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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]They lose a lot of revenue when you do takeout. Waiters, busboys, etc don’t get tipped out when there’s no table service. No alcoholic drinks, which usually has a large chunk of the restaurant markup. You can spare the buck.[/quote]

:lol:  I sincerely enjoy watching these businesses lose customers and go out of business.
I can do without the restaurant experience.[/quote]

Exactly. Make good tasty food and you will get a stream of customers and won’t need to mark it up [/quote]

:roll: You obviously know nothing about the restaurant industry.[/quote]

I’m in the restaurant industry and two of our restaurants do not do takeout. The chef said it would compromise the food, etc. You can’t even order a dish to go at the end of the meal, the only way food is leaving in a box is as leftovers or if you beg and plead and she takes pity on you. We have another restaurant that does do takeout. It’s a bbq restaurant where you order at the counter and then seat yourself. Someone will clear your plate if you do not, but the front of the house service costs and expected tipping is far far less.

So for the taco example, they are already operating without much of a front of the house budget. Incrementally, takeout is more profitable than dine in, because there is no opportunity cost of losing seats and no one cleans up, the trash is not the responsibility of the restaurant, no one is using the bathrooms, etc. But the biggest bonus is that they lose no dine in customers and can sell more food. Imagine if you walked into a restaurant there were 20 people waiting and no table available? You might walk out, but with takeout, the restaurant can serve all those people.

For a restaurant with table service, takeout is much more profitable because it doesn’t require a waiter, a host, busboys, and doesn’t clog up a table. We did the math with the two restaurants that don’t do takeout. In addition to 60 covers a night, they could do 60 takeout orders by adding an extra cook to prep earlier in the day and one or two to the evening shift and a person to coordinate the orders etc. So in terms of personnel, it would be about 1/2 what is needed for dine in. We even discussed setting up a ghost kitchen, which would have really raked it in. But it was all about the quality of the food for the diners, so none of it happened.

The economics of restaurants are tough because there are so many ways to lose control and lose money. Too generous drink pours, food wastage, too high food costs, lightfingered bartenders, too many comps to “friends and family”, payroll mismanagement, paying everyone overtime, kitchen equipment disaster, kitchen fire, rats, bad review. It’s a lot of juggling. But if you think you are being overcharged, vote with your wallet. [/quote]

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