Thursday, February 12, 2009

Restaurant Incubator

I saw a post on PSFK that reminded me of a business idea I had quite some time ago. First I'll introduce a bit of background: our area (Tri-Cities, WA) is notoriously fickle and more than a bit flaky. We constantly have new restaurants popping up here or there and unfortunately as many good ones going out of business just as fast. It was this fact coupled with remembering a joke that a friend of mine once told me once, "Do you know how to make a million dollars in the restaurant business? Start with two million," that sparked my idea.
So if the title didn't give the concept away, here it is: Restaurant Incubators. A building set up so that you could have multiple easily-reconfigured restaurants designed to share some resources (and come pre-equipped with others). I know in practice this could be tricky (too many chefs in the kitchen), so some of the things would need to be independent -- but with good planning, it just might work. This would allow places that might otherwise not exist the opportunity to establish themselves, their menus, and some clientele with lower initial risk, and then move out to their own buildings after a couple years. I think it would also cultivate many new culinary/restaurant ideas that people would otherwise be adverse to trying.