, spitting out dough-what makes these guys over-reach? Often, the original flagship operation is a simple, straightforward concept: a bar with decent food, or a simple country Italian restaurant, or a bistro loved for its lack of pretension. But success makes these guys feel invulnerable. They must be geniuses, right? They're making money in the restaurant business! So why not open a 300-seat interactive Tuscan restaurant/take-out/with merchandising outlet in a high-rent district? Or three more restaurants! Maybe the Hamptons! Miami! The Seaport! Two frat-bar saloons with two Chinese cooks and a large-breasted bartender as overheads have been raking in the dough, so why not open up a jazz-club theme restaurant in Times Square? A multistory one with a three-star chef and live music?

The answer is simple. Because it's not what they're good at!

Making money in the bar business? What's wrong with that? You're a lucky man! Stay in the goddamn bar business! Hang on to your money! I can't tell you how many times I've seen cunning, powerful, even wildly successful men fall victim to this kind of delusional power grab, this sudden urge to expand the empire-only to find their personal Stalingrad waiting for them. Some get away with it for a while, and though things aren't exactly rocket-to-the-moon, they aren't going too badly, either: the second place isn't losing money, it looks like it might even make money someday, so why not open two more at the same time? When they finally go to the well once too often, find themselves overextended, have to start ignoring the original operation-the one that made all the money for them in the first place, eventually bleeding it dry-next thing you know, the Russian tanks are rolling through the suburbs, misusing your womenfolk, and Mr Restaurant Genius is holed up in the bunker thinking about eating his gun.