I encourage people often to eat at locally owned restaurants. Why? Because any money made at the restaurant in profits and employee salaries gets recirculated in our local economy. One of the main reasons I was opposed to the Denty was because ALL profits from the venue go straight out the door. Also, I have noticed, especially at immigrant owned local restaurants that the service and meal quality is usually better than a fart factory franchise.
One of the reasons we have such low unemployment in SF is because people usually have part-time jobs in hospitality on top of full-time or other part-time jobs. In fact, very few restaurants, except local, have full-time staff besides back of house and management. Which means they save $$$ on benefits and since the front of house part-time staff basically works for tips their labor costs are low.
When local restaurants close it not only hurts the employees but the local economy. I worked on and off in the hospitality industry for almost 30 years. My last waiter gig was 5 years ago and it was such an awful experience I will NEVER do it again, unless I am a dishwasher 🙂
You can make good money, but in the current economy I bet a lot of servers are not making much.
Jodi did a story this week that intrigued me about the Steel District restaurants. I asked an executive with Lloyd companies today if Lloyd has always been an owner. They said yes, but it was a partnership until recently, Lloyd basically bought out the Minneapolis ownership group and now own them entirely.
While I guess I could make fun of Lloyd for this arrangement, I feel bad that restaurants are not doing well. So I am sympathetic. There is also the question about the TIF status and if a certain amount of square footage is NOT being used in a project it could hamper their TIF requirements. I have DONE zero research on that, but it is worth questioning.
It also did not help that the most popular restaurant in that downtown area was city owned and taxpayers are subsidizing it to the tune of $300K a year! (The Lodge is ran by the Washington Bazillion)
Either way, it is going to be a rough ride in the Trump economy and we are going to see a lot of restaurant closures in Sioux Falls, especially over the next couple of months. Restaurants depend on extra revenue during the holiday season to float them thru Jan-Feb, which are usually slow months for restaurants. If the holiday season wasn’t extremely profitable they will likely throw in the towel. It is sad, because it will have a domino effect on the local economy and jobs.
So what am I asking of you? I’m not telling you to go out to eat every night to help the restaurants, but what I am asking you to do is when you purchase food at a franchise place or C-Store, instead go to a locally owned restaurant, it gets recirculated in the local economy which actually helps you!