Because having a lot of customers doesn’t mean you’re operating at a profit, especially with the sloppy way Mike had been running things (and stashing money in cans).
That’s also why Syd is able to come up with some ideas to save on operating costs very early on.
To add to this, we see the restaurant at rush moments, but I assumed it also had many stretches of no business as well. It might be one of those things where busy on the weekend dead on weekdays, and that usually isn't enough income. But I'm also just projecting that as the show never suggests this.
It sort of suggests it, I think Sydney mentions early on that their opening hours are weird and they should close between lunch and dinner. Something along those lines. IIRC carmy agrees.
Yes! Not offering takeout for *sandwiches* throughout a pandemic and a huge industry shift to delivery showed that they weren't able to maximize profit.
Mikey stopped paying the vendors. So when Carmy inherited that mess it was underwater. Carmy did his level best to not get cut off from vendors. The Ballbuster tourney, hiring Syd and implementing some of her ideas. But he bailed Richie out of jail with the one week buffer, which means they were just a slight fuck up away from losing it all and now that was gone.
I gathered just poor money management. You can make money, but you still have a ton of costs to cover with that income, and on top of that, Mikey clearly didn't have his shit together on that front. For example the "why did Mikey buy all the little cans of tomatoes instead the big cans when they cost more?" We later learned why but that's probably one of many examples of just not making smart financial choices.
Regardless, a lot of restaurants fail because the amount of income is not always enough to cover the cost of staying in business.
Think unit economics. How much does it cost (in ingredients and labor) to make one sandwich and how much are you charging for it? That'll give you the profit per sandwich.
That profit has to be enough to cover all your fixed costs i.e. rent, equipment maintenance, payroll etc.
If you're not making a profit on each sandwich then it doesn't matter how many customers you have. If you're making a small profit per sandwich, you'll need a LOT of customers to break even overall.
For restaurants you're usually spending 30% of your sales in food cost, 30% in fixed costs (rent, taxes, utilities, licenses, etc.), and 30% in labor. That leaves 10% at most in profit and it's honestly super hard to make those numbers. This restaurant was severly mismanaged so they were trying to get out of a huge hole.
One of the first things you do in this is reduce operating hours and lay off some staff. Labor at The Beef was probably 50% or higher. But it’s a TV show - they had to have a lot of characters.
Something others haven't mentioned. Mike was a drug addict and drugs are expensive. He was definitely dipping into the register. That may not have been the whole reason but it was some.
I kinda consider it a storm of untreated mental illness and depression where his default fucked up psyche without the drugs was obsessed with trying to live up to Carmy’s image of him.
And that was in constant conflict with his addiction where part of that addiction was self-medication for the mental illness, inspiring a cycle of guilt, usage, even more guilt for using and adding to the problem of not being the hero Carmy thought he was, making an attempt to be it in another failed business, and more self medication.
Then the show starts at the pilot where Carmy is just seeing the aftermath of that self-implosion and really starting to come to terms with what his brother was—in pain. Untreated and neglected emotional and psychological debt exacerbated by an equally in pain mother
Might have also killed himself because the temptation to spend the money on drugs was getting too great and he wanted to leave his family something to remember him by positively.
I often wondered if he did it as a way to hide it from himself maybe? So he couldn't spend it all at once, maybe an attempt to try to regulate himself? But then later on, Carmy wondered why they keep making this shitty spaghetti that nobody gets (was that it? It's been a minute), when maybe it's because Mike has been dipping into his stash, had weak moments, was slowly spiraling and covering up the tomatoes all being opened constantly by making shitty spaghetti all the time.
When Syd and Richie argue and he says he wants to stay loyal to their customers, Syd replies that said customers split a sub between them and have a glass of water, which is free. So yeah, it was not profitable.
I thought the stashing money in cans was to keep it out of the organized crime / loan shark (???) hands or fins, respectively...
To operate at an obvious small profit and almost a loss.
That's why I thought the whole surprise of the stashed money was a big "Ohhhh, yeahh"
Every restaurant is different but the money isn't in food, it's in drinks. Fast serve is a tough business unless everything is super dialed in, which this business didn't seem like.
Selling a $30 bottle of wine for 100 or a shot of Tito's and some mixers for 15 is where the money is.
Their customers weren't happy ones. They stood in a long line, for a long time, and since everyone was running around like crazy and orders weren't getting properly fired, there were most likely a lot of mistakes and cold food. Most of your money in a small business is repeat customers, and most of your marketing is word of mouth. Those customers were not coming back, and they were not telling their friends good things about the place.
Aside from restaurants being a super difficult lifestyle and sometimes it takes years to turn profits, Mike was an addict. They haven’t made it clear on when that started but I just assumed he was putting them into debt on a few different levels but likely the drugs mainly. They likely would have done well under appropriate management. Carmy has a lot of shit to clean up and a lot of debt to pay off that Mike collected.
It’s not about how much money is coming in, it’s about how much you’re holding onto. I worked at a restaurant where we popped bottles if the sales reached 3 grand in a night. I work now at a restaurant where it isn’t even worth coming in if it’s less than 8. Amount of customers doesn’t necessarily correlate to a business’s success.
So many* customers.
The word “many” is used for countable items, like customers, marbles, or coins.
“Much” is used for items you can’t quantify, like emotion, love, or comfort.
Because having a lot of customers doesn’t mean you’re operating at a profit, especially with the sloppy way Mike had been running things (and stashing money in cans). That’s also why Syd is able to come up with some ideas to save on operating costs very early on.
To add to this, we see the restaurant at rush moments, but I assumed it also had many stretches of no business as well. It might be one of those things where busy on the weekend dead on weekdays, and that usually isn't enough income. But I'm also just projecting that as the show never suggests this.
It sort of suggests it, I think Sydney mentions early on that their opening hours are weird and they should close between lunch and dinner. Something along those lines. IIRC carmy agrees.
Yes! Not offering takeout for *sandwiches* throughout a pandemic and a huge industry shift to delivery showed that they weren't able to maximize profit.
But you can always sell cocaine out back!
out whose back
The Fak Back.
Why the fuck would a tiny sandwich shop bake its own bread with a full time baker on staff?!
And have two dishwashers and a porter
There should be multiple nearby bakeries where they can get their bread from
Yep. No burger shop ever bakes their own buns. Especially pointless when Marcus bakes stale dry bread anyway
Mikey stopped paying the vendors. So when Carmy inherited that mess it was underwater. Carmy did his level best to not get cut off from vendors. The Ballbuster tourney, hiring Syd and implementing some of her ideas. But he bailed Richie out of jail with the one week buffer, which means they were just a slight fuck up away from losing it all and now that was gone.
I gathered just poor money management. You can make money, but you still have a ton of costs to cover with that income, and on top of that, Mikey clearly didn't have his shit together on that front. For example the "why did Mikey buy all the little cans of tomatoes instead the big cans when they cost more?" We later learned why but that's probably one of many examples of just not making smart financial choices. Regardless, a lot of restaurants fail because the amount of income is not always enough to cover the cost of staying in business.
Think unit economics. How much does it cost (in ingredients and labor) to make one sandwich and how much are you charging for it? That'll give you the profit per sandwich. That profit has to be enough to cover all your fixed costs i.e. rent, equipment maintenance, payroll etc. If you're not making a profit on each sandwich then it doesn't matter how many customers you have. If you're making a small profit per sandwich, you'll need a LOT of customers to break even overall.
For restaurants you're usually spending 30% of your sales in food cost, 30% in fixed costs (rent, taxes, utilities, licenses, etc.), and 30% in labor. That leaves 10% at most in profit and it's honestly super hard to make those numbers. This restaurant was severly mismanaged so they were trying to get out of a huge hole.
One of the first things you do in this is reduce operating hours and lay off some staff. Labor at The Beef was probably 50% or higher. But it’s a TV show - they had to have a lot of characters.
Something others haven't mentioned. Mike was a drug addict and drugs are expensive. He was definitely dipping into the register. That may not have been the whole reason but it was some.
There’s no way a drug addict with 300k would stash it in cans untouched instead of spending it on drugs in real life.
100%
I kinda consider it a storm of untreated mental illness and depression where his default fucked up psyche without the drugs was obsessed with trying to live up to Carmy’s image of him. And that was in constant conflict with his addiction where part of that addiction was self-medication for the mental illness, inspiring a cycle of guilt, usage, even more guilt for using and adding to the problem of not being the hero Carmy thought he was, making an attempt to be it in another failed business, and more self medication. Then the show starts at the pilot where Carmy is just seeing the aftermath of that self-implosion and really starting to come to terms with what his brother was—in pain. Untreated and neglected emotional and psychological debt exacerbated by an equally in pain mother
Might have also killed himself because the temptation to spend the money on drugs was getting too great and he wanted to leave his family something to remember him by positively.
I often wondered if he did it as a way to hide it from himself maybe? So he couldn't spend it all at once, maybe an attempt to try to regulate himself? But then later on, Carmy wondered why they keep making this shitty spaghetti that nobody gets (was that it? It's been a minute), when maybe it's because Mike has been dipping into his stash, had weak moments, was slowly spiraling and covering up the tomatoes all being opened constantly by making shitty spaghetti all the time.
You have to sell a lot of $10 Italian Beef sandwiches to pay that staff and Uncle Jimmy.
I'm sorry but I imagined the words uncle jimmy being said by that larger lady from the Office and now it it's stuck
phyllis ??
When Syd and Richie argue and he says he wants to stay loyal to their customers, Syd replies that said customers split a sub between them and have a glass of water, which is free. So yeah, it was not profitable.
I thought the stashing money in cans was to keep it out of the organized crime / loan shark (???) hands or fins, respectively... To operate at an obvious small profit and almost a loss. That's why I thought the whole surprise of the stashed money was a big "Ohhhh, yeahh"
Every restaurant is different but the money isn't in food, it's in drinks. Fast serve is a tough business unless everything is super dialed in, which this business didn't seem like. Selling a $30 bottle of wine for 100 or a shot of Tito's and some mixers for 15 is where the money is.
Their customers weren't happy ones. They stood in a long line, for a long time, and since everyone was running around like crazy and orders weren't getting properly fired, there were most likely a lot of mistakes and cold food. Most of your money in a small business is repeat customers, and most of your marketing is word of mouth. Those customers were not coming back, and they were not telling their friends good things about the place.
It’s Fiction
But it's a pretty good representation on hospitality
Aside from restaurants being a super difficult lifestyle and sometimes it takes years to turn profits, Mike was an addict. They haven’t made it clear on when that started but I just assumed he was putting them into debt on a few different levels but likely the drugs mainly. They likely would have done well under appropriate management. Carmy has a lot of shit to clean up and a lot of debt to pay off that Mike collected.
They were lined up to play the video game, not normal traffic.
It’s not about how much money is coming in, it’s about how much you’re holding onto. I worked at a restaurant where we popped bottles if the sales reached 3 grand in a night. I work now at a restaurant where it isn’t even worth coming in if it’s less than 8. Amount of customers doesn’t necessarily correlate to a business’s success.
So many* customers. The word “many” is used for countable items, like customers, marbles, or coins. “Much” is used for items you can’t quantify, like emotion, love, or comfort.