[Sca-cooks] Medieval Menu Month

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Nov 19, 2008, at 10:53 PM, Elaine Koogler wrote:

> Yeah, but we don't have to pay salaries, New York city taxes, etc.   
> And we
> don't have to show a profit in order to keep "doing our thing."  And  
> the
> most I've ever been given is $9 per head and was expected to get a  
> dayboard
> out of that as well!!!  And...I managed to give some of the money  
> back!!  It
> was for our Middle Eastern event last spring, so this was a really  
> great
> thing as many of the ingredients we use for Middle Eastern dishes are
> somewhat more expensive...and hard to find, at least for us in  
> southern
> Maryland.
>
> Kiri

Just as a quick and dirty reference point, restaurants in New York  
City tend to spend roughly 25-30% of menu prices on food. Overall it  
is not a high-profit industry, either; profits are small but,  
hopefully, repeated via high turnover. As Kiri suggests, there are  
salaries, rent (which can be enormous; I currently have perhaps the  
best Indian restaurant in the city four blocks from my apartment in  
Queens because they've been priced first out of Manhattan and then out  
of other parts of Queens by building owners raising their rent three  
or four hundred percent at one jump), taxes, insurance, and then  
there's lovely stuff like every commercial laundry service in the city  
laundering more than linens for certain rather unsavory investors who  
tend to make offers one cannot refuse. That runs into money, too.

Ya know wud I'm sayin'? We wouldn't want Bette Midler sleepin' wit da  
fishes, would we?

Adamantius






"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,  
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's  
bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter