#6: SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
Not long into the pandemic, Joe and Peggy Romano announced they planned to close The Med, Brasserie Ten Ten and Via Perla. For 27 years, this trio of iconic eateries stood at the helm of the Boulder dining scene. “With the new economic pressures that the hospitality industry is now facing,” they wrote on their website, “we simply cannot continue to run and operate our restaurants with the level of quality and service that we are committed to providing, and that our guests have rightly come to expect.”
The Romano’s did the math. Because of how big their restaurants were and what it cost to staff them and maintain the facilities, they didn’t make money until they were nearly 90% full. With 50% capacity restrictions in place during the summer of 2020, they didn’t think they’d survive. Antonio Laudisio, their business partner in The Med, told 5280 Magazine: “The real issue is just that the numbers didn’t work. You need the place full. I don’t blame anybody. I blame the virus.”
Federal funds saved more than eight out of 10 restaurants, but what the Payroll Protection Program and the Restaurant Revitalization Fund couldn’t fix was the fact that a typical restaurant doesn’t turn a profit unless it’s slammed. That grim reality was sinking restaurants at an alarming pace in the years leading up to the virus. Sadly, it’s only worse on the other side of the pandemic. After the easing of virus restrictions across the Front Range, even robust, multi-unit restaurant brands returned unprofitable despite strong—and in some cases—record-breaking sales. Unbelievably, after the worst two years the hospitality industry has ever experienced, the struggle for survival is just beginning for restaurants.
Along with so many heart-breaking stories we hear about restaurants every day, there are also tales about evolution and adaptation. Long ago, giraffes looked like deer or antelope. Over time, however, the animal’s neck elongated to nearly seven feet, and its legs grew to nearly six feet. This adaptation allowed the giraffe to access nourishing leaves from trees once far out of reach, ensuring the success of the species for ages to come. In Darwinian terms, survival of the fittest refers to the “survival of the form that will leave the most copies of itself in successive generations.” For restaurants at this vulnerable point in history, it’s time to sprout legs and walk if you’ve only swam, it’s time to fly if you’ve only walked. For all of us in the business, it’s time to step out of our comfort zones in the search for a sustainable hospitality model.
For Urban Field, it started with the choice of space. At 2,700 SF, Urban Field is half the size of the restaurants we’re used to operating. Our office doesn’t even fit two people. The inventory of one-gallon tomato cans for the market and the restaurant will sit decoratively on the soffit above our bar because there’s nowhere else to put them. Many of the ingredients for our menu will be stored within our market rather than in our cramped back of house and walk-in cooler. We tried our hardest to make a tiny facility work to increase our revenue per square foot, a vital stat for restaurant longevity.
To bolster the sales we could generate in the restaurant and market, we aggressively sought off-premise sales through catering. Any revenue you can muster outside of your four walls is a life-line for restaurants. Luckily, right up the street in Lyons, there are several wedding venues that book out several years in advance. It’s our goal to cover the rent of the restaurant and market through catering.
When crafting the Urban Field restaurant menu, Chef Nick Swanson focused on ingredients that were local whenever possible to remove ourselves from the supply-chain circus. He picked only high-value cuisines and menu items to ensure we were a practical dining option. Inflation is real, the chatter of recession is growing. We want Urban Field to work for your family no matter the state of the economy.
We added a market to the restaurant to increase the number of revenue sources propping us up. We’re going to strive to fulfill everyday needs and hopefully become a place you’ll visit multiple times a week. Providing chef-prepared meals for home, fresh produce, milk, eggs, and local meats, we want to be an essential service for downtown Longmont. With the analytics we gather from our market sales, we’ll constantly be tinkering with what we carry based on what you like and what you don’t.
James Rouse, a pioneer of food courts, said: “Profit is not the legitimate purpose of business. The legitimate purpose of business is to provide a product or service that people need and do it so well that it’s profitable.” As we prepare to open the doors of Urban Field Pizza and Market in the coming days, we know all too well our fight to survive the tides is about to begin. Our plan is simple… be genuine and craveable and become memorable. Cheers, folks, we’ll see you at Urban Field!