It would be longer than that. While they are open to customers during these hours, they have to allow time for preparation and setup before opening and then cleaning up after closing. This adds at least one hour to each end of the work day.
We have two trucks in this area that deliver “the best goddam soft ice cream on the planet.” They are owned by two brothers who work from 10 to 10 7 days a week from April through October. They make enough to live the rest of the year.
Then wouldn’t the rent not be the same? Isn’t commercial space usually rented by the square foot?
I haven’t been there, but I’m told there’s a hot dog stand type place here in the SFV that is open only on weds evenings. It’s owned by an attorney that always wanted a hot dog place, so he finally got this place and also gives legal advice while serving up what I’m told are the best hot dogs in LA.
Food costs at just about any successful restaraunt are going to run in the 15%-25% of menu price.
You can’t look at the materials and consider it a 500% markup because the cost of the materials (aka cost of goods sold) is not the final cost to deliver the product to the customer. the $4.99 breakfast special is more like $1.00 in food cost, $1.00 in labor cost (including prep time, dishwashing, waitstafff, etc), $1.00 in facility rent/lease, $1.00 in maintenance, and $1.00 in profit. The final markup is 15-20% not 500%.
That’s definitely true but on the other hand I’m not so sure on the labor cost. Waitresses make most of their money in tips (isn’t hourly rate like $2.35 or something?), then again you have short-order cooks and busguys/prepguys… ok you’re probably right. 
However I estimated really high on my food cost. I doubt a diner that buys 25 doz eggs pays 10 cents per like a retail consumer at the Safeway.
No, Law Dogs is open every night, but free legal advice is only given on Wednesday nights.
*Law Dogs
Free legal advice Wednesday nights 7 p.m.
14114 Sherman Way, Van Nuys, CA 91405
*
And the hot dogs are OK,but it’s no Pink’s.
Where I live, we have a LOT of diners like that. Many times, the owners have apartments over the storefronts that they rent out, defraying the cost of the mortgage and taxes on the buildings.
They also have a pretty loyal following. There’s one where I eat breakfast at least a few times a month. The same people are there, and the diner has various kaffee klatsches that meet once or twice a week. It’s also usually crowded during the main breakfast and lunch hours during the week, and is constantly busy on the weekends. It closes at 2:00, so there are no dinner hours. Of course, it has the advantage of being the closest quick-service restaurant to both Dickinson College and Dickinson Law School, so it gets a lot of faculty, at least at lunchtime.
So the fact that they tend to get a lot of repeat business keeps them afloat.
Robin
Oh hell yeah! I cooked for a few years at a little diner that was open from 5:00 AM to 3: PM. My shift ran from 4:30 AM to 12:30 PM, and I had hours and hours of daylight left when I got off work.
That’s the point. The rent is the same whether you’re open 8 hours a day or 16 hours a day.
Actually, to tell the truth, eggs are typically not much cheaper from a distributor than from the supermarket. In fact, they’re sometimes a bit more expensive. I noticed a long time ago that the eggs I cook with in a restaurant are “sturdier” than the ones I can get a Safeway. Slightly thicker shells (which reduces breakage), and tougher yolk membranes (which reduces the chance of the yolk collapsing in the pan). Packaging is more elaborate and expensive on restaurant eggs, too. They don’t come in the cartons you see in the grocery store. Rather, they come in a cube-shaped cardboard box with five layers of 30 eggs each, divided by trays of the same material that common egg cartons are made from, plus one more tray on top (for a total of six trays).
Just for the record, if there’s $1.00 in profit on a $5.00 item, then it’s a 25% markup, not 15-20% (although markup is usually calculated specifically from cost of goods sold).
It does represent a 20% margin, however, in case that’s what you meant.
Some states (including Montana, where I live), require that all employees receive minimum wage as a base, so our waitresses here get minimum wage plus tips.
Here in San Francisco, the little mom-and-pops have been whining because minimum wage is $9.14 per hour, and California does not allow tips in leiu of minimum wage. There was much gnashing of teeth and predictions of mass extinctions of businesses, but that so far, hasn’t happened.
Yes, but I think the point is that the sorts of breakfast/lunch places the OP mentioned are small. The rent is likely less on a 5-6 table restaurant than on a 30-table restaurant. So these small places can afford to stay open for a shorter period of time.
But what kind of commercial district? I’ve seen these restaurants in a particular type of commercial district- ones with offices, maybe a courthouse and stores that close by 6pm or so . Most of my jobs have been in that sort of district. From 11am-2pm, you almost need traffic lights on the sidewalk, but they look like ghost towns after the office workers go home. Nearly all of the restaurants and stores are closed by 6pm.
:smack:
Yes. I can’t believe I screwed that up, just gave a little speech on it a few days ago.
My Uncle and Aunt had a Mom and Pop restaurant in Oakland, CA for years. They didn’t hire any help. All of the profit was theirs after rent, taxes, gas and electric. They served only breakfast and lunch. When my Uncle died, they were quite well off. Seems like they did OK.
I live in an area with a sizeable Hispanic population. We don’t have many traditional breakfast and lunch diners, but we have a bazillion family owned taco places that close after lunch. Judging from all the work trucks parked nearby and people walking out with big white bags full of tacos (the perfect low cost, compact, no plate, no utensil breakfast), the popular ones seem to do allright. These taco places are not in high rent places. Sometimes they are in what looks like garden sheds with an extension cords running to them. Family owned business with only two employees in a low rent area with concentrated high volumes sales of low cost food- they might survive.
There is a breakfast lunch place near me that closes for business after 1:30, but the staff stays on, making (Pre ordered) lunches for pick up (the next morning) by customers (who also buy their breakfast there). So they get the profit off of breakfast, and the profit off of a lunch in one fell swoop.
I imagine some of the other restaurants mentioned here also do special catering of one sort or another after they close to the public.
FML
I work as an IT guy in a financial department in the home office of a large retailer.
While I’m not a financial analyst, I got the reports on our competitors’ statistics, including estimated profits and results.
As a general trend, profits do trend up in the fourth quarter each year during the holiday season (which is why the industry standard is comp vs. last year, not last month), but many of the larger retail businesses turned a profit each period.
One of the things that interested me when I first started following these trends was that not all of the merchants (and these are very common names that you’d recognize from the malls) make profits each month - some of them loose for tens of months in a stretch, then recover and go on.
Disclaimer: I am neither a Financial Analyst nor an Accountant. I only represent myself. If you invest based on this post, you’re an idiot, and I’m not responsible. I am not disclosing any specifics for any specific company. For more information, seek professional assistance.
Yes, exactly. The OP said, “The rent for the space is the same as a restaurant with longer hours,” but then also said that the places with shorter hours are typically much smaller than restaurants with longer hours – meaning that the rent isn’t the same.
There’s a restaurant here in town that I’m pretty sure it’s hours are 11a-3p M-F. They serve the best burgers you ever had and have been operating the same plan for the past 20 years. From 12-1 the line to the counter is a pretty steady 30 people waiting patiently and chatting. It’s downtown where they roll up the sidewalks at 5. So they’re catching the peak hours for profit and ignoring the rest of the day.
Any Dopers passing through during those hours, my treat. 