Future of Restaurants

Fantastic episode on thinking outside the box!

Restaurants famously have low margins, but Nick Kokonas transformed the cashflow and risk profile of his restaurants by rethinking what they were selling as performances rather than just food. This made them realize they could sell tickets instead of having people pay after the meal, which allowed them to plan ahead and cut costs, all the while increasing their margins. While I’m not personally involved in the restaurant business (in fact I almost didn’t listen to this episode because I thought the topic would be boring!), this interview was a great reminder that there is still so much opportunity to figure things out and make things better for everyone, even in an industry as old as the restaurant business.