How many restaurants in general have closed in the last decade though? 20% surviving might not be that bad considering how expensive restaurant biz is, not to mention covid causing massive waves of failed businesses.
this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2024
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Plus the restaurants on the show were frequently months away from closing due to fundamental issues like owner burnout that aren't going to be fixed on a week or two.
I am surprised it isn't over 85%
You also have to remember that these restaurants were failing largely by their own owners hands. Not keeping kitchens clean, not having a clear vision of the restaurant(too big a menu without a consistent theme), infighting amongst staff/owners, etc.
You don't appear in the show if you're doing well. Even with the facelifts Ramsey provides, it's on the owners and staff to maintain the changes. If they fall back into old habits, then of course they will fail.
I think it's more impressive that 20% actually listened and succeeded during the pandemic.
Came to say the same. 20% surviving is higher than I would have thought.
Yes chef!
That's good numbers, normally 80% of restaurants die in 5 years.
I mean, if 80% fail in 5 years anyway, it sounds like KN has essentially no effect, good or bad.
No effect would be if the restaurant was “average” to begin with. This is Kitchen Nightmares, these restaurants are already failing.
We could say he takes restaurants that have a 100% chance of failure and moves them back to the industry average 80% chance of failure.
That's 80% of ALL RESTURANTS that fail.
Not 80% of resturants that already had one foot in the grave.
He was working with that 80% failure group and got 20% of THOSE not to fail.
The 20% are the ones succeeding
He’s working with the worst of the 80% failing
Huh, I did typo that. Good catch
The 20% survive at least twice as long, it seems KN has some positive effect.
It's not like there's no attrition after the first 5 years. Also, the show started 15 years ago, so the stats are even better.
Most of the owners were fucked in the head, they weren’t going to make it even if he gave every one of them lessons for 6 months and a million dollar investment
does not seem surprising given their criteria for being on the show was something that was going to 100% close and then of course there is the track record in general on restaurants.
I might be misremembering, but I think there was a similar show with the tall body builder guy who is a chef, and they would come in with a decorator and revamp struggling restaurants.
But the guy would sit down with the books and go through salaries, food costs, budgeting, and show them what they should be charging. They would look at the area restaurants to see what the competition was doing, and they would reset the flow of the floorspace to make room for enough guests to make it make sense.
Making good food isn't enough (although making bad food is enough to fail). Restaurants are a business, and while it's probably not good TV, most of them just need a financial review.
Also, many of the restaurants on the show are is very serious debt. Even if they really do turn around, they might still be unable to crawl out from under their mountain of debt in time.
Might be thinking of "Restaurant: Impossible" with Chef Robert Irvine. They claimed to have a 40% success rate.
That's the one. I liked his approach to the process better.
Only about 20% of them actually followed his advice after he left.
I seem to recall a retrospective where they did examine many of the restaurants he visited in Kitchen Nightmares. All of the ones that closed were due to the owners failing to follow the advice given, too deep in the red financially to climb out, or a rare instance of insight where the operators decided that running a food establishment wasn't for them.
I mean, they were all in bad shape and going to fail without Ramsay's help to begin with, so failing to follow an experienced chef and business operator's instructions on how to fix things is a surefire way to seal the business's fate.
The arrogance of some of those owners was astounding. Think of the hubris required to sit in your failing restaurant and argue with the most successful chef in the world about his opinion. Literally moronic.
It was early on in the first American season, that a large beet-red man howled at Gordon that he (Gordon) was "A FUCKIN BLOWJAHB" for telling him (the owner) what to do. To save his restaurant. That was failing.
That guy and the guys like him? They're losers, in the true sense of the word, because they sabotage themselves so thoroughly and constantly that all they can do is fail. Without serious introspection and personal growth that guy is gonna is gonna die of an aneurysm at 55 firmly believing that he was right and the entire world was wrong.
Deep in the red jsyk. In the black is good.
Ah, you’re right. Thank you for pointing that out.
Weren't all these restaurants failing, or at least had bad reputations to begin with? I'm not giving Ramsay credit, but I'm not blaming him either...
all of the restaurants were already on the verge of closing. they all had a mountain of debt, serious management problems, problems with staff, with the food, with the sanitation in the kitchen, and always massive interpersonal drama between the owners and the staff that would prove terminal for any business. so, having anyone, no matter how brilliant, swoop in with a remodel and a menu refresh and a bit of team-building for a week isn't really going to turn places like that around, especially when they have deep-seated problems that have been brewing for years, even decades in some cases. frankly, a lot of those places should fail, and many should never have been in business in the first place.
if you want to blame Ramsay for anything, blame him for tricking the audience into thinking that these places ever had a chance of turning things around.
Well based on the article they had 20% chance to turn it around, which is relatively good
If you had ever watched the show, you’d realize that most of those restaurants had a 0% chance, regardless of what Ramsay did. That 20% managed to turn it around and stay open - especially surviving covid, which killed countless successful restaurants - is amazing.
I have a customer like this. The problem is rarely the Ferrari. The problem is the monkey behind the wheel.
YOU GAVE A FERRARI TO A MONKEy???
The bank paperwork checked out and it was the end of the month?
In comparison, 40% of Restaurant Impossible restaurants are still open.
This is ripe for a Masterchef spinoff.
Master Restauranteur: Gordon vs. Irvine. Only one will survive.
I think a lot of them still wanted to close even after he left. They got a nice influx of cash and equipment at the end to help with debts.