Restaurateur Richard Mott Sees Plunging Wine Sales Hit Dining Margins

餐饮从业者理查德·莫特指葡萄酒销量暴跌重创餐厅利润率 随着年轻食客减少饮酒，曾用来补贴高昂厨房人力与飞涨食材成本的高利润葡萄酒销售不复存在，独立高端餐饮正面临攸关存亡的利润挤压。 餐饮从业者兼布斯商学院MBA毕业生理查德·莫特回顾了他四十年的职业生涯，从经营大学地下室咖啡摊，到打理芝加哥知名高端餐厅North Pond及Spark Shared Kitchen餐饮孵化器。莫特概述了独立餐饮业面临的严峻运营逆风，包括几乎为零的准入壁垒、来自虚荣型投资者的非经济性竞争、工资窃取导致的不平等竞争，以及因食材成本上升、工资通胀和高利润酒精消费代际断崖式下滑所带来的剧烈利润挤压。他阐述了共享商用厨房如何通过资产整合，为初创餐饮创业者缓解高昂的地产和设备资本支出，并将批量批发制造与依托应用程序的幽灵厨房在地产需求上进行了对比。 高端餐饮的酒水经济学正经历巨大的结构性转变：由于代际戒酒趋势、大麻替代品以及GLP-1类药物的普及，North Pond在过去18个月里，葡萄酒和烈酒销售额占比从28年间持续保持的33%–34%骤降至24%。 (40:00) 餐饮业面临巨大的成本压力，厨师起薪在三到四年内跃升了约30%，餐厅食材通胀率徘徊在7%左右，促使North Pond在两年内四次提价。 (42:47) 诸如Spark Shared Kitchen等共享商用厨房提供了一种不同于专注外卖的幽灵厨房的模式，通过在低成本工业走廊整合昂贵资本设备，服务于批量生产、餐饮外包和食品创业。 (45:25) 独立餐厅的经营几乎毫无经济护城河，利润率微薄且全行业回报为负，而不得不与非经济性业余爱好者以及通过克扣工资削减成本的经营者竞争，更令这一局面雪上加霜。 (30:00)

Restaurateur Richard Mott argues that independent fine dining is fundamentally disadvantaged by low barriers to entry, non-economic vanity capital, and the erosion of high-margin beverage revenue. Surviving nearly three decades required hedging seasonal academic food services against park concessions and pivoting toward shared culinary infrastructure. Counter-Balancing Volatility Across Foodservice Niches (20:00) Mott began his operating career by turning a University of Chicago business school basement coffee kiosk into a 20-unit regional food network. By negotiating fixed rents and introducing lunch items, he achieved strong operating leverage across academic departmental buildings while intentionally bypassing large institutional providers like Aramark. However, operating within higher education exposed the business to severe seasonality, leaving overhead unpaid during three-month summer hiatuses. To balance this counter-cyclical cash flow, Mott partnered with the Chicago Park District to run park concession stands, which positioned him in 1997 to bid on a neglected Lincoln Park warming house that became North Pond. Whereas campus coffee shops operated as predictable utilities with transaction volumes tied mechanically to student class schedules, fine dining functioned as an occasional luxury driven by critical acclaim and celebratory milestones, establishing an operational hedge across seasons. Non-Economic Competition and Unforgiving Industry Moats (30:00) Independent restaurants face extreme operational fragility because the sector lacks intellectual property protections and has virtually zero barriers to entry. Mott emphasizes that operators face severe market distortion from non-economic participants, such as affluent professionals who open vanity restaurants without requiring commercial returns, treating them akin to prestige sports franchises. These hobbyist ventures absorb persistent losses while competing against disciplined operators for market share. Simultaneously, operators who strictly comply with labor, overtime, and immigration laws historically operated at an estimated 5% to 10% cost disadvantage against competitors engaging in wage theft or under-the-table practices. While broader cultural accountabilities and post-MeToo workplace reckonings have begun curbing abusive managerial practices across kitchens, high industry failure rates mean the aggregate sector continues to yield negative financial returns. Margin Erosion From Shifting Beverage Habits (40:00) Fine dining relies fundamentally on beverage sales to subsidize labor-intensive kitchens. At North Pond, executing a multi-course dinner requires an expansive brigade of line cooks, pastry specialists, and back waiters, whereas serving a roughly $110 bottle of wine yields an identical margin with only minutes of labor. For 28 years, alcohol consistently made up 33% to 34% of North Pond's gross sales; over the past 18 months, that share dropped precipitously to 24%. Mott attributes this decline to generational wellness trends favoring reduced alcohol intake, the rise of THC-infused alternatives, and the growing prevalence of GLP-1 appetite suppressants. This drop in top-margin revenue coincided with acute inflationary pressures: starting cook wages surged roughly 30% over three to four years, and food costs rose roughly 7%. These spikes forced North Pond to accelerate menu repricing from an annual cadence to every six months, pushing average checks to $400 per couple and concentrating demand around major anniversaries rather than casual dining. Industrial Shared Kitchens Versus Turnkey Storefronts (45:25) Because building commercial kitchens represents one of the most capital-intensive real estate endeavors outside of medical facilities, Mott developed Spark Shared Kitchen as an incubator model. Occupying a 60,000-square-foot warehouse in Chicago's industrial Brighton Park neighborhood, the facility pools expensive infrastructure—such as a $26,000 commercial ice cream maker—to lower capital expenditure barriers for artisanal producers and caterers. Under Spark's master umbrella license, culinary entrepreneurs can acquire operating permits and begin production within days, avoiding years-long commercial leases and protracted municipal buildout approvals. Mott contrasts this wholesale production hub with app-based ghost kitchens, which require expensive, high-density locations like Chicago's South Loop to fulfill live five-minute delivery windows rather than scheduled batch manufacturing. Mott's operating history demonstrates that surviving independent hospitality requires diversifying revenue across complementary operational cycles and managing around structural real estate constraints. As dining checks climb past luxury thresholds and traditional alcohol cross-subsidies diminish, independent fine dining faces an unresolved structural question: whether standalone single-unit restaurants can remain economically solvent without the backstop of shared production facilities or non-hospitality cash flows.

拥有芝加哥大学布斯商学院金融学MBA背景的资深餐饮经营者理查德·莫特（Richard Mott）指出，独立精细餐饮本质上是缺乏护城河且全行业总体回报为负的严苛生意。经营者不仅长期面临业余资本涌入导致的非经济竞争和守法合规的成本劣势，近期更遭遇酒水利润支柱崩塌与成本通胀的双重冲击，这促使重资产设备池化的共享厨房模式成为新的破局方向。 校园初创与跨周期协同：团队大于创意 (6:38) 莫特的商业实践始于1980年代初在芝加哥大学商学院地下室接管的咖啡柜台。他通过引入百吉饼与汤品等餐食，在固定租金结构下放大了营业杠杆，并在毕业后将业务拓展为20处专攻教学楼的校园轻食网点。莫特回顾，早年顶尖商学院几乎只为大型银行与麦肯锡等咨询巨头输送人才，视创业为边缘选择；而如今创业与通过收购创业（ETA）已成为商学院主流方向。结合早期在租赁谈判与员工招聘中的试错教训，莫特的经营认知发生了彻底转变：他认为早期创业成功的决定因素中，初期的商业想法仅占20%，而执行团队与支持环境占80%——例如他对预制菜配送公司Home Chef创始人Pat Vihtelic的早期投资，便完全基于对创业团队个人的信任而非商业模式本身。 面对大学业务在暑期长达三个月营收停滞的周期性痛点，以及大型餐饮服务商（如Aramark与Compass Group）开始统揽全校综合物业合同的挤压，莫特向芝加哥公园管理局竞标，接下了林肯公园一处破败的保暖房并改造成高端餐厅North Pond。精细餐饮的旺季与高校学期的淡季形成对冲，在内部构建起平衡季节性波动的现金流闭环。 零护城河与非经济竞争：独立餐饮困境 (30:00) 莫特直言独立精细餐饮是“最糟糕的行业之一”。该领域准入门槛极低，配方与烹饪创新几乎无法建立知识产权护城河，极易被市场迅速仿冒。与此同时，合规经营者长期承担着结构性财务劣势：在餐饮业，严格遵循劳动法、支付法定加班费并审核正规用工身份的企业，其营业成本通常比克扣工资或违规用工的同行高出5%至10%。尽管近年来反职场骚扰与劳工权益维权促使行业恶劣现象有所收敛，但底层财务脆弱性并未消除。 更为严峻的挑战来自于行业内大量“非经济动机”参与者。许多在医疗或专业服务领域积累了丰厚财富的个人，仅凭个人爱好或社交虚荣心便盲目投资开店，并不以追求正向现金流为运营前提。莫特将其比作富豪耗巨资收购职业运动队：这种非理性资本扭曲了市场定价与竞争机制，导致餐饮行业整体在统计学上呈现负回报，极少有独立餐厅能跨过三年的生存门槛。 酒水利润引擎失灵：双重通胀与代际变迁 (40:00) 精细餐饮的传统盈利模型高度依赖酒水销售对厨房人工与食材损耗的交叉补贴。莫特分析，一份130美元的多道菜晚餐背后需要后厨近十名厨师及大量前厅人员协同运转；相比之下，一瓶售价110美元的葡萄酒仅需服务员两分钟的开瓶取酒流程，毛利相近却几乎没有额外的人力与损耗成本。在North Pond运营的前28年里，酒水营收占比极具规律地稳定在33%至34%。然而在过去18个月中，该比例断崖式滑落至24%，直接抽走了餐厅最丰厚的一块利润。莫特将这一变化归因于年轻一代倡导健康节制的饮酒习惯、THC大麻替代饮品的普及，以及GLP-1类减肥药物对食欲与高阶餐饮消费欲望的潜在抑制。 在收入结构恶化的同时，成本端遭遇双重通胀挤压。莫特透露，初级厨师起薪在三到四年内上涨约30%，餐饮食材通胀率达到约7%，远超3%至3.5%的整体CPI水平。即使North Pond依托威斯康星州等地的本土农场网络减缓了全球供应链波动的影响，每周按需采购新鲜食材的特性仍让批发价格上涨即时体现在账面上。为此，餐厅不得不将年度调价频次压缩至每半年一次，两年内提价四次。如今双人含配酒套餐花费达400美元左右，促使顾客心理发生转变，客流进一步向重大纪念日等体验型消费集中，常规周中客流明显缩水。 重资产池化与监管转型：共享厨房实践 (45:25) 为缓解独立餐饮极高的硬件投资门槛，莫特创办了占地6万平方英尺的Spark Shared Kitchen。他明确厘清了“共享厨房”与外卖“幽灵厨房”在底层资产逻辑上的差异：幽灵厨房必须选址在类似芝加哥南环线等高密度住宅核心区，依赖5分钟车程内覆盖8万居民以支撑即时外卖派送；而共享孵化厨房则选址在布赖顿公园等租金低廉的工业走廊，专注于活动餐饮配餐、手工食品研发以及批量生产。 通过提供小时制工位与独立专属单元，共享平台为微型餐饮创业者承担了极为昂贵的专业排风设施、地漏工程与市政合规改造。莫特以冰淇淋生产为例，一台价值2万至2.6万美元的高级连续式冷冻机每日产能可达50至200加仑，创业者通过分时租赁只需支付单日千元左右的场地与设备使用费即可完成整批生产并入冷库，避免了单体采购低效设备带来的产能瓶颈与沉没成本。此外，莫特观察到芝加哥市政审批体系由早先严苛设障的“拒绝局”（评级约D-）演变为以协助商户开业为导向的务实机构（评级约B-），大幅缩短了从业者的准入周期。 莫特的运营经历表明，独立餐饮正处于传统高毛利补贴模式瓦解与要素成本通胀交织的历史拐点。共享厨房通过重资产设备池化与监管合规前置，有效降低了单体创业者的沉没成本与试错门槛；然而，行业内低准入壁垒与非经济资本盲目入场所导致的市场无序竞争，依然是制约独立餐饮业实现长期稳健回报的结构性难题。

## Background 本期节目由彭博（Bloomberg）旗下的《Odd Lots》播客于 2026 年 10 月 24 日发布在 RSS 及网页端。节目简介介绍道，芝加哥资深餐饮人 Richard Mott 在 1980 年代读研时以大学地下室咖啡馆起家，随后创办了运营近三十年的知名农场到餐桌餐厅 North Pond，并拓展了餐饮孵化共享厨房 Spark Shared Kitchen；两位主持人与 Mott 深入探讨了食材与人工成本攀升、食客饮酒习惯改变，以及餐饮业为何极易倒闭的微观经济真相。 ## TL;DR 节目围绕芝加哥资深餐饮从业者兼芝加哥大学布斯商学院 MBA 校友 Richard Mott 的实战经历展开，以餐饮业作为透视通胀与劳动力市场的宏观经济窗口。Mott 剖析了自己从 1980 年代校园咖啡连锁到创办三十年精致餐饮老店 North Pond 的起伏历程，揭示了高级餐厅极其残酷的竞争格局、缺乏护城河与“严格守法带来的成本劣势”，并指出过去靠高利润酒水维持运转的底层模型正在因年轻人健康生活方式及 GLP-1 减肥药物而瓦解。最后，他详细介绍了新型孵化器 Spark Shared Kitchen 的重资产与共用设备模型，展现了其如何通过剥离繁琐行政审批与重度资本开支，助力小微食品创业者实现轻资产突围。 ## Atmosphere & style 对谈氛围务实、睿智且极具洞察力，既有顶尖商学院理性经济学视角的冷峻解剖，又洋溢着一线实体创业者数十年摸爬滚打的鲜活故事。Mott 毫无保留地戳破了外行人对开餐厅的浪漫幻想，用“周日早晨通下水道”的冷幽默与主持人的敏锐追问碰撞出深刻火花。整场对话既充满对餐饮行业微薄利润与倒闭宿命的冰冷警示，又通过共享厨房等模式创新流露出对实体食品创业者的深切共情与温情支持。 ## Bulletin - `40:00` 餐饮业酒水高利润模式正遭遇结构性冲击：芝加哥知名餐厅 North Pond 过去28年间酒水营收占比稳定在33%至34%，但在最近18个月内骤降至24%，主因在于年轻人饮酒量下滑、健康观念重塑及替代品流行。 - `43:24` 餐饮业面临高于整体经济的通胀压力：初级厨师起薪较三四年前上涨约30%，食品供应链实际通胀达7%，迫使餐厅由过去的年度调价转变为两年内连续四次涨价。 - `30:00` 餐饮业合规运营存在相对成本劣势：严格遵守最低工资、全额加班费与合法劳务身份规定的餐厅，相较于违规竞争对手会承担5%到10%的经营劣势。 - `48:00` 共享厨房通过共用高昂固定资产实现规模经济：商业厨房建设单平米造价仅次于医院病房，共享模式让初创食品商仅需按小时或按套间租赁即可投产，规避了多年租约及复杂行政审批。 ## Key takeaways - `00:00` 餐饮业是观察宏观经济的绝佳微观缩影，集中承载了劳动力成本、大宗商品供应链与商业地产租金三大核心变量。 - `05:00` 商学院教育范式在过去数十年发生根本逆转：从早年单纯为银行与咨询公司输送企业螺丝钉，演变为将创业学作为核心专业，并广泛支持自主创业与搜索基金。 - `12:30` 创业成功要素随经验发生认知颠倒：商业点子本身仅占20%，而执行团队、支持网络与外部商业环境占据80%。 - `20:00` 高校咖啡店与精致高级餐厅在经济学上属于不同物种：前者依赖课表与客流确定性，属于刚需公用设施；后者以明星主厨为中心，具有极大的需求波动性与以“狗年”计的短暂生命周期。 - `30:00` 餐饮行业缺乏专有知识产权与技术护城河，极低的准入门槛使得同行能够迅速低成本抄袭任何爆款菜品创意。 - `31:30` 非理性跨界资本扰乱餐饮经济秩序：大量高收入业余人士出于虚荣心和情怀开店，不计日常现金流亏损，使理性商户面临严峻的不对称竞争。 - `33:30` 行业存在严重的幸存者偏差：公众注意力往往被极少数餐饮集团的成功所掩盖，忽视了绝大多数新餐厅在数年内倒闭且行业整体资本回报率为负的残酷现实。 - `37:40` 高级餐厅的菜品由于昂贵的人工与食材配置几乎不盈利，传统商业模式极度依赖高利润率且低劳动密度的酒水消费来维系。 - `43:24` 成本通胀重塑了高级餐厅的消费属性：双人用餐配酒花费推升至400美元，导致顾客大幅缩减日常随机餐饮，转向重大纪念日等仪式感消费。 - `50:00` 共享厨房与幽灵厨房在选址与模式上存在本质区别：幽灵厨房注重高密度住宅黄金地段以保障外卖配送半径，共享厨房则多位于工业区以实现重资产设备共享与集中合规孵化。 - `52:15` 芝加哥市政商业审批环境明显好转：营商牌照审批从昔日千方百计拒签的“拒绝部”转向更具支持性的协助落地服务。 - `54:15` 现代商业基础设施通过专业分工释放生产力：共享厨房等业态剥离了繁琐的市政合规、法务租约和重资产设备负担，使擅长产品研发的专业大厨无需兼顾行政脏活。 ## Detailed walkthrough ### `00:00` 宏观经济的微观缩影：为什么餐饮业是绝佳的观察窗口 播客开篇，主持人 Tracy Allaway 与 Joe Weisenthal 再次来到芝加哥。Tracy 提到芝加哥是她曾生活过的美丽城市，重返此地总让她联想起中学时光。他们此次虽是为现场活动而来，但仍特意加录了一期节目。节目的初衷源于以往采访各行业一线从业者（例如此前对话过的面包师）带来的启发：相较于经济学家或投资人停留在概念层面的商业推演，真正身处一线的实操者能提供更为鲜活的洞察。 Joe 补充指出，《经济学人》提出的“巨无霸指数”（Big Mac Index）之所以能够作为衡量宏观经济的经典标尺，核心就在于餐饮业无缝链接了经济体系中的三大基本要素——劳动力、大宗商品成本与租金。整个宏观经济的几乎每一个投入变量，最终都会反映在餐馆的资产负债表与日常运营中。当一位从业者既具备顶尖商学院的理论金融功底，又拥有数十年真刀真枪的创业实战经验时，其观察视角便显得尤为难得。 本期嘉宾正是兼具这一双重背景的芝加哥资深餐饮人 Richard Mott。他不仅是当地著名农场到餐桌餐厅 North Pond 的创办人与经营者，还创办了孵化餐饮初创企业的共享厨房项目 Spark Shared Kitchen。同时，他早年在芝加哥大学布斯商学院（Booth School of Business）主修金融，随后却毅然舍弃了传统的金融职业道路，全职投身餐饮服务业。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 餐饮业连接宏观经济要素示意图 accDescr: 展示劳动力、大宗商品和租金三大宏观投入如何汇总至餐饮企业损益，并衍生出宏观微观视角的结合。 subgraph MacroInputs["宏观经济基本要素"] Labor["劳动力成本"] Commodity["食材与大宗商品供应链"] Rent["商用地产与租金"] end subgraph RestaurantBiz["餐饮企业运营与损益 (P&L)"] Ops["日常运营与毛利"] Scale["选址与扩展模式"] end subgraph Perspective["从业者双重视角"] Theory["商学院金融理论"] Practice["一线实体创业实操"] end Labor --> Ops Commodity --> Ops Rent --> Scale Ops --> Perspective Scale --> Perspective ``` ### `05:00` 商学院的风向演变：从企业螺丝钉到创业热潮 回顾自己的求学经历，Richard Mott 透露自己在布法罗大学本科阶段其实主修历史、城市研究与政治学，后来才进入芝加哥大学布斯商学院攻读金融方向的工商管理硕士（MBA）。研究生期间，他曾在当时正处于高速成长期的前进保险公司（Progressive Insurance）金融部门实习。尽管那是一家极具活力的优秀企业，但在大公司的企业办公室待了整整三个月后，他彻底认清了自己的职业诉求：“在企业办公室度过的三个月，足以让我余生都彻底远离那个领域。”他明确意识到，自己不想替别人打工，而是要独立创办属于自己的事业。 Joe 指出，如今在斯坦福商学院或沃顿商学院，聚集着大量想要成为创业者、风险投资人，或是募集数百万美元设立搜索基金（search fund）去收购地方泳池维修店的年轻人，然而在过去，顶尖商学院纯粹是向大型机构输送人才的流水线。Richard 对此深表赞同，直言当年的环境与现在有着 180 度的天翻地覆变化。在他读书的年代，商学院根本没有所谓的“创业学”课程，也没有针对小微企业融资的研讨会，整个教学体系唯一的目的就是为大陆银行（Continental Bank）、花旗银行（Citicorp）或麦肯锡（McKinsey）这类大型金融与咨询机构培训员工。 当 Richard Mott 决定在商学院求学期间便自己创业时，他的同班同学普遍感到匪夷所思，甚至有人带着讽刺意味调侃：“怎么了，Rich？你难道没拿到一份正式的工作邀约吗？”然而具有讽刺意味的是，如今在布斯商学院，规模最大的单一专业方向正是创业学（Entrepreneurial Studies），其选修规模甚至超过了传统的市场营销与金融学。此外，芝加哥大学还设立了全校性的波尔斯基创业与创新中心（Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation），专门推进物理实验室前沿成果的商业化变现与学生初创项目。 - **当年商学院主流去向**：大陆银行（Continental Bank）、花旗银行（Citicorp）、麦肯锡（McKinsey）等传统大型金融与咨询巨头。 - **时代反差**：过去创业被视为找不到体面“正式工作”的无奈之举，如今创业学却跃升为布斯商学院最热门的学科方向。 - **学界创业生态**：沃顿、哈佛、斯坦福、伯克利等院校目前均配备了极其完善的实验室、孵化器与支持资金。 ### `06:50` 地下室咖啡厅起家：二十家校园餐饮网络的构建与咖啡消费变迁 Richard Mott 的实体商业探索始于芝加哥大学商学院地下室的一个学生承包项目。当时校方每年都会挑选几名学生接管该咖啡厅，Richard 成功竞标拿下经营权。接手之后，他并未止步于售卖简单的饮品，而是迅速引入百吉饼（bagel）、三明治以及各类午餐食品，将简陋的咖啡角改造成了一个功能完备的简易学生餐厅，营收由此实现暴增。 该业务拥有完全独立的损益核算（P&L），经营团队向学校支付固定租金。由于签约时的租金是按纯咖啡厅的标准核定的，在营收翻了四倍后，经营团队获得了极其丰厚的回报。Richard 笑称，那笔收益比他当时一生见过的钱都要多。到他商学院毕业时，他们已经在校内开设了四家分店，并顺理成章将其升级为全职事业；八九年之后，该网络在各大高校教学楼内拓展到了足足二十家分店。与 Compass 或 Aramark 这类承包全校主食堂包餐计划（board plans）的跨国餐饮巨头不同，他们专注于非主食堂教学楼内的咖啡与三明治快餐点位。 谈及咖啡馆的历史，Joe 与 Tracy 探讨起咖啡文化如何作为理解美国宏观经济与消费变迁的绝佳切入点——从初代美式滴滤，到星巴克掀起的连锁浪潮，再到如今层出不穷的开心果糖浆抹茶、南瓜抹茶拿铁甚至香蕉布丁小豆蔻拿铁等复杂特饮。面对当下繁复的特饮潮流，Richard Mott 回顾道，在他们创业的 1980 年代，咖啡消费形态截然不同。当时的校园咖啡馆只提供极其基础的产品：普通咖啡与低因咖啡、汽水、三明治、热汤以及一些烘焙面点；所谓的咖啡，使用的就是类似海军军营里那种三加仑装的大型 Bunn 商用滴滤保温桶直接打出来的浓汁，没有任何现代花哨的花样。 - **起步点位**：芝加哥大学商学院地下室学生咖啡馆竞标项目。 - **商业模式创新**：在固定租金框架下扩充品类（加入三明治、百吉饼与午餐简餐），使总营收实现四倍跃升。 - **扩张规模**：毕业时扩展至校园内 4 个点位，8 至 9 年内发展至拥有 20 家连锁门店的校园轻餐饮网络。 - **时代对比**：20 世纪 80 年代初的咖啡馆仅提供极简的批量滴滤咖啡（美军军营式 Bunn 咖啡桶），与当下追求复杂原料搭配与定制风味糖浆的精品特饮文化形成鲜明对照。 ### `10:00` 早期咖啡生意的摸索与星巴克的崛起 Richard Mott 回忆起他在1980年代初（1981年开始，1982年毕业）在芝加哥大学创办咖啡馆的经历。当时的咖啡标准与现在完全不同。那时的咖啡只有7盎司（小杯）和10盎司（大杯）两种规格，而现在的“小杯”往往比当年的“大杯”还要大。当时的咖啡质量用现代标准来看简直是“糟糕透顶”，甚至在暑假停课时，没用完的咖啡豆会直接装进容器里，等到9月开学继续用。Mott 调侃道，那时的咖啡不过是一种“热的褐色饮料”，但当时大家对工业级咖啡并无怨言。 大约在1980年代中期（1986或1987年左右），星巴克将芝加哥作为其在西北地区以外开设分店的首个城市。Mott 视咖啡如命的妻子去体验后赞不绝口，告诉他那是一家只卖咖啡且服务极佳的店。然而，当时的 Mott 对此嗤之以鼻。Richard Mott 谈到自己对星巴克最初的怀疑时说：“一家只卖咖啡的店？是的。这能撑多久？”结果讽刺的是，他自己后来竟然陆续开了20家咖啡馆。 - **咖啡杯尺寸对比**：1980年代的小杯为7盎司，大杯为10盎司，远小于现代咖啡馆的常规尺寸。 - **星巴克进驻芝加哥**：约在1986或1987年，芝加哥成为星巴克在太平洋西北地区以外开拓的首个市场。 --- ### `12:30` 创业初期的教训与商学院教育的演变 谈到创业初期最大的挑战，Mott 坦言自己当时完全是“两眼一抹黑”。他建议任何想要创业的人：“如果我要给别人提建议，我会让他们先去给别人打工，学习这个行业，让别人为你的错误买单。”因为坚持要为自己工作，他几乎犯了所有能犯的错误，包括签下糟糕的租约以及在招聘上栽跟头——他花了很多时间才学会如何为了业务需要而雇人，而不是因为自己喜欢某个人而雇人。 Mott 指出，1980年代芝加哥大学的 MBA 项目极其严谨和学术化，但完全忽视了公共演讲、面试技巧等“软技能”。而如今的商学院已经彻底改变，采用更全面的方式培养商业人才，并建立了完整的生态系统来支持“搜索基金”（Search Funds）和“通过收购进行创业”（Entrepreneurship through Acquisition）的群体。 Mott 总结了他多年来对创业成功要素看法的转变：“如果你在15年前问我，在我开始与这些创业公司大量合作之前，我的看法会是：成功80%取决于商业创意。而现在我会把这个比例倒过来，我认为创意只占20%，其余80%是团队、环境和你的支持网络。” --- ### `14:30` 投资 Home Chef 的故事与广告插播 为了佐证“团队重于创意”的观点，Mott 分享了自己投资餐食套盒（Meal Kit）公司 Home Chef 的故事。当创始人 Pat Vihtelic 带着这个想法找到他时，Mott 觉得这简直是个“烂透了的主意”——在网上买食品然后邮寄，听起来太荒谬了。但因为他非常欣赏 Pat 这个年轻人，最终还是决定支持他。事实证明，Pat 带领公司取得了难以置信的成功。 随后节目进入了一段广告插播，内容包括： - **巴克莱银行《Barclays Brief》播客**：提供快速、精炼的市场与研究动态。 - **彭博科技一分钟（Bloomberg Tech Minute）**：报道美国电动汽车（EV）需求在经历去年的爆发后开始趋于稳定，经销商的电动车库存天数从2026年初的180天降至8月的78天。买家目前更青睐油电混合动力车及价格亲民的二手电动车。 - **Underdog 体育卡牌抽取应用**：宣传其即时开包、卡牌邮寄及高额卡牌价值的玩法。 - **爱德华琼斯（Edward Jones）财富管理**：宣传其个性化的财富管理与传承规划服务。 --- ### `17:00` 咖啡生意的转型与向公园景区的拓展 广告结束后，主持人 Tracy 引导 Mott 梳理他多年来的商业版图。Mott 介绍说，他的咖啡馆生意最初专注于高校市场，先后在5所大学开设了分店。然而，他们很快遇到了行业逆风：大学开始转向综合外包合同模式，将餐饮、洗衣、食堂等所有服务整体打包给 Aramark 或 Compass Group 这样的巨头。 Mott 谈到当时面临的竞争困境时表示：“不幸的是，在餐饮服务市场方面，我们当时有点像是在逆水行舟。”作为一家专注于咖啡馆的细分小公司，Mott 的企业逐渐被这种市场趋势所吞噬。 此外，高校咖啡馆是一门季节性极强的生意（每年9月到次年5月营业）。为了平衡淡旺季，Mott 开始寻找能填补夏季空白的业务。他们与芝加哥公园管理局（Chicago Park District）展开合作，运营了一系列特许经营点和特许摊位。正是这一契机，为他们后来竞标并创立著名的 North Pond 餐厅埋下了伏笔。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Richard Mott 的早期商业版图演变 accDescr: 展示了 Richard Mott 从大学咖啡馆起步，因应对季节性和巨头竞争而转向公园特许经营，最终走向 North Pond 餐厅的过程。 subgraph Coffee ["高校咖啡馆业务 (1981年起)"] A["芝加哥大学地下室咖啡馆"] --> B["扩展至5所大学分店"] end subgraph Challenges ["面临的挑战"] C["季节性限制 (9月至次年5月)"] D["巨头竞争 (Aramark/Compass 综合外包)"] end subgraph Pivot ["业务转型与拓展"] E["芝加哥公园管理局特许经营"] end B --> C B --> D C -->|"寻找夏季平衡"| E E -->|"获得竞标机会"| F["North Pond 餐厅 (后来的发展)"] ``` ### `20:00` 从破败废墟到林肯公园的餐饮实验：咖啡店与高级餐厅的经济学鸿沟 Richard Mott 回忆起当初拿下林肯公园（Lincoln Park）自然博物馆附近那栋老式取暖屋（warming house）作为餐厅用地的经历。如今那片区域是公园内最令人心旷神怡的黄金地段之一，甚至常有朋友好奇地探听：“你是不是在市政府有人脉，才拿到那份合同的？”然而 Mott 坦言事实恰恰相反，在 1990 年代末，那里只是公园一个被彻底遗忘的角落，充斥着流浪汉与街头拉皮条的丑陋行径，旁边的池塘更是污浊得如同一口臭泥塘。他们能中标的原因极其朴素——根本没有其他人愿意投标。 这座日后成为传奇的高级餐厅 North Pond，在运营曲线上恰好与大学校园里的咖啡店形成了完美的互补。大学咖啡店是典型的学期制生意，而公园内的高端餐饮则极具户外季节性，两者的旺淡季正好相反。在此基础上，Mott 进一步利用现有的厨房与物流设施，开办了一家餐饮承办公司（catering company）和一家自动售货机公司（vending company），将业务半径不断拓宽；此外，在过去的二十多年里，他还以业余爱好的心态投资或入股了朋友及合伙人的八九家初创企业。 谈及校园咖啡店与 North Pond 这种高级精致餐饮（fine dining）在商业本质上的差异时，Mott 强调两者虽然同属餐饮，但逻辑完全相反，甚至不如说是两个截然不同的行业： ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 校园咖啡店与高端精致餐饮商业模式对比 accDescr: 对比大学校园咖啡店与高级精致餐饮在客流特征、核心驱动力、生命周期及消费属性上的不同 subgraph Campus["校园咖啡店（公共公用属性）"] A1["客流预测极具确定性<br/>按课表及在校人数测算"] --> B1["消费需求：刚需填饱肚子"] B1 --> C1["运营重点：通行流量与日常周转"] end subgraph FineDining["North Pond 高级餐厅（奢侈体验属性）"] A2["客流波动大且难以预测<br/>严重依赖媒体评价与主厨名气"] --> B2["消费需求：生日、庆典等非日常奢侈消费"] B2 --> C2["生命周期以‘狗年’计算<br/>主厨驱动与名流效应"] end ``` - **明星主厨驱动与反向 PR 策略**：精致餐饮极度依赖明星主厨文化。North Pond 经营了三十年，先后经历了四任主厨。Mott 刻意退居幕后，媒体宣传中几乎找不到他与餐厅的联系，因为食客冲着的是主厨的名气与烹饪理念，而不是幕后老板的名字。 - **不可捉摸的“狗年”生命周期**：行业内有一句残酷的名言：“在餐饮界，餐厅的寿命是用狗年（以一当七）来计算的，而不是人年。”（“But in restaurants, you measure restaurant lifespans in dog years, not people years.”——Richard Mott）绝大多数餐厅撑过三年就悄无声息地倒闭了，偶尔有活过二十年的老店也属罕见异数。 - **公用设施（Utility）与奢侈体验（Luxury）的鸿沟**：咖啡店的营收可以根据课表掐算出来——周二楼里有 400 名学生，就会有 300 人次进店，课少的时候可能只有 120 人次；而高端餐厅则是非日常的奢侈消费，顾客为了生日或特殊纪念日专程而来，《芝加哥杂志》（Chicago Magazine）的一篇好评就能让餐厅接下来一个月座无虚席，评价若遇冷则立刻门可罗雀。 --- ### `25:00` 从公园小卖部到农场到餐桌先锋：主厨更迭与残酷的行业利润真相 当被问及如果拿 1997 年开业时的菜单与现在的菜单相比会有何变化时，Mott 讲述了餐厅早年荒诞而艰难的合规之路。由于承租的是芝加哥公园管理局（Chicago Park District）的建筑，对方当时的管理思维还停留在“路边偷奸耍滑卖热狗的流动摊贩”上，完全无法理解什么是高端餐饮，更无法接受在公园内部开设酒吧和供应酒精饮料。团队光是取得各项许可就耗费了整整两年半，装潢又花了一年；不仅如此，公园管理局起初不仅禁止他们设立吧台，还强行要求餐厅必须开一个外卖打包窗口。为了适应这种荒唐的限制，他们最初只能将其命名为略带休闲色彩的“North Pond Cafe”。 直到几年后，公园管理局换上了更具前瞻眼光的新任总监与董事会主席，餐厅才被允许拆除外卖窗口、搭建吧台，并真正作为一家高级餐厅来运营。这也迎来了第二任主厨的加入——这位年轻人十分独特，他曾在宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院攻读金融学，却毅然中途放弃金融界转行学厨。Mott 曾前往加州造访爱丽丝·沃特斯（Alice Waters）开创的 Chez Panisse 餐厅，深受震撼，决心在林肯公园的自然环抱中复制这种尊重自然质感的用餐哲学。他们将原本犹如简易工棚的旧建筑改造成手工艺（Arts and Crafts）风格，并早于行业普及之前，探索如今被称为“农场到餐桌”（farm-to-table）的理念，当时他们称之为“可持续餐饮”（sustainable dining）。 当时的大众对这一超前概念感到茫然：餐厅标语写着“北美时令餐饮”（seasonal American dining），食客会打电话询问“你们哪个季节营业？”；菜单上开始列出供货农夫的名字，客人们则困惑地嘀咕“这个叫 Mickey Kluge 的家伙是谁？什么是 Mickey Kluge 梨？”然而，这位沃顿出身的主厨彻底拥抱并深化了这套理念，他加入了慢食协会（Slow Food Board），并成为芝加哥著名绿城集市（Green City Market）的联合创始人之一。他们搭建起了一张由近百个本土小微农场主、手作奶酪师和独立渔民组成的供应网络。Mott 笑称，这些农夫不是爱荷华州拥有 1,200 英亩玉米地的传统第三代农民，而是“被西北大学社会学系博士项目开除后，跑到威斯康星州北部种植有机甜菜的人”。 第二任主厨兼具法式正统烹饪底蕴与可持续农业理念，在 North Pond 掌勺了二十余年，并在极为巧合的节点——2019 年 12 月离职。随后他们迎来了第三任年轻主厨，菜单风格从过去的传统法餐底色，逐步转向更为全球化、兼收并蓄（eclectic）的现代风味。 谈及外界最关心的财务现实时，主持人和公众往往产生错觉：既然纽约等一线城市的高级餐厅夜夜爆满、收费令人咋舌，老板岂不是赚得盆满钵满？对此，Mott 给出了极其直白且冰冷的定论：“对于独立高端精致餐饮而言，餐饮业是你能进入的最糟糕的行业之一。”（“I mean, just the basic, and I'm talking about the independent, pretty fine dining. It's one of the worst industries to ever, ever get into.”——Richard Mott）他指出，表面热闹的高级餐饮本质上处于极度残酷的超竞争（hyper-competitive）环境中，行业准入门槛极低，任何人只要有资本都能入局，这也注定了其背后微薄的利润空间与极高的淘汰风险。 ### `30:00` 极低的准入门槛、缺乏护城河与合规劣势 餐饮行业最大的特点之一就是准入门槛几乎为零。对于那些聪明、勤奋、才华横溢但无法进入高端金融或投行圈子的人来说——例如没有沃顿商学院文凭的第一代移民——开餐厅成了一个极具吸引力的出路。然而，这也导致整个行业处于极度残酷的竞争之中，并且几乎不可能构建真正的商业护城河。即使某家店研发出了全新的爆款产品（比如像“可颂甜甜圈”这样的创新混搭美食），不出几天，街头巷尾的所有竞争对手就都能依样画葫芦抄得一模一样。 更严酷的现实在于合规成本。Richard Mott 指出，如果一家餐厅执意严格遵守所有法律法规，在成本上往往直接处于劣势：“如果你一心想要遵纪守法，你就会比所有竞争对手承受 5% 到 10% 的经营亏损。”长久以来，餐饮业内部充斥着猖獗的克扣工资（wage theft）和超时用工滥用。行业中雇佣了大量没有合法身份的移民劳工，这部分群体因为担心被驱逐而不敢向劳工委员会投诉，导致许多不良雇主肆无忌惮地践踏劳工法。 过去四五年间，行业内部终于迎来了一场迟到的清算。这在一定程度上是由“Me Too”运动推动的。在餐饮行业中，无论是前厅还是后厨，无论是厨师、服务员还是调酒师，任何一位入行超过半年的女性，几乎都经历过令人发指的职场骚扰。随着问责机制的引入，许多昔日声名显赫的名厨因不当行为被扫地出门，劳动法执法也日益严格，这些恶习才逐渐受到遏制。 - 竞争与壁垒：餐饮行业缺乏专有知识产权保护，菜单创意极易被同行无成本复制。 - 守法劣势：合规运营（严格遵循加班费、最低工资及移民法规）相比违规操作会增加 5% 至 10% 的相对成本负担。 - 行业清算：针对后厨霸凌、性骚扰以及压榨非法移民劳工的现象，行业正面临自净与问责。 --- ### `31:30` “别和为了非经济目的入场的人竞争”：餐厅的光鲜幻想与残酷现实 餐饮业另一个巨大的经营陷阱在于竞争者的动机。在商业世界中，最糟糕的情况莫过于你为了经济回报在苦苦经营，而你的对手入场压根就不是为了算经济账。Richard Mott 拿体育俱乐部打了个生动的比方：一个亿万富翁花 120 亿美元买下洛杉矶道奇队（Dodgers），绝不是因为看中其日常现金流有多优秀，而是出于巨大的个人虚荣心，并在玩一场击鼓传花的游戏，赌五年后球队估值还会上涨转手。 许多在其他领域赚了大钱的专业人士（例如高收入医生）也常抱着类似心态跨界开餐厅。这些人绝不会因为钱多无聊跑去买一家汽车拖车公司，因为他们知道自己对修车拖车一窍不通；但每个人都下馆子吃过饭、都有自己的饮食偏好，甚至家里有一份祖传的巧克力曲奇食谱，就自以为懂行，觉得可以开一家餐厅或食品公司。朋友们对外行开餐厅的想象往往充满小资情调：周六晚上打扮得体地出现在吧台，和熟人打招呼、请客人喝酒、自己靠在吧台边惬意地喝上一杯然后回家。 对此，Richard Mott 一针见血地戳破了这种浪漫幻想：“餐饮业的实际日常，是周日早上六点钟在那里通下水道，那才是真正的餐饮业。”这种光鲜亮丽的印象占实际运营的比重微乎其微。对此，播客主持人幽默地回应道，这就像人人都觉得自己能做播客一样——仅仅因为自己有嘴、有观点，就觉得入场轻而易举，殊不知做出来和做得好完全是两码事。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 业余跨界者对餐饮业的认知错位 accDescr: 对比外行跨界投资餐厅的光鲜幻想与实际运营中的残酷现实 subgraph 业余者的浪漫幻想 A["高收入跨界投资<br/>（医生、律师、商人）"] --> B["拥有个人口味偏好<br/>（如私房曲奇配方）"] B --> C["周末光鲜社交<br/>（吧台畅饮、招待朋友）"] end subgraph 严酷的商业现实 D["极高倒闭率与负回报"] E["琐碎苦脏累日常<br/>（清晨排查下水管道堵塞）"] F["非理性资本竞争<br/>（盲目烧钱破坏市场平衡）"] end C -.->|"现实脱节"| D C -.->|"残酷反差"| E A --> F ``` --- ### `33:30` 惨烈的倒闭率与幸存者偏差 餐饮业的宏观统计数据极其冰冷残酷。无论是沃顿商学院的学术研究，还是美国小企业管理局（SBA）的官方数据，都表明餐饮业的倒闭率令人触目惊心。绝大多数新餐厅在开业后几年内都会走向关门大吉，整体行业资本回报率深陷负值区间。 大众之所以对餐饮业产生能赚大钱的错觉，完全是由于严重的幸存者偏差。媒体和公众目光总是聚焦在像 Rich Melman（芝加哥传奇餐饮集团 Lettuce Entertain You 的创始人）这样大获成功、赚得盆满钵满的餐饮巨头身上。但在每一个声名远扬的成功者背后，横亘着至少 40 个默默倒下、无人知晓的失败者，他们在血本无归后只能灰溜溜地关停店铺，重新回去当他们的牙医或做回老本行。 --- ### `35:00` 赞助商与插播资讯 本期节目中间穿插了科技简讯与商业赞助内容： - **Bloomberg Tech Minute**：Carol Masser 报道美国电动车（EV）市场出现复苏迹象。特斯拉（Tesla）与 Rivian 第三季度交付量均超预期；现代（Hyundai）与福特（Ford）的经销商正在要求增加库存；通用旗下凯迪拉克与丰田的主流电动车型亦势头良好。经销商的电动车库存天数已从 2026 年初的约 180 天大幅下降至 8 月的 78 天左右，已基本与传统燃油车持平，显示市场在经历补贴退坡冲击后正逐步企稳。 - **Underdog 体育**：推广其数字化卡牌抽取玩法“Rips”，支持用户低成本抽取实体稀有球星卡（部分珍稀卡牌价值高达 12.5 万美元）。 - **Edward Jones**：提供针对高净值客户的定制化财富管理、家族传承与慈善规划服务。 - **IBM**：推介其企业级 AI 混合架构技术方案，强调无需推倒现有企业软件堆栈即可融合先进 AI 模型。 --- ### `37:40` 菜单设计的利润玄机与时代剧变 回到演播室对话，主持人提出了一个关于餐饮经济学的经典命题：在不探究具体商业机密的前提下，餐厅的菜单究竟是如何设计构建的？坊间普遍流传“餐厅全靠卖酒水赚钱，菜品本身不赚钱”，这一说法是否属实？ Richard Mott 明确证实了这一说法的真实性，并坦言疫情以来的几年对餐饮业是毁灭性的打击——几乎所有同行都在连续三年亏损，即便是眼下的行业复苏也异常艰难，利润空间已被严重压缩至负区间。更关键的是，过去二三十年间维系高级餐厅盈利模式的底层逻辑，眼下正在发生历史性的剧变。 Richard Mott 强调指出了这种模式的必然性：“有关餐厅靠葡萄酒赚钱的说法是千真万确的。”为了维持高品质的出餐水准，一个周六的繁忙夜晚，后厨里往往需要配置 9 到 10 名专业厨师同时高负荷运转，昂贵的人工与生鲜食材成本使得菜品本身的利润微乎其微。然而，随着当下消费者饮酒习惯的断崖式改变，过去赖以生存的高额酒水利润池正遭受前所未有的严峻冲击。 ### `40:00` 酒水销售下滑、健康生活方式与 GLP-1 药物的冲击 餐饮行业中最关键且暴利的盈利来源——酒水销售，正面临前所未有的结构性危机。在高级餐厅的常规运作中，制作一份售价 130 美元的套餐背后涉及极其庞大的人工与复杂工序：甜品师、切配厨师在后厨紧张备餐，前厅则有服务员、副服务员（back waiters）以及传菜/收桌人员（busboys）共同提供服务。然而，当客人点了一瓶平均单价约 110 美元的葡萄酒时，服务员只需花两分钟走去酒窖、取酒、开瓶并端上餐桌。这瓶葡萄酒的利润率与食物相当，却几乎没有任何繁复的人力与操作成本。 然而，眼下的数据令所有餐饮从业者深感焦虑。以经营近 30 年的 North Pond 为例，在开业前 28 年里，酒水销售额在总营收中的占比犹如钟摆般精准稳定，常年保持在 33% 到 34% 之间；但在最近的 18 个月里，该比例断崖式下滑到了 24%。丧失这 8% 的份额意味着失去了利润率最高的业务。年轻一代消费者的饮酒量锐减，这背后既有健康观念的转变，也有大麻与 CBD 产品的替代效应——例如当年芝加哥的 Lollapalooza 音乐节甚至首次推出了含有 THC 成分的玛格丽特鸡尾酒。North Pond 也向公园管理局提交了在菜单中增添相关产品的申请（尚待审批），并已推出了专门的无酒精鸡尾酒菜单。 面对新型减重药物（如 GLP-1 受体激动剂）可能带来的冲击，尽管目前难以从宏观趋势中精准剥离其单一影响，但这种生活方式的重构显而易见。如果一个人正在使用这类抑制食欲的药物，很难想象其在吃完五道正餐后，还能继续享用精致的高热量甜点并搭配一杯波特酒。 - **酒水利润与成本对比**：130 美元的正餐需要后厨多部门配合及多级服务人员全程跟进；110 美元的葡萄酒仅需 2 分钟取酒服务，利润率相仿却无附带成本。 - **关键数据滑坡**：North Pond 前 28 年酒水销售稳占 33%–34%，最近 18 个月内跌落至 24%。 - **核心原话**：“Now, the thing that has kind of got every restaurateur nervous as hell, and I'll use our figures as an example, we've been in business almost 30 years. For the first 28 years, our liquor wine sales, and we're almost exclusively 33%. So between 33% to 34% every year like clockwork. In the last 18 months, that has dropped to 24%. That is a huge deal because that 8% was the most profitable sales that we did.”（理查德·莫特语） --- ### `43:24` 餐饮业通胀失控：劳动力缺口、频繁调价与消费习惯改变 截至 2026 年 10 月，劳动力短缺与原料通胀对餐饮业造成的打击远超其他实体行业。初级厨师的起薪相较三四年前激增了约 30%，整体食品成本更是一路飙升。North Pond 得益于其庞大的本土独立农场供应链网络，在某种程度上与全球供应链震荡实现了隔离——例如来自威斯康星州农户供应的有机洋蓟，其生产成本基本不受海外关税、霍尔木兹海峡地缘危机或长途柴油运输费用的牵制。 但由于餐厅遵循即买即用的周采购模式，餐盘上的每一样食材成本都会在通胀来临时直接反馈在账面上。面对常规经济中 3% 到 3.5% 的通胀率，餐饮板块的实际通胀却高达 7% 甚至更高。过去 North Pond 每年仅对价格进行一次常规审查（偶有针对特殊配额葡萄酒的零星微调），但在过去两年内，由于通胀剧烈，餐厅不得不每六个月调价一次，两年内提价了四次。 价格上涨直接拉高了顾客的就餐门槛。如果两位客人在 North Pond 享用晚餐并搭配葡萄酒套餐（wine pairing），总消费将达到 400 美元。如此高昂的花费要求餐厅必须在服务品质与体验感上做到极致，因为顾客来这里已绝非单纯为了填饱肚子。这种经济压力也重塑了消费者的光顾动机：以往“周四晚上犒劳自己一顿大餐”的随意型消费大幅减少，现在的客人绝大多数都是为了庆祝生活中的重大特殊纪念日才选择登门。 - **人力成本增长**：初级厨师起薪比三四年前高出约 30%。 - **食品行业通胀差**：整体经济通胀约为 3%–3.5%，而食品供应链通胀达到 7%。 - **调价节奏突变**：由过去的“每年审查调整一次”变为“过去两年内每六个月调价一次，累计调价四次”。 - **人均消费与就餐性质**：双人带配酒晚宴花费高达 400 美元，客群从常规聚餐全面转向“极具仪式感的特殊事件”消费。 - **核心原话**：“The restaurant business and those two particular items have been hit with inflation and scarcity probably more than any other industry. Labor has gotten crazy. We're paying about 30% more for starting cooks than we did three, four years ago. And food costs have just gone through the roof.”（理查德·莫特语） --- ### `45:44` 共享厨房（Shared Kitchen）的商业模式：与幽灵厨房的区别 针对其新创立的业务 Spark Shared Kitchen，理查德·莫特清晰界定了“共享厨房”与常见“幽灵厨房”（Ghost Kitchen）的本质差异。虽然两者都是由第三方持有、供多个商家共用的厨房设施，但定位与客群截然不同：幽灵厨房是专为外卖平台（如 DoorDash、Uber Eats）设立的集中式出餐点，使用者通常是连锁品牌或纯外卖快餐；而共享厨房则是为各类独立食品创业者（特别是小型宴会承办商 Caterers）打造的生产与孵化基地。 Spark Shared Kitchen 主要提供两种灵活的租赁形式： 1. **按小时计费的全套设备厨房**：适合产量较小、初入市场的创业者（例如家庭手工饼干商）。每周只需租赁 5 小时进行批量生产，并可按需搭配租用部分仓储空间，极大地压低了初期的固定成本投入。 2. **24/7 独立专属厨房套间**：面积从 400 平方英尺到 1600 平方英尺不等。租户拥有专属钥匙并全天候出入，内部提供排气罩、水槽、防滑地砖和地漏等商业厨房基础设施，商户仅需自行添置专属的专业烹饪设备。 这种模式彻底拆解了传统食品创业的准入门槛。如果创业者独立租赁商业空间，通常需要耗费数月选址，面临房东 3 至 5 年的长期租约捆绑以及高额押金，更要经历漫长复杂的市政合规审批流程。而在共享厨房体系下，由于 Spark 已经持有全市通用的共享厨房运营方牌照（Shared Kitchen Operator License），创业者只需周一前往市政大厅申领个人使用者执照（Shared Kitchen User License），周二就能合规开工生产。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 传统开店与共享厨房模式对比 accDescr: 流程图展示了传统商业厨房开店的高门槛漫长周期与共享厨房即租即用的极简流程 subgraph Traditional["传统开店模式（高门槛/长周期）"] T1["耗费数月寻找商业场地"] --> T2["签署3-5年租约并缴纳重额押金"] T2 --> T3["自行申请施工与复杂市政合规牌照"] T3 --> T4["漫长等待：至少需要数月乃至半年"] end subgraph Shared["Spark 共享厨房模式（灵活/轻资产）"] S1["Spark 持有集中运营牌照 & 基础硬件"] S2["选项 A: 按小时租用全套设备（如5小时/周）"] S3["选项 B: 租用400-1600平方英尺独立套间 (24/7)"] S1 --> S2 S1 --> S3 S2 & S3 --> S4["创业者周一申请使用者执照，周二直接投产"] end ``` - **核心原话**：“The advantage of that is if you were to go out and open a cookie store, you'd have to go rent a licensed facility. And you could spend months looking for that. Landlords typically want a three to five year minimum rent. Then you're going to have to put a deposit down. You're going to have to go through the whole licensing process... you can come in and you can open basically for the price of your ingredients and the license.”（理查德·莫特语） --- ### `48:00` 招租需求爆发、重资产投入与专业冰淇淋工坊案例 由于省去了繁杂的建筑合规、物业改造以及行政审批（即所谓的“blocking and tackling”脏活累活），创业者得以将全部精力聚焦在核心产品上，使得 Spark Shared Kitchen 的招租极为顺畅。但该商业模式的核心瓶颈在于**极度资本密集（Capital Intensive）**：在商业地产建造中，建造专业商用厨房的单位造价之高，在整个建筑行业中仅次于医院手术病房。 尽管前期建造成本惊人，但其后期的单位经济模型却非常稳固。理查德·莫特举了一个量身定制的孵化案例：有三位创业者同时找上门希望开设冰淇淋业务，其中一人专注拉丁裔特色风味，另一人则主打亚洲风味。由于制作冰淇淋不需要昂贵的商用排气罩（ventilation hood），整体土建成本相对可控。为此，Spark 专门为其定制打造了专属工坊，并投入 26,000 美元购置了一台 5 加仑容量的工业级商用冰淇淋机，通过共用昂贵核心生产工具，极大地降低了每个个体租户的初始启动成本。 - **建筑成本极值**：商用厨房按每平方英尺造价计算，属于仅次于医院病房的高成本基建。 - **设备投入案例**：为三家风味特色各异的初创冰淇淋品牌定制无排气罩专用空间，并集中配置了一台价值 26,000 美元的 5 加仑工业级冰淇淋机。 - **核心原话**：“It has been very easy getting tenants. The biggest problem with it, it's a very capital intensive business. Building restaurant kitchens, short of building hospital rooms, they're about the most expensive on a square foot basis thing you can do. But the economics are so compelling on the other end.”（理查德·莫特语） ### `50:00` 共享厨房的规模经济与幽灵厨房的区别 Richard Mott 深入解释了共享厨房（Shared Kitchen，如 Spark Shared Kitchen）在财务与设备利用上的底层逻辑。以制作冰淇淋为例，初创创业者如果自己开店，可能必须花 2 万美元购买专业商用冰淇淋机，或者退而求其次买一台 5,000 美元、容量仅 1 加仑的小型机器，后者一整天只能产出 10 加仑，效率极低；但在共享厨房，他们只需支付场地与设备租金（例如 1,000 美元左右）加上原材料成本，就能利用顶级商用设备一天制作 200 加仑冰淇淋并直接放入深冷冻库。Richard Mott 总结道：“任何时候，当你面临高昂的资本支出，而单个人每周只使用它们两小时、四小时、六小时或八小时，但你能通过让三、四个人甚至更多人共用来实现规模效应时，它的效率就会高得令人难以置信。”（“Anytime you've got a lot of capital costs and an individual would use them, you know, two, four, six, eight hours a week, and you can get the scale of having three, four, whatever number of people using them, it's incredibly efficient.”）此外，分摊牌照办理、财产税以及寻找场地的搜寻成本，也让共享厨房成为城市经济的微型引擎。 随后主持人询问这类设施是否能在理论上用作即时配送的“幽灵厨房”（Ghost Kitchens）。Richard Mott 指出两者在商业逻辑与选址上存在本质差异： - **幽灵厨房（Ghost Kitchen）**：通常规模较小，必须选在租金昂贵、人口高密度的优质黄金地段，以确保外卖能在 5 分钟内送达目标群体。例如芝加哥南环线区（South Loop）第 22 街与 Wabash 大道交界处就有一处幽灵厨房，能在 5 分钟辐射区内覆盖 8 万居民。 - **共享厨房（Shared Kitchen）**：主要面向食品制造、批量备餐与餐饮孵化。Richard Mott 的设施位于布莱顿公园（Brighton Park），是一个占地 60,000 平方英尺的工业仓储厂房，位置大概处于前往中途机场（Midway Airport）的三分之二路程处。那里属于纯工业区，周围缺乏密集的高层公寓和常住人口，根本无法支撑即时外卖业务。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 共享厨房与幽灵厨房的运营模式对比 accDescr: 对比共享厨房与幽灵厨房在选址、设备资本开销及核心业务模式上的差异 subgraph SharedKitchen["共享厨房模式（如 Spark Shared Kitchen）"] A["工业区仓储物业（如 Brighton Park，60,000 平方英尺）"] --> B["高资本设备共用（深冷库、2万美元商用冰淇淋机）"] B --> C["批量食品生产、外包孵化与分摊牌照税务成本"] end subgraph GhostKitchen["幽灵厨房模式（Ghost Kitchen）"] D["高密度住宅黄金地段（如 South Loop 核心区）"] --> E["小型紧凑厨房单元"] E --> F["专注即时外卖配送（5分钟配送圈覆盖8万人）"] end ``` ### `52:15` 芝加哥市政监管与审批环境的变迁 谈到餐饮业不可避免的痛点——政府监管与审批流程时，主持人指出许多餐厅老板常常抱怨与市政部门打交道的官僚作风。Richard Mott 回顾了芝加哥过去几十年的监管演变，表示情况确实有了明显好转。 在拉姆·伊曼纽尔（Rahm Emanuel）担任市长期间，市政厅处理所有商业牌照的第八层办公室曾被业界戏称为“拒绝部”（Department of No）。Richard Mott 讽刺道：“我的意思是，他们会千方百计地找理由对你说‘不’，拿个营业执照成了一项极其繁重、折磨人的苦差事。”（“I mean, they would just go out of their way to find reasons to tell you no. And it was just an ungodly, burdensome task getting a license.”）虽然现在的流程依旧算不上高效，但政务服务的基调已经完全转变。按照评分来算，整体办事效率和体验已经从过去的“D-”提高到了现在的“B-”。工作人员的初衷变成了“尽力帮你把生意开起来”，即便各项规章细则依然繁琐，但沟通氛围已经变得更加支持和配合。 ### `54:15` 节目后记：餐饮护城河、不计亏损的玩家与商业分工 在访谈结束后的复盘环节，Joe Weisenthal 与 Tracy Allaway 探讨了本期播客的核心启示： 1. **难以构筑的护城河**：餐饮业虽然准入门槛看似明确，但流行热度极其短暂，新晋网红餐厅层出不穷，极难建立长久的商业护城河。 2. **“为了热爱的非理性玩家”扰乱竞争**：许多人开餐厅纯粹是出于虚荣心、社交俱乐部需求或纯粹的个人情怀，根本不在意亏损；与那些“愿意承受亏钱”的玩家竞争，在财务上会陷入极大被动。 3. **合规带来的成本惩罚**：如果一家餐厅严格遵守各项法律——包括移民雇佣合规、全额依法支付加班费等，其经济效益反而会被严重恶化。Joe Weisenthal 强调：“如果你认真对待移民法和正规加班费这所有事情，如果你当真去执行，你实际上在严重恶化自己的经济效益。”（“if you're like serious about like, you know, immigration law, and all these things, and proper overtime, and all of these things that like, if you take these seriously, you're really worsening your economics.”） 4. **技能分工与共享基础设施的价值**：Tracy Allaway 提到，一个人的核心竞争优势可能是顶级大厨、拥有无与伦比的味觉感知（例如烤出绝妙的饼干），但他可能完全不擅长看租约、选址或用 Excel 建模。共享厨房把资本投入、场地租赁、牌照核查与卫生检验等繁琐行政事项统统剥离，让专业做产品的人能专注于产品本身。 5. **商学院教育重心的变迁**：两人最后感叹，从过去的案例教学走向培养实际创业者，而非仅仅训练去花旗集团做中台行政分析师，商学院教育与真实商业世界互动模式的演进同样令人深思。 ## Notable quotes > `30:00` 如果你一心想要遵纪守法，你就会比所有竞争对手承受 5% 到 10% 的经营亏损。 — Richard Mott > `31:30` 餐饮业的实际日常，是周日早上六点钟在那里通下水道，那才是真正的餐饮业。 — Richard Mott > `12:30` 如果我要给别人提建议，我会让他们先去给别人打工，学习这个行业，让别人为你的错误买单。 — Richard Mott > `12:30` 成功80%取决于商业创意。而现在我会把这个比例倒过来，我认为创意只占20%，其余80%是团队、环境和你的支持网络。 — Richard Mott > `37:40` 有关餐厅靠葡萄酒赚钱的说法是千真万确的。 — Richard Mott > `20:00` But in restaurants, you measure restaurant lifespans in dog years, not people years. — Richard Mott > `25:00` It's one of the worst industries to ever, ever get into. — Richard Mott ## Mentioned Richard Mott, North Pond, Spark Shared Kitchen, Tracy Allaway, Joe Weisenthal, Odd Lots, Bloomberg, University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, Progressive Insurance, Continental Bank, Citicorp, McKinsey, Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Starbucks, Compass Group, Aramark, Pat Vihtelic, Home Chef, Chicago Park District, Lincoln Park, Alice Waters, Chez Panisse, Slow Food, Green City Market, Lettuce Entertain You, Rich Melman, Los Angeles Dodgers, DoorDash, Uber Eats, Rahm Emanuel, GLP-1 ## Video description <p data-prosemirror-content-type="node" data-prosemirror-node-name="paragraph" data-prosemirror-node-block="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []">Richard Mott's first foray into hospitality was in the 1980s at the University of Chicago, where he started running a coffee shop in the basement of the business school when he was a grad student. By the time he graduated, he helped grow that single coffee shop into four locations across campus. He's a longtime Chicago-based restaurateur and his farm-to-table restaurant North Pond has been around since the late 1990s. Lately, he's expanded his business to include Spark Shared Kitchen, a catering facility and incubator for food entrepreneurs. He knows a lot about the practical economics of restaurants and hospitality at large, and in his decades-long career in the Chicago scene he's seen about everything. On our recent trip to Chicago, we sat down with Mott to talk about the ever-increasing price of food and labor, why diners are drinking less, and the expected and unexpected reasons that restaurants so often fail.</p> <p data-prosemirror-content-type="node" data-prosemirror-node-name="paragraph" data-prosemirror-node-block="true">Read more:<br data-prosemirror-content-type="node" data-prosemirror-node-name="hardBreak" data-prosemirror-node-inline="true"><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-21/chicago-seeks-to-borrow-for-police-settlements-revive-head-tax?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=odd_lots&utm_content=article" data-prosemirror-content-type="mark" data-prosemirror-mark-name="link">Chicago Seeks to Borrow for Police Settlements, Revive Head Tax</a><br data-prosemirror-content-type="node" data-prosemirror-node-name="hardBreak" data-prosemirror-node-inline="true"><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-23/chipotle-s-softening-sales-force-analyst-to-throw-in-the-towel?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=odd_lots&utm_content=article" data-prosemirror-content-type="mark" data-prosemirror-mark-name="link">Chipotle&rsquo;s Softening Sales Force Analyst to Throw in the Towel</a></p> <p data-prosemirror-content-type="node" data-prosemirror-node-name="paragraph" data-prosemirror-node-block="true">Only <a href="http://Bloomberg.com" data-inline-card="" data-card-data="">http://Bloomberg.com</a> subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at&nbsp; <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots?in_source=oddlotspodcast" data-prosemirror-content-type="mark" data-prosemirror-mark-name="link">bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots</a></p> <p data-prosemirror-content-type="node" data-prosemirror-node-name="paragraph" data-prosemirror-node-block="true"><a href="http://bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots" data-prosemirror-content-type="mark" data-prosemirror-mark-name="link">Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter</a><br data-prosemirror-content-type="node" data-prosemirror-node-name="hardBreak" data-prosemirror-node-inline="true"><strong data-prosemirror-content-type="mark" data-prosemirror-mark-name="strong">Join the conversation:</strong> <a href="https://discord.gg/oddlots" data-prosemirror-content-type="mark" data-prosemirror-mark-name="link">discord.gg/oddlots</a></p><p>See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.</p> [Source](https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/8a94442e-5a74-4fa2-8b8d-ae27003a8d6b/0e910a81-d26f-4e7f-852a-b4ec0142c272/audio.mp3?in_playlist=982f5071-765c-403d-969d-ae27003a8d83)

[30:00] Richard Mott: 如果你一心想要遵纪守法，你就会比所有竞争对手承受 5% 到 10% 的经营亏损。 [31:30] Richard Mott: 餐饮业的实际日常，是周日早上六点钟在那里通下水道，那才是真正的餐饮业。 [12:30] Richard Mott: 如果我要给别人提建议，我会让他们先去给别人打工，学习这个行业，让别人为你的错误买单。 [12:30] Richard Mott: 成功80%取决于商业创意。而现在我会把这个比例倒过来，我认为创意只占20%，其余80%是团队、环境和你的支持网络。 [37:40] Richard Mott: 有关餐厅靠葡萄酒赚钱的说法是千真万确的。 [20:00] Richard Mott: But in restaurants, you measure restaurant lifespans in dog years, not people years. [25:00] Richard Mott: It's one of the worst industries to ever, ever get into.

[30:00] Richard Mott: You never want to be in a business for economic reasons when you are competing with people who are in there for non-economic reasons. [20:00] Richard Mott: In restaurants, you measure restaurant lifespans in dog years, not people years.

[0:00] There are some market stories where you want every detail. Joe and I have made quite a few podcasts on that basis, but sometimes you've only got 10 minutes and just want to know what's moving markets fast. That's the Barclays Brief podcast. Every week, experts from Barclays Markets and Research get you up to speed on what's happening and what to watch next. Concise, focused, and brief. Search Barclays Brief wherever you get your podcasts. Your team is on a deadline, but moving will take time your business simply doesn't have. IBM technology lets AI work with your data where it already lives, with an open hybrid cloud approach designed to build on your existing investments. It's another way IBM helps you put your data to work. Let's create smarter business. IBM. Visit ibm.com to learn more. For big business, AI opened up a world of promise, but that world of promise turned into a world of pain. Cost spiraling, data trapped, security and governance risks multiplying, and ROI out of reach. That's why enterprises turned to Boomi to connect data, apps, and AI, helping them operate securely, efficiently, and at scale. Boomi turns a world of AI pain into a world of AI gain. As Boomi says, we got you. Head to boomi.com. O-O-M-I dot com. Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Allaway. And I'm Joe Weisenthal. Joe, we are back in Chicago. I love Chicago. It's a beautiful city. I used to live here. It's always kind of surreal coming back because it reminds me of middle school. Basically, we're actually here for a live show. But I thought we would squeeze in one additional episode. It's one of the kind of favorite types of episodes that we like to do. entity, the baker. Remember him? Absolutely. And one of the reasons these episodes are so interesting to do is, you know, we have a lot of economists on the show. We have a lot of investors, whoever, and they kind of talk about business in this conceptual way. But it's always interesting talking to actual practitioners in the space. And the thing about food is it touches on so many different aspects of the macro economy. You know, you have labor, you have supply chain issues, as well. And so I thought we would talk to someone a little bit different to the Chicago-based baker. We would talk to someone who not only comes from, I guess, sort of a finance background, but someone who actually left finance at an undergraduate level in order, he made the conscious decision to become a practitioner in the restaurant and catering space. You know, the Big Mac Index, right? The economist, the reason why that works as a concept is because is... labor, commodity costs and rent. And that's everything. Right. And so like, Here you get like the reason why these particular businesses are so fascinating to us is because, as you said, like every input goes into it. Every input in the economy goes into it in some way. And then, of course, the chance to someone who sort of knows business both from a theoretical background and also a entrepreneurial background. That's a good guest. And someone who's had experience running different types of food businesses. So this will be really interesting. I'm very happy to say we have the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with Richard Mott. of North Pond here in Chicago. He is also the owner of the Spark Shared Kitchen, which we'll get into exactly what that is. And he studied finance at the University of Chicago. So truly the perfect guest. Richard, thank you so much for coming on. Oh, thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here. So I mentioned finance was your undergraduate expertise, but I also said you made a decision the restaurant business? Well, actually, I was a history urban studies, political science major as an undergrad at the University of Buffalo. But I attended Booth, the graduate school at the University of Chicago, where I was a finance major. And I did my internship. I did in the finance department of progressive insurance, which at the time was sort of a young, fast-moving upstart. I mean, it was a great company to work for and everything. But I left that summer with anyone else and I wanted to start on [5:00] venture on my own. So three months in a corporate office was enough to kick me out of that field for the rest of my life. These days, if you were to like go to Stanford Business School or Wharton, for sure, you would find tons of people who are there because they want to be entrepreneurs and maybe or maybe they want to be VCs or they want to have a so-called like search fund where they gather a couple million dollars from their friends and buy some local pool repair companies or I guess like that's sort of novel. And I guess like in the past, like someone who was at these schools, it was just purely a pipeline for. working at a big firm. It's a complete 180-degree sea change on this. When I was at school, there was no such thing as entrepreneurial studies. There were no seminars on small business financing. There was absolutely nothing paid attention to any of those fields. You were being trained to work for Continental Bank, for Citicorp, for McKinsey, those types of companies. And my decision to go off on my own and start a business, which I had started my I was sort of met with a lot of bewilderment by some of my classmates, and even to the point where some were like, kind of derisively asking questions like, oh, what's the matter, Rich? Didn't you get a real job offer? That kind of thing. And the really ironic thing is that now at Booth, the largest single concentration, larger than marketing or finance, the largest single concentration at the school right now is entrepreneurial studies. And it is a huge part of the business. And they've also spun off from that the Polsky Center, which is the university-wide center entrepreneurship and, you know, monetizing advances in their physics labs and things like that. But it is a very big and very successful part of the university now. And if you go to all the top business schools, you go to the Whartons, the Harvards, the, you know, Stanford, Berkeley, they all have very, very dynamic spaces, entrepreneurial spaces, and labs, classes, it's an incredibly supportive environment right now. That's such an interesting shift. But when you bid on a school project to actually start a coffee shop. They had a coffee shop in the basement of the business school and they would let a couple students run it every year and I bid on it and turned it from a coffee shop into, you know, let's get bagels, let's get sandwiches. Pretty soon we got a whole little lunchroom there. Turned out to be quite a successful little venture. other. And by the time I graduated, we had four locations on campus and started this as a full time business. And by, you know, eight, nine years later, we had a chain of 20 of these. And they were all coffee slash sandwich shops, but they were all in the academic building. So we didn't do the main board plans, you know, what Compass and Aramark typically do. We were just buildings. Did you get to keep the profit from the coffee shop? Yes, that was a complete P&L. We paid them a rent, and it worked out very well for us because we'd reached an agreement on the rent based on basically just being a coffee shop and then kind of quadrupling the revenue and turning it into a real sort of lunchroom. For an undergrad, I'd be more money than I'd ever seen in my life. I mean, that wasn't a lot of money, but still. You know, it's funny because we're that's maybe a lens through which to understand the history of the American economy. You could tell probably the history of the American economy through coffee shops themselves. And you think about like first generation coffee shops and then the Starbucks is, and then now like the explosion of like, oh, you have to have matcha with pistachio syrup and all these things. It's like, I had a pumpkin matcha latte this morning. Don't judge me. I don't normally get this. There's about two, many ingredients. I never drink that stuff. But the other day I was walking home and I saw this, it was like a banana pudding flavored latte with cardamom. And those are like, I was so tempted. That sounds bad to me, but it sounds fantastic. I know, I was so tempted, but it's like, I can't do it. But actually, I am curious, like, what years were this? And what were you serving? What was the coffee shop expected to have in those years? Coffee was a very, very different back then. It was coffee and soda, sandwiches, soup, a lot of pastries and baked goods. And by coffee, there's just like a cap or decal. This was the old one you would have gotten in a Marine barracks with the big bun, three-gowns, [10:00] and pour over things. And I'm not a real coffee drinker, but if you were to go back and taste it now, I'm sure it would be just wretched. No, I love that stuff. I'm fine with industrial-grade coffee. Well, the other thing that's kind of funny is we serve coffee. We had two sizes of coffees. We had a seven ounce, that was our small, and a 10 ounce, which was the large coffee. And now if you go to a coffee shop, most smalls are larger than the large that we had at that time. And don't claim back then in the coffee market. I remember my wife came back. Starbucks, Chicago was the first city outside of the Northwest that they'd opened in. And my wife, who's a coffee addict, came back and said she went to this great store. They had coffee and that was pretty much all they served, but it was great coffee and great service and everything. And I just poo-pooed the whole thing. A store that just serves coffee? Yeah. How long is that going to last? And then I end up. opening 20 coffee shops. What was the most challenging aspect of running that type of coffee shop business at the time? By the way, what years are we talking about? Oh, I graduated in 82. So I started this in 1981. So yeah, the very, I think Starbucks might have come to Chicago mid 80s, 86, maybe 87, somewhere around in there. So this was still, you bought the coffee, and that coffee could be sitting around. If you didn't use it at the end of June when classes closed, you just put it in a container and use it in September. I mean, the kind of things that would get you shot by a coffee lover these days. So it was a hot brown beverage is what it was. And the biggest challenge at that time, what was hardest? Well, hardest for me is that I had started this business with absolutely no idea what I was doing. If I were to ever counsel someone about this, I'd go work for someone else, learn the business, and have them pay for your mistakes. I was a little too insistent on working for myself at that time, opened the business, and literally made every mistake you possibly could. Because I had no reference set. I had no peers to go to. everything up. Oh, let's hear some mistakes. Oh, I got into bad leases. I mean, oh boy, hiring people. I think that was probably the biggest thing with hiring people. It took a long time to really figure out, really figure out how to hire people for the business, not hire them because you like them, that kind of thing. So personnel was probably the biggest problem I And these are they're taught in the school and these things were never taught. Ours, going back to the school question and, you know, the differences between now and then. Back then, the MBA program, and I only speak from the University of Chicago's viewpoint, it was it was very rigorous program, very, very academic program. There was little or there was no emphasis on any of the sort of soft skills of business, public speaking, interviewing people, things like this. There was it was all it was just a large classroom exercise. And they have. completely gotten off of that. Their program now, you know, it's a very holistic approach to educating someone to run a business. And they have this entire environment to support people who are doing the search funds or doing the entrepreneurship through acquisition. So it's a very, very different atmosphere. And if you were to ask me 15 years ago, before I started working a lot with these entrepreneurial startup companies, you know, my take would be, oh, it's the success. It's 80%. It's the business idea. And I would flip that on the now and I would say it's 20% and the idea is the team and is the year environment and it's your support network. Those are the things that make it successful, you know, not the business. I'd rather, and a great example, you know, if we get back, we talk about Home Chef. When I was approached by Pat, I thought it was a horrible idea. You know, a meal kit, you're going to buy food online and they're going to ship it. It's ridiculous. But I absolutely love this young man. And it worked out. I mean, he had an incredibly successful run, you know, starting that company. There are some market stories where you want every detail. Joe and I have made quite a few podcasts on that basis, but sometimes you've only got 10 minutes and just want to know what's moving markets fast. That's the Barclays Brief podcast. Every week, experts from Barclays markets and research get you up to speed [15:00] on what's happening and what to watch next. Concise, focused, and brief. Search Barclays Brief wherever you get your podcasts. are asking for more battery-powered inventory to sell as customers come back. Even some lower volume models from Toyota and GM's Cadillac brand are gaining momentum. Dealers have also sold through much of that excess inventory, going from about a 180-day supply of EVs in early 2026 to 78 days worth in August, roughly in line with industry stocks of vehicles with combustion engines. It all points to EV demand that's beginning to stabilize after last year's boom U.S. tax credits for EV buyers. EV sales have stabilized at close to 6% of the U.S. market this year, according to researcher Cox Automotive. To be sure, many automakers continue to report weak year-over-year EV sales, and a demand boom for new EVs has not materialized. Instead, shoppers are snapping up gas-electric hybrids, as well as used EVs which can be had for prices similar to their conventional counterparts. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to available with all paid ChatGPT plans. Games on a break? Instead of doom scrolling, try Rips on Underdog. Rip real player cards worth real money right there in the app. It's instant cash in the palm of your hand. Buy a digital pack, rip it open on your phone, and reveal a real physical card. Football, basketball, Pokemon, yes, Pokemon, and more. The best part? Packs start at just $5. 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Your Edward Jones advisor takes the time to truly get to know you and provide personalized strategies to help keep your goals on track. Whether you're passionate about charitable giving, considering business succession, or legacy planning with the next generation in mind. Planner professionals than nearly any other firm, Edward Jones Financial Plans, are custom-built around what matters most to you. Because the key to being rich is knowing what counts. Edward Jones, member SIPC. Tracy, in the introduction, mentioned various endeavors that you've had over time. What do you give us the sort of broad overview of your footprint? Then we can dive into these things. Your portfolio. Your portfolio of businesses over time that we can talk about. So I started the coffee shop business and grew that over the years. And we're dealing exclusively with academic locations for small coffee shops. shops and we had five universities that we worked for. Unfortunately, we were sort of swimming upstream in terms of the, you know, the food service market. That was about the beginning of the sort of comprehensive contract model with the universities. So they were going to companies like Aramark and Compass and not signing them just to do the, you know, coffee shop. They're signing them, you're going to run our laundry program. You're going to run our cafeterias. You're going to run Yeah, you're going to run everything. And we were just a tiny little niche company. So eventually we sort of got swallowed up by that. But started with the coffee shop company. That's a very seasonal business. So we were looking for something to balance the September to May season. Started doing work with the Chicago Park District and ran a bunch of concessions and things like that. had the opportunity to bid on... [20:00] a facility, it was the old warming house out in Lincoln Park by the Nature Museum. And I mean, I've had friends ask me now, like, oh, how'd you get that contract? You know someone in City Hall? And so I was like, no, at the time, now it's one of the most beautiful places in Lincoln Park. But at the time, it was a very neglected corner of the park. It was a homeless hangout. There was a lot of prostitution going on in the area. They had not redone the, the pond actually looked like a at the point. So it really wasn't much of a... We got the contract basically because no one else bid on it. So opened up a fine dining restaurant and that helped balance. That's a very seasonal business too, but the opposite season from the coffee shop. So there was a nice synergy on there. And then also with the coffee shops to sort of broaden our reach and take advantage of some of our facilities, we opened a catering company and a vending company. And ran those. And then just as a hobby, I invested in, you know, over the year or the 20 years or so invested in eight or nine other startup businesses, just, you know, friends or an associate starting a business and I'd invest or, you know, be a partner or whatever. But it really was just a just a hobby. What are the difference in economics between running, you know, a bunch of student coffee shops, university coffee shops versus a fine dining restaurant like North Pond? Oh, completely different. Might as well be completely different industries, too. The fine dining, a couple of things. The first, it's very chef driven. We've been there 30 years. We've had four chefs. Our newest chef just started. A lot of it is sort of a celebrity chef culture. Nobody would see my picture or my name in the paper and go to the restaurant because of that. And if you look at our PR, you know, you Google me in the restaurant and you're hard pressed to find any connection between the two. The idea was always to promote the restaurant, you know, the restaurant and the chef. And there's a lot of sort of vagaries in the popularity of restaurants. The analogy, and knock on wood, we've been there 30 years. But in restaurants, you measure restaurant lifespans in dog years, not people years. We've been there, oh, yeah, close to 30 years. And that's so, so unusual for a restaurant. You know, they're there for three years and then they're gone. Every now and then there's a cat that's there for 20 years, but that is very, very unusual. So the popularity is very different. We would get a good review in Chicago Magazine and the place would be booked solid for a month. Now, the coffee shop business, it's really just a matter of traffic. There's 400 students in the building on Tuesday and we get 300 visits. and we get 120 visits. I mean, you can really kind of just take a look at the class schedule, and I can tell you almost exactly what our sales are going to be. Because it's more of a utility where the fine dining, that's a luxury. You're going out for your birthday, you're going out for an event, whereas the coffee shops, you're going to feed yourself. Since we talked about the difference between coffee shops in the 1980s versus the monstrosities Another thing that just strikes me about a fine dining restaurant that lasts as long as yours is like tastes change and so forth what people want. If we had the menu from the opening day versus now, what stayed the same and what's different? And how do you evolve a menu and how do you maintain stay on trend? I'm trying to think of like a classic 1980s dish, like chicken marbella or something, chicken Kiev, something like that. 1997. Okay. So you probably had pesto. No, that's what I think of when I think of mid-90s food. When we first opened it up, we were leasing the building from the Chicago Park District. Now, the Chicago Park District, their paradigm was working with concessionaires who run crappy hot dog carts that steal from us. So to go to them with this whole plan of, hey, we want to do a fine dining restaurant in the park and we want to get a liquor license, just completely over their heads. took a total of about two and a half years just to get the permission, then about another year to build the place out. Because like I said, we had the first liquor license that was in the park. And even then, they looked at us with [25:00] quite a deal of skepticism. We were not allowed to have a bar. We had to have a takeout window. I mean, things that were just absolutely incompatible with doing a fine dining restaurant. So when we first opened it up, we called it North Pond Cafe, and it was a little more casual. After a couple of years with the park district, and they also had the new superintendent and the president of the park board were two very forward-thinking individuals, and they kind of room at a bar and started treating us like a fine dining restaurant. And that was about the time our second chef started. And our second chef, absolutely brilliant young man, he had been, ironically enough, he had been a finance major at Wharton and decided not to go into finance. A kindred spirit. Yeah. And one of the smartest, most talented chefs you're ever going to run into. And back then, focus for the restaurant was going to be on what now we would call farm to table. I mean, that phrase didn't exist. I had been in California and had visited Alice Waters restaurant, absolutely loved the place. And it just seemed to resonate that a menu and an approach to food like that in Lincoln Park, you know, just given the park-like setting. And we had built the building out. It had been a very workmanlike, just shed almost. We had built it out in the arts and craft seem to fit with sort of our idea of the craft approach to food and also the vintage heritage and location of the building. So we really started what we called a sustainable dining, but we started what you'd call farm to table now. And at the time, it was most people didn't kind of know what to do with it. I mean, we would get our sign, the tagline in our sign was North Pond, seasonal American dining. And we would get people that would call like, you know, oh, what season are you open? We started doing on the menu, we started listing farmers and people were like, who's this Mickey Kluge guy? And what's a Mickey Kluge pair? You know, that kind of thing. So it's actually really warming to see how that whole movement has taken off. And at the time, I mean, our chef really embraced this, even more so than I had originally proposed, really embraced it, became very involved in this movement. He was on the Slow Food Board. He was one of the founders of the Green City Market. close to 100 small local craft farmers and producers, fishers and cheesemongers and stuff like that. And at the time, That supply network didn't exist. And these are not the 1,200 acres of corn, third generation farmer in Iowa. This is the guy who got kicked out of the PhD program at sociology department at Northwestern, and now is farming organic beets in upstate Wisconsin. So it's a really interesting movement, just shift in the whole agricultural industry too. I mean, it's still a pretty much didn't exist. And our chef, he had trained in France. So the theme originally was a very classic French preparation with this theme of sustainable dining. And he was with us for 20-something years, left, talking about good timing, he left a in December of 19. And when there was one guy coughing into his egg drop soup, you know, and two months later, the whole world shuts down. The third chef we hired is much more of a younger guy, much more of an international approach. And the menu for the last four or five years has been much more eclectic, much more international, and not as sort of classically French. So very different take on it. I'm going to ask a very direct question, but what are the profit margins actually like for a higher end restaurant? I think the weather's going to be really good this week. No, but like, you get these different senses. So a lot of people will say like, oh, never start a restaurant because it never makes money. But then you see these restaurants that are incredibly popular in New York, and people are paying insane prices, and they're all full every night. And you the restaurant business is one of the worst businesses to ever get in. I mean, just the basic, and I'm talking about the independent, pretty fine dining. It's one of the worst industries to ever, ever get into. And a couple things. The first is it's hyper-competitive. There's no barriers to entry. Anybody can get into it. It's also, there's a lot of, [30:00] entry into the restaurant business from people who don't have access, you know, talented, hardworking people, but who don't have access to the finance world or the banking world. You know, someone who's really smart, who's a first generation immigrant, did not go to, you know, Wharton. And, you know, they're smart, talented, hardworking guy, you can go start a restaurant. So it's very, very competitive, no barriers to entry. It's very difficult to build a moat around It's proprietary. You come up with the, you know, the latest croissant donut mashup. And everyone has it around. Everyone has it down. And then the last thing is that if you're intent on obeying the law, you're going to operate at a five, 10 percent deficit to all your competitors. So if you're going to pay attention to labor laws, immigration laws, overtime laws, things like that, And there has been a little bit of a reckoning in the industry, but it was an industry that wage theft, overtime abuse, things like that, which is absolutely rampant. There has been, if you're looking at. sort of changes in this business in the last four or five years. There has been, and some of it started with sort of the Me Too movement. You talk to any woman who's ever been in the restaurant business, and I don't care whether she's a front of the house, back of the house, cook, waitress, bartender, whatever, I guarantee you that if she's been in the business for six months, she's got horror stories to tell you about, you know, harassment in the industry. And that is starting to get held to account for that. And you see a lot of high profile chefs who are getting bounced out of their jobs. And so that's a good thing. And the same thing with the abuse of all the labor laws. And a lot of it was predicated on it was an industry that was filled with a lot of illegal immigrants. And these are people that you can abuse and not get called for it because they're not going to go to the labor board and complain. Oh, and then the final thing about why the restaurant You never want to be in a business for economic reasons when you are competing with people who are in there for non-economic reasons. It's the same. It would be the equivalent of a sports franchise. You don't spend $12 billion to buy the Dodgers because you think they have great cash flow. You're spending that money because you're a billionaire and you've got huge ego. And it's a game of like hot potato. In five years, you want to sell that franchise to someone else and the value has gone up. who made money in other fields. And because Like if you're a doctor and you've made millions of dollars and you're looking for something fun to do, you would never think like, oh, I'm going to go buy an auto towing business. No, because you don't know anything about towing. Right. But everyone thinks that, one, just because they dine out and have preferences when they dine out, they think they can run a restaurant or start up a food business. chocolate chip cookie recipe, therefore I should have a chocolate chip cookie company. So it's very different. And also, people have this idea. I talk to friends, and they're Their idea is that I go in on Saturday night, I hang out at the bar, greet friends, buy people drinks, have a drink at the end of the bar myself, and then go home. And that's the exact opposite. Running in the restaurant business is 6 o'clock on a Sunday morning, unclogging the drain. That's the restaurant business. So there's a lot of sort of ideas that it is somehow glamorous and cool and fun. And, yeah, there can be parts to that, but that's a pretty small part of the business. could run a restaurant it's like everyone thinks they could do a podcast because they have opinions they're like i have takes i can do that that's a good analogy everyone can do a podcast it's just they might not be very good right right they're like oh that seems easy i can run my mouse and the the proof of all this is and there's very good statistics on it wharton has great statistics the sba has great statistics the failure rate for restaurants is abysmal and the figures that i a negative return. So yes, there are people who hit it big, make lots of money. And for every rich Melman that's out there that's making boatloads of money in the restaurant business, there's 40 other guys you don't know their names because their restaurant closed and now they're back to being a dentist or whatever they did before. Yeah. [35:00] Music Music This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by Chachi PT. Now with Chachi PT work, I'm Carol Masser. Just when it seemed American car buyers had left electric vehicles for dead, there are new signs of life in that corner of the auto market. Bloomberg's Kara Carlson and Gabby Coppola report that Tesla and Rivian each posted better than expected EV sales for the third quarter. Executives at Hyundai and Ford say dealers are asking for more battery-powered inventory to sell as customers come back. volume models from Toyota and GM's Cadillac brand are gaining momentum. Dealers have also sold through much of that excess inventory, going from about a 180-day supply of EVs in early 2026 to 78 days worth in August, roughly in line with industry stocks of vehicles with combustion engines. It all points to EV demand that's beginning to stabilize after last year's boom and bust tied to the cancellation of generous U.S. tax credits for EV buyers. EV sales have This is a production of the U.S. Department of State. 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Visit ibm.com to learn more. you Without going into exactly what your profit margins are, but like maybe you could talk about like theory of menu design because there are these things that people say, oh, you only make your money on wine or something like that. No, there's a better truth to that. So what is like this sort of like you construct a menu? What are the principles of menu constructing and where do the profits come from on that menu? post-pandemic, it's probably seriously negative. You had three years where pretty much everybody lost money, and even the recovery hasn't been very good. But in terms of profitability, menu mix, and things like that, there's one of the biggest sea changes in the last 23, 20, 30 years is happening right now. And your statement about restaurants making money on wine is absolutely And I've got on a Saturday night, I've got nine to 10 guys in the kitchen and [40:00] pastry department who are preparing that meal. And we've got waiters, back waiters, and busboys, you know, serving the table. And that's for that $130 dinner. If you're sitting at that dinner, now you order our average bottle of wine is about 110. You order a bottle of wine from us, it takes the waiter two minutes to walk over to the wine cellar, bring it back, open it, and put it on your table. And the profitability margin on that wine is about the same as the food with almost none of the associated costs. Now, the thing that has kind of got every restaurateur nervous as hell, and I'll use our figures as an example, we've been in business almost 30 years. For the first 28 years, our liquor wine sales, and we're almost exclusively 33%. So between 33% to 34% every year like clockwork. In the last 18 months, that has dropped to 24%. That is a huge deal because that 8% was the most profitable sales that we did. And people just are not drinking like they used to, particularly our younger guests. I was going to ask, is this the generational shift that we hear about? Absolutely. I mean, some of it is just people, you know, for health, they're not drinking. You know, there's an entire industry, you know, the cannabis CBD industry out there. And you're just starting to see that work into menus with Lollapalooza this year for the first year had THC margaritas. So you're starting to see, you know, things like this show up on menus. We've got a proposal with the park district to add them to our menu. We haven't been approved for it yet. We just put in a non-alcoholic cocktail menu. really big problem for most most restaurants do you see any impact from glp ones not specifically because it's hard to identify that versus more you know global you know other other sort of mega trends i'm sure it is is is affecting i mean What's it like? 20% of the country is on GLP. I don't remember the number now, but it's a pretty significant amount. And I just can't imagine that you're on a GLP and you want to come in and have five courses and then finish that with these incredible desserts we make and then also have a glass of port. It seems a little incongruous. Maybe there's still room for a CBD-infused pastry of some sort. I'd be interested. Well, the THC-infused margaritas, yeah. Well, that gets people eating more. That might create a positive flywheel. All right. It's October 2026 right now. What do you give us like a little snapshot of what you're seeing in terms of labor availability, food costs, like the sort of like basic like economic measures that would go into it? The restaurant business and those two particular items have been hit with inflation and scarcity probably more than any other industry. Labor has gotten crazy. about 30% more for starting cooks than we did three, four years ago. And food costs have just gone through the roof. It's one of the highest inflation sectors in the economy. Although we have as much of an effect as some other restaurants have had, because we have a whole network of suppliers and farmers that to some extent, are isolated from the global economy. So when we're dealing with Joe's organic artichokes from Wisconsin, this man's, his cost basis is not being affected by tariffs or, um, straight or Hormuz, yeah, straight or Hormuz, or generally, you know, not as affected by things like diesel costs and things like that. But the inflation in this industry has been, has been incredible. And and our costs, you know, everything that we put on the plate, we bought that week. So when there's inflation, we see it immediately. We've raised prices four times in the last two years, about every six months, which we used to sort of balance it out and do it once, you know, once a year, unless there was a specific item that might have, particularly wine that was on allocation or something like that. But generally the prices would, like once a year, we'd review it. deal. But when you have a 3%, 3.5% inflation, and then 7% inflation in the food business, you really had to stay on top of that. And it's tough. I mean, going out, if you and your partner come out to North Pond for dinner, and you have the wine pairing, it's going to be $400 for the two of you. And it's, you have to do a lot to justify someone to spend $400 with you. So it really, [45:00] It has forced us to kind of up our game in terms of the things that we do and how we treat our guests. And what it has become is, you know, people don't dine at North Pond because they're hungry. They dine because they want the experience. But we have seen a little bit of a trend where we're getting more and a higher percentage of our guests are coming in for very special events in their lives. We don't get as many, hey, it's Thursday night, let's treat ourselves to a really nice meal. It's becoming much more of an event. So I wanted to ask about your other venture now, which is the Spark Shared Kitchen. What's the difference between a shared kitchen and a ghost kitchen? Okay. Is this rebranding? It's some subtle changes. The similarity is that they're both kitchen facilities that are used by multiple vendors and typically owned by a third party. Ghost kitchens are typically thought of as someone has a brand, whether it's Popeye's Chicken or Joe's Italian Subs, takeout only location and it's in a central facility. It's all set up for very easy delivery to the DoorDashes and the Uber Eats of the world. So it's really for food delivery companies. Now, the shared kitchen model is a little different. In there, we build out kitchens that people can use for food businesses. The biggest use of them we have is by caterers. So you have a small catering company. You can come in and you can rent a kitchen. And we have two types of rentals, too. We have a couple fully equipped kitchens you can come in and rent by the hour. So if you have a, you know, you have Tracy's granola. No, not granola. It'd be something else. What would you make? What would be your thing, Tracy? To Richard's point earlier, I'd probably make cookies because my husband does have the best cookie recipe in the world. You want to start a cookie business. in, you rent our kitchen. You only need a kitchen maybe five hours a week. You come in, you rent our kitchen, you make your production, you can rent some storage space to us, but you're only paying us for those five hours. We also have kitchens where you can come in and you can rent this kitchen. And we've got some small ones that are 400 feet and they go up to 1600 feet. You can rent that kitchen. You have access to it 24 seven. You've got your own key. Everything in there is yours. And we provide you with a kitchen and the kitchen has the very basics, the hood, the sinks, the flooring, the floor drains, all that stuff. You just have to bring in all your equipment. Now, the advantage of that is if you were to go out and open a cookie store, you'd have to go rent a licensed facility. And you could spend months looking for that. Landlords typically want a three to five year minimum rent. Then you're going to have to put a deposit down. You're going to have to go through the whole licensing process. Minimum, it's going to take come in and you can open basically for the price of your ingredients and the license. And the license, you can go down to City Hall, you get a shared kitchen user license, and you get that on Monday and you can come because we have a shared kitchen operator license. You get the license on Monday and on Tuesday you can be in business. So it is a great way to encourage entrepreneurship. It's one of the better things that City has done over the last shared child care space in Mount Airy. Because if you think of like a child care entrepreneur, and like, okay, they want to take care of children, but do they want to spend their time thinking about licensing and like the building codes, etc. So let another entity just sort of do all this sort of blocking and tackling with like all of that, and then just like, do the actual business that you like. So talk to us a little bit of, I guess, like, has it been to get tenants into the kitchen? It has been very easy getting tenants. The biggest problem with it, it's a very capital intensive business. Building restaurant kitchens, short of building hospital rooms, they're about the most expensive on a square foot basis thing you can do. But the economics are so compelling on the other end. I'll give you one example. hood on it. It was made for, I had three people approach me, they were going to start ice cream businesses. We went out, built this facility out, and again, it doesn't have a hood, so it wasn't as expensive as most kitchens. And we just ordered a $26,000 five-gallon industrial ice cream machine for it. Now, these people who are, you know, doing it, one's doing a specialty Hispanic-themed ice cream, another's doing one with Asian, you know, flavored ice creams. You can [50:00] come in in a day and you can make, you know, 200 gallons of ice cream, put them in the deep freeze, plus your ingredients, you spend a thousand dollars with us or something along those lines, where it would be almost impossible to do that on your own without a complete facility. And you'd have to go buy that $20,000 ice cream machine, or you'd buy a $5,000 ice cream machine that has one gallon capacity and you can make 10 gallons in a day versus making 50 or 100 gallons in a day. very compelling. Anytime you've got a lot of capital costs and an individual would use them, you know, two, four, six, eight hours a week, and you can get the scale of having three, four, whatever number of people using them, it's incredibly efficient. And all the associated costs with it, the licensing, the, you know, the property taxes, the search costs to find a little engine for the city's economy. Just real quickly, could they theoretically be used as ghost kitchens? Like could someone do live delivery? Oh yeah, absolutely. The other difference between ghost and shared kitchens, ghost kitchens typically tend to be smaller and in much more desirable real estate because they need to be within five. Like there's one, I live in the South Loop. There's one about three minutes south of us, 22nd and Wabash. Now they can get to the whole South Loop in five minutes, and there's 80,000 people living in the South Loop. Our facility is in Brighton Park. It's a 60,000-square-foot warehouse, and we're two-thirds of the way to Midway Airport. Unless you got lost on the way to the airport, you'd never realize. We're an industrial area. You could never run a ghost kitchen. There's just not the density of apartments and residents. a third of the value of what their buildings are. You mentioned licensing for the shared kitchen. And I feel like whenever we talk to restaurateurs, dealing with the city and regulations always seems to be some form of complaint. Has it changed over the years? Has it gotten better? Absolutely. Absolutely. I noticed some real changes when Rom was mayor. The joke was that eighth floor, which is where all the licensing is, eighth floor was the department of no. I mean, they would just go out of their way to find reasons to tell you no. And it was just an ungodly, burdensome task getting a license. It is much, much better now, but it is still not a real efficient process. So it went from a D minus, now it's a B minus. they are trying to help you open that business. So there's still a lot of little vagaries in the licensing and things like that. But the tone when you talk to people and you work with them, they're generally much more supportive and they are trying to help get your business open. All right, Richard, thank you so much for coming on All Thoughts. Really appreciate getting your perspective. Oh, glad to be here. Glad it was very enjoyable. Thank you. Joe, that was really enjoyable. That was so fun. I thought the comments about... restaurants being a competitive industry i mean kind of obvious but this idea that it's very hard to draw a moat around your business especially when popularity tends to be fleeting for a lot of the new hot spots right yeah and the fact and i guess it's obvious but i hadn't thought of it that there are just a lot of people in it i guess quote for the love of the game on yeah who are not in it because you're not competing in the same game right because they don't care about me yes example, and people want to have their it's kind of like their clubhouse or something like that, or some of these vanity, vanity endeavors where it's like, I'm okay, losing money, that's really hard to compete against. And then, of course, the idea and you know, that it's hard to be competitive, if you want to follow the law, which I think is a really big deal. And the fact that like, if you're like serious about like, you know, immigration law, and all these things, and proper overtime, and all of these things that like, if you take these seriously, if you want you're really putting, you're really worsening your economics. Yeah. Also, The shared kitchen idea is an interesting one because you basically I guess you pull together all the capital for that initial investment and the cost of the lease and stuff like that. And then everyone can benefit from it rather than having to go out and purchase their own kitchen. Like you said, it's very similar to the Mount Airy example. [55:00] And to start your cookie... uh empire i would probably do something better than cookies for the record but my husband's cookie recipe is phenomenal and also a source of great drama in our community and if you have a great cookie recipe why do you want to spend your time on random things like licenses and health inspectors and all that stuff that has nothing to do with whether your cookie recipe is good focus on the cookies for real no i think these those types of businesses where you like earlier about you know like a wharton grad versus a non-wharton grad one person's competitive advantage might be they're just a really good chef or they just have a really good feel for flavors and actually they suck at maybe identifying residential real estate signing leases sourcing capital and all those other things like they suck at excel basically and so if you can divide some of that up yeah yeah it seems like an interesting proposition no there's so much in there now that episode on what you learn in business school. Yeah. I actually have no idea, like really what you learn in business school and hearing about what you learn and how that's evolved over time. That's super interesting right there. We could have talked for a long time just about the emergence of all these places that we have like they teach you how to be an entrepreneur rather than just sort of. you know, go into middle office at City Group or something. There was just a lot in there. Like I said, we could talk for hours with him. Absolutely. Shall we leave it there for now? Let's leave it there. Okay. This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Tracy Allaway. You can follow me at Tracy Allaway. And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at The Stalwart. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at CarmenArmond, Dashiell Bennett at Dashbot, Kale Brooks at Kale Brooks, and Kevin Lozano at Kevin Lloyd Lozano. And for more Odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg.com our episodes. 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