David Hopkins

I always say it's pretty much the hardest business to run, at least the hardest small business.

It depends on how the economy is doing, what consumer confidence is like, what your competition is like.

So many factors.

But it also depends, too, on what you're doing internally in a restaurant and how you can build revenue yourself.

On top of that, I mean, they're such complicated businesses to run from a profitability point.

There are so many variables that are unknown in a restaurant.

Many businesses, like even my consulting company, I know exactly what my expenses are going to be next month, whereas in a restaurant.

you don't know what about 80% of your expenses are going to be.

Everything is variable.

Staff get paid hourly and your utility costs, your paper supplies, your kitchen expense, your repairs and maintenance, it's all variable costs, which makes it a really tough business to manage even when you have the revenue.

If you interviewed me 10 years ago and said, how's the industry?

I'd say it's tough.

It's not great.

It's tougher now because so many restaurants to survive COVID took on a bunch of debt.

We've got the economy at play.

We've got what's going on in the world.

The whole Middle East thing is in play.

And we've also got a decline in people eating caused by the ozympics of the world.

You know, I would say there's a worse market condition than we've seen in a long time.

I mean, there are two fundamentals to restaurants, and they sound simple, but they're hard to deliver on.