Should Restaurateurs Be Asking Themselves Quality Of Life Questions?
Is it possible to balance the economics of running a restaurant while maintaining a high level of happiness?
Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash
Jamie Mah @grahammah
Since the pandemic hit in March of 2020 life as I, and everyone else in the restaurant industry once knew it changed. Which means, arguing about the nuances of our predicament has not only become common fodder between me and my fellow work colleagues, but a small source of contention as well.
Allow me to explain.
I work at the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel, where I’m a bartender/sommelier in our Lobby Lounge. Before the pandemic we had 25 seats and ample room for guests to stand and mingle at our bar. Now we only have 14 seats and that’s it. This massive change in bar patronage shook me for a long time. My brain always fought the restrictions, even though I understood their implementation.
Eager for the day we’d be allowed to return to normal, I’d champion my fellow colleagues about having things the way they used to be. Yet, with all this stammering and hopeful thinking put forth by yours truly, I could never fully convince those around me that going back to the way things once were was the way we ought to go. Confused by their oppositional logic and reasoning, one of my colleagues pulled me aside one day and put it to me this way.
“So let me get this straight, you think that by having 25 seats at the bar, with everyone squished beside each other, side-by-side that guests will want to stay with us longer and ultimately spend more money than say 14 guests who might enjoy the space and added freedom and higher quality attention from us?”
At the time I’d yet to view things from that perspective and I initially didn’t disagree with his logic, even though I still held firm to the belief that having more opportunities to sell — meaning more customers — would prove to work for us rather than against us in the long run. However, how he put things did make sense in some way. Hence for the past while now I’ve found myself sitting on this proverbial fence so to speak of which reality is best for our bar. As you can see by my writing this article, my skepticism has lingered.
That was until recently when I read this column in Eater. It’s written by Corey Mintz, a food journalist from Winnipeg, someone I interviewed a few months back for my podcast. His column is titled: How a Buzzy New York City Restaurant Makes More Money By Closing on Saturdays. After reading it, I’ve come to reconsider my initial line of thinking.
First, before I get into detail as to why, I’d like you to re-read that headline a few times and wonder how that might come to pass. Take a minute and actually do that. I’ll wait.
Welcome back.
Now let’s begin with the obvious reality of a restaurateur.
The restaurant industry has its entire ethos built along the very foundation of being open on Friday and Saturday nights.
For an industry with high fixed costs and slim margins for profitability, not being open on one or both of these nights would seem irresponsible to say the least. Yet, here’s Corey talking about how one restaurant in New York City which has chosen such a path.
From Eater:
Mondays in the restaurant business are typically thought of as quiet, while busier nights like Saturday bring in more revenue. With only 22 seats and a strong reputation (built over a series of pop-ups and collaborations, with profits funneled to charities), Dame is popular enough to be booked solid every night. There are currently hundreds on the waitlist, so filling the dining room on a Monday isn’t the challenge. Also, before eliminating weekend service, Howard and Szymanski noticed a smaller average check size on Saturdays. Weekends attract the non-repeat customers; the scavenger hunt diner who wants to visit every buzzy spot to take a picture for the gram, or the couple splitting an entrée because they’re rushing to a show or bar after. While not the main reason for the change, belligerent “Why can’t I get a table?” diners were also more frequent. One of the last straws, before the owners decided to close on Saturdays, was a guest who had no reservation, who aggressively demanded a table in the packed room, while trying to bring in a cosmopolitan from another restaurant (he had to be physically removed).
“The weekend crowd is not as fun to work for as the weekday crowd,” says Szymanski. Monday diners at Dame tend to be more industry veterans who order the whole menu and full bottles of wine. So with every seat filled, opening on Monday is more profitable than Saturday, while also affording staff and owners weekends off.
Now there’s a lot to unpack here. Primarily, not all restaurants are bustling joints located in a massive metropolis like New York, a city with enough people to go around that filling a 22 seat restaurant on any night shouldn’t be all that difficult. However, this should not deter a restaurateur from considering this idea, which isn’t entirely what I’m proposing here. I’ll get to that in a second.
The latter part of this quote does touch on a common trope industry folks often harp on about. Those whom we serve on a Monday are definitely different from those on a Saturday and it is at this point where I want you to consider that first line in the second paragraph.
“The weekend crowd is not as fun to work for as the weekday crowd,” says Szymanski.
Restaurants are often open seven days a week. The good one’s possibly only five, when they’re closed on Sundays and Mondays. Dame, this established bustling gem Corey has showcased here has found a loophole in our conventional system of restaurant stewardship — they’ve upended the classic model and gone with what works best for them. With a shifting paradigm having been created due to the pandemic, are we at a point where restaurateurs should be asking themselves how important is their quality of life versus running their businesses?
For Dame, the economic practicality of closing on Saturdays made as much sense as their personal convictions did, which is why making the choice was easy. With a less is more approach, could other establishments create the same sort of quality of life choice while not sacrificing their need for economic stability?
Is it possible to have their cake and eat it too?
At the top I mentioned my colleague’s preferential desire to have less seats at our bar. This has little to do with their stated goals for tipped compensation as we’ve seen little if zero decline in that area (this fact alone kinda proves their point) but more of a personal happiness desire. This want, however, contradictory it may seem to any capitalists sense of duty to drive sales, hasn’t been lost on our upper management either, as they too have enjoyed the spoils of a more controlled and calmer lounge.
If the pandemic has altered the landscape of how we work and perceive it’s proverbial hold within our lives, it’s that we now have learned to place a higher value on happiness than we once did just two years ago. One of my favorite writers for The Atlantic, Derek Thompson, recently penned a column suggesting that the five day work week is dying. Why? Because we’ve experienced, thanks to the pandemic, what it was like to have more time on our hands. We’re happier with life at home, without the commute and stress of getting to and from work. More time with family and friends this way. Less hassle.
For an industry built on being in person (for the most part), restaurateurs don’t have this luxury. However, they do have options.
In 2004, American psychologist Barry Schwartz wrote a book around a fundamental dilemma economists and psychologists had been seeing for decades, when presented with too much information, we struggled to make decisions. His book, titled: The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, Schwartz looked to examine this phenomenon but also break down why having more can actually amount to having less. I read his book a few years back and found this concept intriguing. The Decision Lab broke down his thesis in a great way, one that I believe will help you to understand where I’m trying to go here.
From The Decision Lab:
Schwartz, who has long studied the ways in which economics and psychology intersect, became interested in seeing the way that choices were affecting the happiness of citizens in Western societies. He identified that the range of choices that we have available to us these days is far greater than people had in the past; however, consumer satisfaction has not increased as much as traditional economics theories might expect.
One of the central tenets of western societies, especially America, is freedom. This freedom is often associated with choice, with a belief that greater choice is equated to greater freedom. This logic is easy to follow: instead of being forced to choose between one or two different options, people have the freedom to choose between an almost unlimited number of options. Businesses and corporations often also follow this ideology, believing that more choices will lead to greater customer utility.
However, Schwartz found that having this unparalleled plethora of choice in the modern world was actually causing people to be less happy with their decisions. He found that instead of increasing decision satisfaction, having too many options made people less likely to be satisfied that they had made the best decision. While freedom is important, Schwartz explains that there is a fine line between having the freedom to choose what you want and being paralyzed in the face of too many options. In his paper “Doing Better but Feeling Worse” that came out in the same year as his book, Schwartz and co-author Andrew Ward claimed that “unconstrained freedom leads to paralysis.”
If I examine this summary from both perspectives, that of the restaurant consumer and that of the restaurant owner, on one hand, having the freedom to go to as many restaurants and bars on any given night can seem enticing. However, it can also, as Schwartz has proposed here, be paralyzing. Think of how many times you’ve struggled with your significant other trying to decide where to eat tonight? I’m sure we’ve all had this conversation. But, if restaurants took it upon themselves to give you less options — again completely going against what a normal capitalist might think — you might reward that one alternative, the one you really want to visit more of your attention if you knew you could only go there on select evenings or times.
One of the main tenets of the premium casual restaurant (Earls, Cactus Club, Joey) is to be open all the time, no matter what. But part of the problem with this logic is that you are open all the time. Unless you have a lot of advantages (buying power, political clout, deep pockets) being busy constantly is very hard to maintain. Most small restaurateurs cannot compete or expect to have this type of efficiency. Some do, and kudos to them, but for the vast majority, it would better serve them to maximize the days they are open and close when they are not. The logic being, sometimes less really is more.
The pandemic has forever altered how we do so many things, from constant Zoom meetings, to work from home to restaurant QR menus. It would behoove any rational restaurateur to not self examine their situation and look at how they can not only improve their model economically but also from a quality of life standpoint. For their sake happiness wise but for that of their employees as well.
Closing on Saturdays isn’t entirely an option the vast majority of owners will want to make or consider, but even if it isn’t, knowing that one has the option to do such a move can be liberating in some way. Most trends in this industry come from seeing someone else succeed at taking a risk. Dame has taken that step and it looks to be paying off for them. Others may follow suit. It may take off and become a thing like ordering an espresso martini has. Variables and trends emerge all the time and those restaurateurs who can and are not afraid to consistently take risks have not only my utmost respect but a possible leg up on their competition. I’ve written about this several times in the past. Here, here and here. The first of which proved to be correct and has turned into a real thing.
Again if your brand is strong and your customers are loyal, choosing what’s best for yourself and your staff should not deter them from accepting and honoring your quality of life decisions. A four day work week isn’t just some novel idea cooked up so we all can be lazy one extra day of the week, it’s because the stats have come in, the writing is on the wall, that time is precious and helpful to one’s balance and happiness. Can the restaurant industry ever be fully a part of these possible new changes? Probably not, unless cheaper rent becomes a thing. But there are other ways they can achieve a higher plane of happiness within their economic models. Dame took that risk and it looks to be paying off for them. My colleagues at work seem happier with our current situation. Once all restrictions are lifted, things will most likely change and they’ll have to adapt. Happiness may slide up or down, at which point their new reality can be examined or altered.
The pandemic gave a glimpse of what things can look like from a completely different perspective. There are lessons in that. Restaurants are no longer tied to a one size fits all archetype. Those who pivot and examine their happiness will thrive the most, I guarantee it. That’s something to think about.