Sweet Taste of Success?

Most restaurants also provide their staff with a "family meal" before or after the dinner rush. Plus there are all the little free amenities like the extra lemon in your ice tea, the extra butter on your baked potato, the seven sugars Mr. Sweet Tooth puts in his coffee, the additional basket of bread, etc., that are not charged for.

You might be scoffing at those extra sugar packets but multiply all these seemingly miniscule trivialities by a month's worth of dinner guests and you'll have the equivalent of a mortgage payment. It's like Ford having to replace a fifty cent part on all it's Lincolns in one year.

Servers may earn two bucks an hour but there are many of them. As well as the bartenders, bus boys, cooks, dishwashers, hostesses, the executive chef, and one or more managers.

Every businessman knows that staff cost much more than just their salary. Figure in social security taxes, benefits, the cost of hiring and training employees, (restaurants have very high staff turnover), and the accoutrements you must supply them.

But wait, there's many more demons lurking behind the scenes ready to eat up the "big profit" on the prime rib. Consider insurance, advertising, repair and maintenance, cleaning supplies, office supplies, the telephone bill, waste removal, pest control, and many other nickel and dime items that insidiously accumulate. Oh, and don't forget Uncle Sam's cut.

One third of all new restaurants fail within the first year. Another third will fail by the end of their second year. By the five year mark, 80% will have gone out of business or been sold.

Competition in the restaurant business is fierce. Customer loyalty is fickle and that elusive repeat business is the lifeblood of any restaurant. Many other options exist if a particular establishment miffs you with inferior service or cooks your medium rare steak well done.

A good restaurant manager and executive chef are worth their weight in gold. It takes noteworthy skill and incessant diligence to maintain consistent quality in a restaurant.

You're constantly adjusting to fluctuating product quality and availability, varying food trends, and staff that come and go quicker than restaurants do.

And when quality drops for any length of time, you're pretty much dead in the water. How often do you go back to an inferior place in the hopes that they finally got their you-know-what together?

Twenty bucks for a steak dinner? I'd say it's a bargain.

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