Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote:
Comments, Madhu?
http://www.slate.com/id/2132576/
A little late, but yes, I do have a comment or two.
The author is right; it's not easy to make a living in the business.
You have no idea how many people I've spoken to in the last couple of years who tell me something like "It's always been a dream of mine to open a little cafe/ restaurant/ sandwich shop. Nothing big like yours; a smaller cosier place. Maybe one day I can leave my job like you did and start one up." Owning a little shop much like the author describes is such a romantic notion. I pity the poor fella when reality hits him in the face.
Most of the time, the person telling me his or her dream is making a decent chunk of change, usually in the IT business. To prevent them from doing something silly, I show them a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how much money they can make in a month. The problem is that a small cafe usually means your turnover per customer is quite low, and you need a lot of them to actually make some money. There's a good chance that at the end of the month, aforementioned IT dude will make less than what he's making at his regular, salaried job right now.
But even if he does make a bit of money, he will quickly be disabused of
another romantic notion (probably gleaned from Hollywood movies and TV shows)
is that everything will work smoothly if you have a small place to run. As with
many movie-world scenarios, this too is far from true. A restaurant owner is
forever dealing with crises at work. I can't think of one week at a stretch
when I could relax and have nothing go wrong. Equipment fails, labour issues
crop up, prices change, raw material can suddenly be out of stock with the
supplier, your chef needs to go home on a family medical emergency, your drains
are clogged... I could go on. And the nature of the business doesn't even let
us take a couple of days to fix the problem. If the air-conditioning has a
problem, you need to fix it *today* or your customers will be sweating. If your
grinder conks off, you can't make the pastes for your menu. If a couple of your
kitchen staff fall sick, food preparation will take longer a
nd you'll have to wear an apron and start cooking too. And your customer has
to remain blissfully oblivious of all this. He pays the same money for the same
product each time. You can't charge him less if your chef didn't come to work
that day, can you? So he expects the same product and service every time too.
I'm very fond of saying this: a lot of effort goes into making it look
effortless.
So yeah, it ain't easy. It's hard enough if you actually know how to make food. If one wants to start a cosy little place, one better be prepared to work like a mule for less pay. It's not an easy living at all. If I were married with kids right now, I'd be struggling to put food on the table.
Regards,
Madhu
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Madhu Menon
Shiok Far-eastern Cuisine
Indiranagar, Bangalore
http://www.shiokfood.com
Chef's Notes: http://www.shiokfood.com/notes/
