I’ve often thought that it would be possible to make decent money starting a chain of fast food barbecue restaurants in big Canadian malls.
Although these restaurants are ubiquitous in South America, and often very good, what I have in mind is a little different.
Obviously, a lot of the best barbecue restaurants are found in rural areas in the US. Many use open pits, natural smoke, cooking meat for long times at low temperatures, custom spices and sauces, and so forth. Open pits and natural smoke both require considerable space and adequate ventilation to deal with smoke.
Which leaves me with two questions.
Is there a way for mall restaurants deal with local laws and grill food?
No one is likely to mistake Burger King’s grilled patties for high quality barbecue. BK obviously does not have barbecues. Without resorting to chemicals and microwaves, using modern technology is it possible to have a charcoal grill in a mall setting that would be acceptable? Does one need specialized equipment? Laws differ from place to place, but in parts of Canada wood burning ovens used to be illegal. What constraints exist on restaurants located in a mall?
What are the major disadvantages to opening a restaurant in a mall?
Would appreciate advice, especially from people with direct experience. Don’t know how serious I am about this idea.
For starters, “cooking meat for long times” is pretty much the opposite of what true fast food restaurants do. Of course, you can always start cooking at dawn, but the downside to that is you have to project your demand precisely, or else you either run out during the lunch rush, or have a bunch of leftover meat at the end of the day.
The alternative is to cook lots of meat in advance and freeze it in individual portions, which I gather is NOT what you want to see.
As for the wood-fire problems, that’s not usually a problem with U.S. clean air regulations. You can use high-capacity ventilation fans to take care of the exhaust smoke, but that all takes up valuable space (which is pricey in a shopping mall), requires staffing to load the smoker and monitor it throughout the day, and still doesn’t solve the problem of cooking to meet actual demand.
“Real barbecue” - like “real” baking is not something that lends itself to a fast food approach.
Do you guys still have a lot of malls in Canada? They are on a major league decline in the USA. I’d say that is the major constraint in your scheme if you attempted it here.
Canadian malls are both failing and very successful. Many small malls and strip plazas are not doing well. But every city has one to four huge malls that attract a lot of people and the biggest chain stores — and Canada has a lot of big chain stores which compete with traditional small and family businesses. Rents would be probably be proportional to mall traffic, to some degree. Some downtowns have been much more successful than others about supporting business and attracting customers.
Malls are not known for inviting new concepts by firms that don’t have a national reputation into the food courts. They want the most familiar names that will have instant recognition by customers. The best way to get into a food court is to be successful as a fast-food operation outside of malls. It’s like wanting to get your start as star of a primetime show. Doesn’t work that way.
This place has locations in malls. It’s not BBQ, or fast food but it is charcoal grilling , so I’m guessing the issue isn’t the charcoal. What might be a problem is the overnight cooking- Arby’s is apparently not smoking it’s own brisket * but most BBQ restaurants I know are cooking the meat for 12 hours or so. Which means someone has to stay in the store overnight - and a mall might have an issue with employees staying after the mall closes.
It seems to come from a place called Sadler’s Smokehouse in Texas.
Good barbecue is messy when done right. Maybe I’m getting too old to matter, but I want my barbecue in a relaxed, outdoor environment. With beer or maybe some cheap, chilled wine. I rarely go to a mall these days (Thanks, Amazon!) but when I do, I rush in, get what I need, then skedadle.
When I’ve seen BBQ places “in malls”, they’ve always been in a standalone building in the parking lot, not in the food court.
I suppose that you could do the tricky parts of the cooking in a standalone building, and then wheel in carts with steamer trays into a little booth in the food court. But it probably wouldn’t be worth the number of extra customers you’d be able to get that way.
Right now, the big concept in mall dining in Montreal seems to be “food halls”. One has already opened and two more are supposed to open soon. They seem to be a higher-end alternative to a food court, and the one I’ve seen sells gourmet groceries as well as prepared food (to take out or eat in). Maybe that would be an opportunity for real quality BBQ, as it’s offered at a higher price point than most food court options? Eater Montreal article here.