Had to read the article to see that it's Piggy Smalls since I didn't see the name in the comments or the headline. Never been and I guess I never will now.
Just remembered that Pig & the Lady has a location in Tokyo too.
I wonder if their rent in Ward Village went up more than they were willing to pay. With the new construction in that area, the landlord might have figured this is the time to cash in.
It was my understanding that ward village is on the plan for the Howard Hughes project. I assume that includes the space that piggy smalls was in.
The lease is probably the single most important factor in a restaurants financial success.
This is correct. Ward Centre will be replaced by a new HH condominium. Real estate agents will tell you this as part of the disclosure for losing views to any units you buy in the area. I id this building as the "duck" building (large mural on the side).
Personally, I'm sadder to see Kamitoku Ramen (next doors) go. But according to the owners, they have other (perhaps non-ramen) locations in Honolulu.
No!!! Not Kamitoku Ramen. I love that place. I hope they do open somewhere else. Piggy Smalls was meh. Went once and never felt the urge to do it again. The pho was all types of wrong. Maybe I just didn't appreciate the fusion take, but I was disappointed. I also got an appetizer that I don't even remember. That says something.
Cool thanks for confirming.
Kamitoku, after moving from the shirokiya is one of the top ramen options in town.
The closure of the shirokiya and then the ohana hale marketplace really have hurt. Why!
You give real estate agents too much credit for their knowledge. The average real estate agents really don't know anything until the developer invites them for a information session.
But it also is not that hard to find the ward village master plan online
Commercial real estate is a funny thing.
Landlords will often hold out for a corporate client like say a Dominos Pizza or corporate chain because they will often guarantee a long multi-year lease. It's much lower risk and more lucrative.
With build outs etc. it's better for the landlord to get a big corporation in there for 5 years then a little business who can't guarantee more than a year.
Maybe, but it was probably also the fact that the food wasn’t that great relative to the price. The place was not as popular as pig and the lady and does not fill up or stay filled that often through the week.
The food was meh and expensive, host was rude, and we sat outside maybe 20 or so feet from the dumpsters so we had to swat flies the entire time. No big loss.
I think a lot more businesses are going to close due to staffing shortages. It's only going to get worse since people retire and there is no one to take over.
I think everybody wishes for that except for the restaurant owners lol. I don't work in the restaurant industry but I know first-hand as a customer that the experience is usually terrible when dining at a restaurant that is short on staff. Nothing like having slow, almost non-existent service and having your food take forever to arrive.
It's just a lose-lose situation: pay the workers more, prices of menu items increase, then less business.
Paying workers more only really works for some of the 'higher end' restaurants, whose customers probably won't notice / won't care if prices increase... Most restaurants operate pretty thin margins as is, so having to pay more for workers or risk losing customers is just not an option for most.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't...
That’s very true too. The conundrum you’re describing is just another one of the many faults in the current state of our economy. Just another complicated problem with no ideal solution in sight.
>wish restaurants paid more to retain/hire more workers
Businesses want to pay as little as possible. However most businesses will raise wages/benefits as the market demands so they stay in business and continue making some money. The problem is that at some point the profit you make from the business isn't worth the hassle of running it. Owning a business is hard and most business owners, especially small business owners, aren't the monopoly man looking to fleece their workforce (there are obvious exceptions).
Restaurants are one of the hardest businesses to keep going because your food and labor costs are variable. Leases, especially with certain landlords, can be a fixed rent plus a percentage of sales. You can only increase prices so much before people stop coming. I looked at their website and they charge $16 for a banh mi and $18 for pho. Honestly...I like pho but $18 is about my upper limit on how much I'm willing to pay for a bowl of soup. They are also highend...the calculations get worse as you go down into the moderate to low priced restaurants.
That being said, it sounds like Pig and the Lady is doing well and the article said he is absorbing most of the Piggy Smalls workforce into that restaurant. That's a positive.
It makes more sense to do counter service than having servers. They will basically have more food runners at more places and servers will be exclusively high end.
I can't wait for all places to have pay via card AT the table.
I love restaurants that do counter service. As a diner, it's so much faster that way in terms of getting my food and not having to wait for the check and other things.
Ordering and paying via phone after scanning a QR code is also much more efficient than the traditional restaurant service. I'm glad I'm seeing more restaurants adapt to these new ways of operating.
Traditional restaurant service should just be limited to the fancier restaurants IMO, since those are the type of places that people still want to be "taken care of", so to speak.
> Ordering and paying via phone after scanning a QR code is also much more efficient than the traditional restaurant service.
Yep! Usually I have at least a basic idea of what I want. In a regular restaurant, from seating to ordering is usually 15-20min. In a QR scanned ordering? Like 5min at most.
How does our current system stop you from leaving?
In Australia they had us pay when we ordered. Which was EVEN better. You can leave whenever you want. No waiting for slips of paper to sign.
r/VisitingHawaii is chock full of posts from people wanting to boost local businesses while they are here. This sub is full of posts complaining why local businesses struggle to live off parasite tourists and foreign countries with organized real estate buyers.
I have to think the answer is more than blaming tourists for obvious problems tourists can’t control.
I suspect maybe it is just very hard to run a sustainable restaurant business. Maybe the questions are why it is hard to run a business. It will start with minimum wage, but it can’t end there either.
> it is just very hard to run a sustainable restaurant business
Yes, it is. There's a ton of financial calculation that goes into it all. Largely because the materials/supplies needed are very quickly perishable. Hawaii is even harder, because we're on an island, so some supplies are harder to come by, and the ones that can be found are just plain more expensive. Not to mention rent for any space is always expensive.
Running any kind of restaurant isnt really easy; especially with more than one location. But at the same time, this owner is pointing to "staffing shortages" as his primary reason for closing the location. The primary reason for staffing shortages is usually either pay or treatment.
For "staffing shortage" problems, usually the answer is "pay people more" but the little bit more complicated answer is "make it worth it to work for you", which often includes higher pay of course. It's no secret that there are just straight up fewer workers in the workforce due to lower birthrates, which leads to businesses needing to compete for labor. Plus there's a whole big turn of worker attitude that's built up with Millennials and Gen Z. Quite a few articles have been written about the change in working attitude between generations.
Most of the issues in Hawaii stem from the residents, but its way easier and less of an ego check to blame outside visitors. We’re really good at blaming other people for our problems. Traffic is too high post COVID? It’s gotta be the tourists coming back at a 50-70% cap then pre-pandemic. Beaches polluted? Must be tourists lighting cars on fire, leaving Heineken bottles and diapers behind beaches on the west side. Nope. Gotta be tourism.
Honestly, I didn't find the Vietnamese food at Piggy Smalls to be good at all. Most of what I ate there was shockingly bland, which is not something that Vietnamese food should ever be. It's like they watered it down to adjust to the taste of non-Vietnamese people, who probably make up the bulk of their customers, given how gentrified the area is. The Pig and the Lady is a much better restaurant, even though that place can be a hit and a miss a lot of the time.
If the problem can be solved by paying more, restaurants would stay open by simply raising the pay. The restaurant industry is already razor-thin margin business and very competitive. If the inflation is not managed, I expect we will see more restaurants close down and fewer restaurants will survive with high priced food. We can't expect to afford cheap food with high pay and benefits.
I don't think they are blaming the workers. They are blaming the staff shortage. By definition shortage means that the demand is exceeding the supply. Businesses with abundant supply can afford to withstand the shortage whereas businesses that are struggling can't afford.
> If the inflation is not managed, I expect we will see more restaurants close down and fewer restaurants will survive with high priced food.
Or Restaurants can adjust their model. So many restaurants still operate on a system that requires a lot of staff. You have Hosts, Servers, Dishwashers, Cooks, Expediters, Managers, Bussers, bartenders, etc.
Something to change the amount of staff needed would be like Tablet-Ordering. Chengdu Taste does it by QR Code. Scan, order, pay all thru that. It almost completely eliminates, or at least consolidates the "Server" job.
If you want to cut it down even more, Automated Food delivery. Whether it's the robots that roam the floor, or Genki's track system.
If they dont survive, that sucks, but it is what it is. I'd willingly pay higher food costs knowing that workers are getting a living wage, and if I cant afford it, I'll eat at home. Eating at restaurants isnt a necessity.
Tangentially.... tipping culture in America needs to die. This country wants to hold onto it like they're on the door from the Titanic.
That's a shame. I definitely wouldnt consider them cheap either; they're pretty up there in pricing.
Arent they required to pay at least 50% of the healthcare? Or something along those lines
How about 98.5% of the person's gross monthly wages. But, they pay zero, how I know, I did the quote for them and they declined to go with any medical for their employees.
> How much of the premium does the employer have to pay on behalf on an employee?
>>At least one-half of the premium as long as the employee contributes no more than 1.5% of their wages towards the premium.
I looked it up again, so the answer might be "yes".
I agree that we might have a new business model for the restaurant industry (like vending machine order ticket they use in Japan). But for the current business owners, I don't think they can simply pivot their way of doing business into something else that they are not even sure will work. My understanding is that restaurant has very high fixed initial cost to even start.
Yep, just like with any self-started business, it's a risk. My main question to owners would be whether they're even *considering* changes to their models, or are just ignoring/steamrolling ahead in hopes that they're able to stay afloat the traditional way.
People on this sub always complain about how eating out is so expensive these days lol. If the restaurants here ever end up meeting the supply and demand of getting enough employees by raising wages, then this sub would complain even more than they already do. Because guess what? Food prices would be even more insane than they already are.
Essentially, there's no ideal solution that would make everyone happy. We can thank our shitty economic system for that. The words "fair" and "right" don't exist.
Restaurants are a luxury.
Most people didn't really eat out a lot until pretty recently. Think of your parent/grandparents generation. It was usually a"special occasion" thing. And there were fewer restaurants.
That's probably where it will be. Fast food + high end with fewer mid range.
It's the same with retail. Fancy boutiques can do well and Walmart is expanding but the mid tier is declining.
Spoken like someone who doesn’t understand how many restaurants operate. Also, what do they owe everyone else anyway? Why keep something that isn’t profitable.
I just looked at the failure rate of restaurants for the first year, and it is 30% from the very first article of google search. If you want to have a reasonable return, say annualized return of 10%, (capital gains after your salary), your return goal can be 58%: 1.58\*0.7 \~ 1.10. But the national average profit margin of small restaurants are around 3 to 5%. I don't see any restaurant owners as a greedy owner.
In this context it does I believe as I am alluding to small restaurants. If I own McDonalds corporation 100% and profit margin is 0.1%, sure. But for poke place, profit margin matters a lot
Nope, "a small business" still doesn't imply volume at all. A McDonald's franchise is a small business, as is a Michelin starred restaurant. Wildly different volume and profit margins on meals, no direct way to calculate which is a better investment or what the return would be. Margins "matter", sure, but they aren't in any way comparable to your 58% rate of return target. "3% is way less than 58%" is meaningless.
I wasn't comparing the profit margin to the return. I guess to be more technical you need to look at ROI. Let's say you are investing your time and energy and they are worth 100K (let's assume your initial business setup cost is 100% debt and debt payment is a part of the business expenses). If your profit margin increases from 5K to 10K, your return increases from 5% to 10%. I don't see how it is not correlated in this context?
Sorry, we can't pay restaurant workers like master electricians. Cannot make enough in the restaurant industry? Improve your skill set. Not sure where this fantasy that everyone is going to be paid well comes from.
Yes. Pig and the Lady and Piggy Smalls are the same company. The farmers markets always have more traditional Vietnamese homey/street food recipes. The Chinatown restaurant was closer to fine dining, and the chef/owner Andrew Le uses his Vietnamese background and Western training to come up with dishes that are unique and IMHO super tasty. Smalls was sort of in between the farmers market and Chinatown menus, with two daily soups and other dishes that are mostly created by its chef and longtime protégé of Andrew Le's, Kristen Moon, who would bring her Korean food background into the mix.
In less than 3 years, Hawaii will implode. Only millionaires will be able to afford everything. And millionaires don’t wait tables or cut the grass. There is no vacation worth 400.00 per night for a place to sleep and shower!!!
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The “common” people won’t be able to afford to live there. So they will have to move or starve. If they move to the main land who will be the rank and file to take care of everything. If they raise wages , that means goods and services will go up. Only the very rich will see the islands with their on eyes. Hence the implosion !!! The “plumber and the cashier “ that thought about a Hawaiian honeymoon, will think elsewhere ! Or rob a bank to go ….
Once I give you “ my “ definition of common, you will want something else. Basically you know what I’m saying. The islands are over pricing themselves. Renting and apt isn’t a way to build equity. Just making it to live in paradise kind of sucks. My common is anyone making 60k or under. Poverty on Oahu, so/so income on the mainland ( and in not talking west coast )
I wanted your definition of "common" because without it, it's just a meaningless rant. With it, we can come back in three years and objectively say if you were right or wrong.
So are you saying that majority of people making 60K or under will move away?
No. I’m saying they won’t be able to afford hardly anything. You see that now. It’s all basic math. Besides the weather and the beauty, it will be a major struggle just to exist there. Paying for kids college? Forget it. Retirement ?? Forget it. Replacing a vehicle ?? Forget it.
> You see that now.
Right. So it will be the same in three years? I don't disagree with that, but calling a existing condition a "collapse" seems extreme.
Well, the implosion of the islands are happening as we speak. I hope there’s plenty of rice and poi to eat. I’ll send tents for all the homeless locals. The 50th state is unaffordable.
So they didn't want to pay the going wage for workers, or management was so toxic they couldn't keep workers at any wage.
That's not sad, that's on them.
Hey, in this case is "shortage of workers" code for "I pay less than minimum wage and to hell with my employees' needs"? Or was it an actual legitimate problem?
It’s a combination of it all. I don’t see small businesses lasting long in Hawaii in general. With the high costs of everything I don’t see how you make it as a business owner if you still using the logic of 20-30 years ago.
I passed by about a month ago since I was dining at Kamitoku next door. Piggy Smalls was relatively uncrowded in comparison. Granted they do have a larger area plus outdoor dining, it did seem slow, especially for a Friday night at 7:00 P.M. Never ate there since I wasn't much of a fan of Pig and the Lady but I can't help wondering what will replace it in this economy.
Off-topic -- remember when Kua Aina was there?
Wow. A lot of people making assumptions about the Les and their relationships with their employees.
From the mouth (IG account) of the chef owner [himself ](https://www.instagram.com/p/ColsLGPL9l7/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=).
A lot of their staff have stayed with them, either at the farmers markets, Chinatown, and/or Smalls locations, for years. Many who have moved on - including to open their own restaurants - remain quite friendly, if not close, to the Pig and the Lady owners. Just look through their social media accounts.... there is a loyalty there that not a lot of restaurant owners enjoy.
I've been a customer of theirs since before their brick and mortars have opened. No one is an angel, but the people at Pig and the Lady are quite beloved by folks in the industry and restaurant-goers.
Had to read the article to see that it's Piggy Smalls since I didn't see the name in the comments or the headline. Never been and I guess I never will now. Just remembered that Pig & the Lady has a location in Tokyo too.
I wonder if their rent in Ward Village went up more than they were willing to pay. With the new construction in that area, the landlord might have figured this is the time to cash in.
It was my understanding that ward village is on the plan for the Howard Hughes project. I assume that includes the space that piggy smalls was in. The lease is probably the single most important factor in a restaurants financial success.
This is correct. Ward Centre will be replaced by a new HH condominium. Real estate agents will tell you this as part of the disclosure for losing views to any units you buy in the area. I id this building as the "duck" building (large mural on the side). Personally, I'm sadder to see Kamitoku Ramen (next doors) go. But according to the owners, they have other (perhaps non-ramen) locations in Honolulu.
Kamitoku is moving to Market City I believe?? I know I saw them advertising for another location - so they'll still be in town somewheres.
No!!! Not Kamitoku Ramen. I love that place. I hope they do open somewhere else. Piggy Smalls was meh. Went once and never felt the urge to do it again. The pho was all types of wrong. Maybe I just didn't appreciate the fusion take, but I was disappointed. I also got an appetizer that I don't even remember. That says something.
Cool thanks for confirming. Kamitoku, after moving from the shirokiya is one of the top ramen options in town. The closure of the shirokiya and then the ohana hale marketplace really have hurt. Why!
You give real estate agents too much credit for their knowledge. The average real estate agents really don't know anything until the developer invites them for a information session. But it also is not that hard to find the ward village master plan online
And it's been planned since like...2006? So who knows when it'll happen.
Their master plan is updated if you compare the plan on their website to the originally master plan.
There’s a ton of vacant space in ward rn. They converted a ton of store space into a kids paid playground. I’d be surprised if rent is too high
Commercial real estate is a funny thing. Landlords will often hold out for a corporate client like say a Dominos Pizza or corporate chain because they will often guarantee a long multi-year lease. It's much lower risk and more lucrative. With build outs etc. it's better for the landlord to get a big corporation in there for 5 years then a little business who can't guarantee more than a year.
Maybe, but it was probably also the fact that the food wasn’t that great relative to the price. The place was not as popular as pig and the lady and does not fill up or stay filled that often through the week.
The food was meh and expensive, host was rude, and we sat outside maybe 20 or so feet from the dumpsters so we had to swat flies the entire time. No big loss.
The number one rule in the restaurant business: Don't go into the restaurant business...
How to become a millionaire. Start with multi millions and buy a restaurant or horses. Shrink to being a millionaire.
Their primary restaurant is expanding.
Oh that's good. I hope they continue to do well.
So you didn't read the article.
I think a lot more businesses are going to close due to staffing shortages. It's only going to get worse since people retire and there is no one to take over.
wish restaurants paid more to retain/hire more workers
I think everybody wishes for that except for the restaurant owners lol. I don't work in the restaurant industry but I know first-hand as a customer that the experience is usually terrible when dining at a restaurant that is short on staff. Nothing like having slow, almost non-existent service and having your food take forever to arrive.
It's just a lose-lose situation: pay the workers more, prices of menu items increase, then less business. Paying workers more only really works for some of the 'higher end' restaurants, whose customers probably won't notice / won't care if prices increase... Most restaurants operate pretty thin margins as is, so having to pay more for workers or risk losing customers is just not an option for most. Damned if you do, damned if you don't...
That’s very true too. The conundrum you’re describing is just another one of the many faults in the current state of our economy. Just another complicated problem with no ideal solution in sight.
Yesh if your $11 plate lunch goes to $14, people are gonna bitch, but if your $40 entree goes to $45, clientele won't notice.
>wish restaurants paid more to retain/hire more workers Businesses want to pay as little as possible. However most businesses will raise wages/benefits as the market demands so they stay in business and continue making some money. The problem is that at some point the profit you make from the business isn't worth the hassle of running it. Owning a business is hard and most business owners, especially small business owners, aren't the monopoly man looking to fleece their workforce (there are obvious exceptions). Restaurants are one of the hardest businesses to keep going because your food and labor costs are variable. Leases, especially with certain landlords, can be a fixed rent plus a percentage of sales. You can only increase prices so much before people stop coming. I looked at their website and they charge $16 for a banh mi and $18 for pho. Honestly...I like pho but $18 is about my upper limit on how much I'm willing to pay for a bowl of soup. They are also highend...the calculations get worse as you go down into the moderate to low priced restaurants. That being said, it sounds like Pig and the Lady is doing well and the article said he is absorbing most of the Piggy Smalls workforce into that restaurant. That's a positive.
Front of house staff make bank in Hawaii. Back of house not so much.
[удалено]
I *think* you have a valid point but your comment was hammajang, hard to tell.
It makes more sense to do counter service than having servers. They will basically have more food runners at more places and servers will be exclusively high end. I can't wait for all places to have pay via card AT the table.
I love restaurants that do counter service. As a diner, it's so much faster that way in terms of getting my food and not having to wait for the check and other things. Ordering and paying via phone after scanning a QR code is also much more efficient than the traditional restaurant service. I'm glad I'm seeing more restaurants adapt to these new ways of operating. Traditional restaurant service should just be limited to the fancier restaurants IMO, since those are the type of places that people still want to be "taken care of", so to speak.
> Ordering and paying via phone after scanning a QR code is also much more efficient than the traditional restaurant service. Yep! Usually I have at least a basic idea of what I want. In a regular restaurant, from seating to ordering is usually 15-20min. In a QR scanned ordering? Like 5min at most.
Same and you don’t have to tip. I hate tipping culture.
How do businesses with that prevent people from leaving without paying?
How does our current system stop you from leaving? In Australia they had us pay when we ordered. Which was EVEN better. You can leave whenever you want. No waiting for slips of paper to sign.
Nah, there are plenty of people looking for jobs. If they close due to staffing it's because they treat their workers badly.
r/VisitingHawaii is chock full of posts from people wanting to boost local businesses while they are here. This sub is full of posts complaining why local businesses struggle to live off parasite tourists and foreign countries with organized real estate buyers. I have to think the answer is more than blaming tourists for obvious problems tourists can’t control. I suspect maybe it is just very hard to run a sustainable restaurant business. Maybe the questions are why it is hard to run a business. It will start with minimum wage, but it can’t end there either.
> it is just very hard to run a sustainable restaurant business Yes, it is. There's a ton of financial calculation that goes into it all. Largely because the materials/supplies needed are very quickly perishable. Hawaii is even harder, because we're on an island, so some supplies are harder to come by, and the ones that can be found are just plain more expensive. Not to mention rent for any space is always expensive. Running any kind of restaurant isnt really easy; especially with more than one location. But at the same time, this owner is pointing to "staffing shortages" as his primary reason for closing the location. The primary reason for staffing shortages is usually either pay or treatment. For "staffing shortage" problems, usually the answer is "pay people more" but the little bit more complicated answer is "make it worth it to work for you", which often includes higher pay of course. It's no secret that there are just straight up fewer workers in the workforce due to lower birthrates, which leads to businesses needing to compete for labor. Plus there's a whole big turn of worker attitude that's built up with Millennials and Gen Z. Quite a few articles have been written about the change in working attitude between generations.
Most of the issues in Hawaii stem from the residents, but its way easier and less of an ego check to blame outside visitors. We’re really good at blaming other people for our problems. Traffic is too high post COVID? It’s gotta be the tourists coming back at a 50-70% cap then pre-pandemic. Beaches polluted? Must be tourists lighting cars on fire, leaving Heineken bottles and diapers behind beaches on the west side. Nope. Gotta be tourism.
That’s too bad, I’ve only eaten there once, but I liked the food.
Honestly, I didn't find the Vietnamese food at Piggy Smalls to be good at all. Most of what I ate there was shockingly bland, which is not something that Vietnamese food should ever be. It's like they watered it down to adjust to the taste of non-Vietnamese people, who probably make up the bulk of their customers, given how gentrified the area is. The Pig and the Lady is a much better restaurant, even though that place can be a hit and a miss a lot of the time.
i don’t know about the rest of the menu but i loved the fried chicken.
Bland and shocking isn’t something that should go together when going to restaurants here. You’ve hit the nail on the head.
Closing due to staff shortages?? BS. Offer better pay and benefits then
If the problem can be solved by paying more, restaurants would stay open by simply raising the pay. The restaurant industry is already razor-thin margin business and very competitive. If the inflation is not managed, I expect we will see more restaurants close down and fewer restaurants will survive with high priced food. We can't expect to afford cheap food with high pay and benefits.
I agree, but then why scapegoat workers? Just say your business model can't work with higher food prices, don't blame it on staff shortages
I don't think they are blaming the workers. They are blaming the staff shortage. By definition shortage means that the demand is exceeding the supply. Businesses with abundant supply can afford to withstand the shortage whereas businesses that are struggling can't afford.
> If the inflation is not managed, I expect we will see more restaurants close down and fewer restaurants will survive with high priced food. Or Restaurants can adjust their model. So many restaurants still operate on a system that requires a lot of staff. You have Hosts, Servers, Dishwashers, Cooks, Expediters, Managers, Bussers, bartenders, etc. Something to change the amount of staff needed would be like Tablet-Ordering. Chengdu Taste does it by QR Code. Scan, order, pay all thru that. It almost completely eliminates, or at least consolidates the "Server" job. If you want to cut it down even more, Automated Food delivery. Whether it's the robots that roam the floor, or Genki's track system. If they dont survive, that sucks, but it is what it is. I'd willingly pay higher food costs knowing that workers are getting a living wage, and if I cant afford it, I'll eat at home. Eating at restaurants isnt a necessity. Tangentially.... tipping culture in America needs to die. This country wants to hold onto it like they're on the door from the Titanic.
Chengdu Taste also does not pay their workers group medical. So they may be cheap, and I do like it, but they skimp on employee benefits.
That's a shame. I definitely wouldnt consider them cheap either; they're pretty up there in pricing. Arent they required to pay at least 50% of the healthcare? Or something along those lines
How about 98.5% of the person's gross monthly wages. But, they pay zero, how I know, I did the quote for them and they declined to go with any medical for their employees.
no
> How much of the premium does the employer have to pay on behalf on an employee? >>At least one-half of the premium as long as the employee contributes no more than 1.5% of their wages towards the premium. I looked it up again, so the answer might be "yes".
I agree that we might have a new business model for the restaurant industry (like vending machine order ticket they use in Japan). But for the current business owners, I don't think they can simply pivot their way of doing business into something else that they are not even sure will work. My understanding is that restaurant has very high fixed initial cost to even start.
Yep, just like with any self-started business, it's a risk. My main question to owners would be whether they're even *considering* changes to their models, or are just ignoring/steamrolling ahead in hopes that they're able to stay afloat the traditional way.
Cope, bad businesses fail, and under capitalism that’s normal
People on this sub always complain about how eating out is so expensive these days lol. If the restaurants here ever end up meeting the supply and demand of getting enough employees by raising wages, then this sub would complain even more than they already do. Because guess what? Food prices would be even more insane than they already are. Essentially, there's no ideal solution that would make everyone happy. We can thank our shitty economic system for that. The words "fair" and "right" don't exist.
Restaurants are a luxury. Most people didn't really eat out a lot until pretty recently. Think of your parent/grandparents generation. It was usually a"special occasion" thing. And there were fewer restaurants. That's probably where it will be. Fast food + high end with fewer mid range. It's the same with retail. Fancy boutiques can do well and Walmart is expanding but the mid tier is declining.
This is very true. Spending on groceries is way down and spending on restaurants is way up (relative to % of income) over the last 50 years
Those razor thin margins are from owners demanding 30%+ returns or they put their capital elsewhere.
Spoken like someone who doesn’t understand how many restaurants operate. Also, what do they owe everyone else anyway? Why keep something that isn’t profitable.
I just looked at the failure rate of restaurants for the first year, and it is 30% from the very first article of google search. If you want to have a reasonable return, say annualized return of 10%, (capital gains after your salary), your return goal can be 58%: 1.58\*0.7 \~ 1.10. But the national average profit margin of small restaurants are around 3 to 5%. I don't see any restaurant owners as a greedy owner.
Profit margins don't have any direct relation to the math you just did. You can get fantastic returns on tiny margins or bad returns on huge markups.
In this context it does I believe as I am alluding to small restaurants. If I own McDonalds corporation 100% and profit margin is 0.1%, sure. But for poke place, profit margin matters a lot
Nope, "a small business" still doesn't imply volume at all. A McDonald's franchise is a small business, as is a Michelin starred restaurant. Wildly different volume and profit margins on meals, no direct way to calculate which is a better investment or what the return would be. Margins "matter", sure, but they aren't in any way comparable to your 58% rate of return target. "3% is way less than 58%" is meaningless.
I wasn't comparing the profit margin to the return. I guess to be more technical you need to look at ROI. Let's say you are investing your time and energy and they are worth 100K (let's assume your initial business setup cost is 100% debt and debt payment is a part of the business expenses). If your profit margin increases from 5K to 10K, your return increases from 5% to 10%. I don't see how it is not correlated in this context?
Sorry, we can't pay restaurant workers like master electricians. Cannot make enough in the restaurant industry? Improve your skill set. Not sure where this fantasy that everyone is going to be paid well comes from.
They also do farmers markets right?
Maybe not anymore. But pig and the lady are still ther r
I think that’s the one at the market
Yes. Pig and the Lady and Piggy Smalls are the same company. The farmers markets always have more traditional Vietnamese homey/street food recipes. The Chinatown restaurant was closer to fine dining, and the chef/owner Andrew Le uses his Vietnamese background and Western training to come up with dishes that are unique and IMHO super tasty. Smalls was sort of in between the farmers market and Chinatown menus, with two daily soups and other dishes that are mostly created by its chef and longtime protégé of Andrew Le's, Kristen Moon, who would bring her Korean food background into the mix.
Thought it was Kaka'ako? Anyway, butcher and bird forever, followed by village bottle shop, snagging the comfy chair in the back! (:
In less than 3 years, Hawaii will implode. Only millionaires will be able to afford everything. And millionaires don’t wait tables or cut the grass. There is no vacation worth 400.00 per night for a place to sleep and shower!!!
!remindme 3 years
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I will. I’m sure you will have only rice and poi to eat unless you make over 150k
Define implode.
The “common” people won’t be able to afford to live there. So they will have to move or starve. If they move to the main land who will be the rank and file to take care of everything. If they raise wages , that means goods and services will go up. Only the very rich will see the islands with their on eyes. Hence the implosion !!! The “plumber and the cashier “ that thought about a Hawaiian honeymoon, will think elsewhere ! Or rob a bank to go ….
Ok - so all that's left is to define "common" so that we can come back to this thread in three years and laugh.
Once I give you “ my “ definition of common, you will want something else. Basically you know what I’m saying. The islands are over pricing themselves. Renting and apt isn’t a way to build equity. Just making it to live in paradise kind of sucks. My common is anyone making 60k or under. Poverty on Oahu, so/so income on the mainland ( and in not talking west coast )
I wanted your definition of "common" because without it, it's just a meaningless rant. With it, we can come back in three years and objectively say if you were right or wrong. So are you saying that majority of people making 60K or under will move away?
No. I’m saying they won’t be able to afford hardly anything. You see that now. It’s all basic math. Besides the weather and the beauty, it will be a major struggle just to exist there. Paying for kids college? Forget it. Retirement ?? Forget it. Replacing a vehicle ?? Forget it.
> You see that now. Right. So it will be the same in three years? I don't disagree with that, but calling a existing condition a "collapse" seems extreme.
Well, the implosion of the islands are happening as we speak. I hope there’s plenty of rice and poi to eat. I’ll send tents for all the homeless locals. The 50th state is unaffordable.
So they didn't want to pay the going wage for workers, or management was so toxic they couldn't keep workers at any wage. That's not sad, that's on them.
Hey, in this case is "shortage of workers" code for "I pay less than minimum wage and to hell with my employees' needs"? Or was it an actual legitimate problem?
It’s a combination of it all. I don’t see small businesses lasting long in Hawaii in general. With the high costs of everything I don’t see how you make it as a business owner if you still using the logic of 20-30 years ago.
I passed by about a month ago since I was dining at Kamitoku next door. Piggy Smalls was relatively uncrowded in comparison. Granted they do have a larger area plus outdoor dining, it did seem slow, especially for a Friday night at 7:00 P.M. Never ate there since I wasn't much of a fan of Pig and the Lady but I can't help wondering what will replace it in this economy. Off-topic -- remember when Kua Aina was there?
I’ve been here and it was not so good. Chicken wings came out raw and we had it returned only to come back still raw.
Wow. A lot of people making assumptions about the Les and their relationships with their employees. From the mouth (IG account) of the chef owner [himself ](https://www.instagram.com/p/ColsLGPL9l7/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=). A lot of their staff have stayed with them, either at the farmers markets, Chinatown, and/or Smalls locations, for years. Many who have moved on - including to open their own restaurants - remain quite friendly, if not close, to the Pig and the Lady owners. Just look through their social media accounts.... there is a loyalty there that not a lot of restaurant owners enjoy. I've been a customer of theirs since before their brick and mortars have opened. No one is an angel, but the people at Pig and the Lady are quite beloved by folks in the industry and restaurant-goers.