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Restaurant Comings & Goings

Riverman said:
I saw that! I was in T. for 6 days last week with my car and drove by it.

I finally got to try Duff's wings on College - absolutely foul. Undercooked and horribly soggy. I did have a terrific plate of wings on this trip at Barker's in Hudson Wisconsin.

Is there a good wing place in Toronto proper?
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I always see Wild Wing really busy at Church and Richmond. http://www.bestchickenwings.com/
 
A few new places have opened/will be opening on the Danforth:

* Pizzeria Libretto on Ossington is opening a new location on Danforth just west of Carlaw, between Baskin Robbins and Re Reading (where Iliada used to be);

* Café Fiorentina just opened west of Playter in the old (sadly missed) Dash Kitchen location, in the same building as Modern Optical;

* Combine Eatery has recently opened its doors, replacing the ancient South Seas chinese restaurant and serving "southwestern" food apparently.
 
Here's something I don't quite get about these two strips:

College west (little Italy)
Danforth (Greek town)

These two strips probably have the highest concentration of restaurants in Toronto, particularly the Danforth with literary has tons.
Maybe Yonge between Bloor and Queen comes next.

So my question is, how do they all manage to stay in business ? Here's why I ask, other strips directly downtown or say all the ones around Yonge and Eglinton, NYCC, ... (are smaller) but they have tons (relatively) of employment in area and a high concentration of condominiums.

Danforth has very little employment from what I can see - maybe a little in the way of 2nd / 3rd story offices (on top of the restaurants) and same with College.


Am I missing something ?
 
taal said:
Here's something I don't quite get about these two strips:

College west (little Italy)
Danforth (Greek town)

These two strips probably have the highest concentration of restaurants in Toronto, particularly the Danforth with literary has tons.
Maybe Yonge between Bloor and Queen comes next.

So my question is, how do they all manage to stay in business ? Here's why I ask, other strips directly downtown or say all the ones around Yonge and Eglinton, NYCC, ... (are smaller) but they have tons (relatively) of employment in area and a high concentration of condominiums.

Danforth has very little employment from what I can see - maybe a little in the way of 2nd / 3rd story offices (on top of the restaurants) and same with College.


Am I missing something ?
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They don't stay in business. At least not most of them.

I'd say on those strips, at any given time, about 20% of the restaurants are less than one year old. There are always a few institutions that have been there forever (The Standard Club, Astoria etc....), but the rest of the strip is always mostly places 2-3 years old.
 
Jonny5 said:
They don't stay in business. At least not most of them.

I'd say on those strips, at any given time, about 20% of the restaurants are less than one year old. There are always a few institutions that have been there forever (The Standard Club, Astoria etc....), but the rest of the strip is always mostly places 2-3 years old.
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Sure I can by that ... but there aren't many spaces for lease at least on the eastern stretch where most restaurants are located (actually there were a couple only, I could count them on one hand). If the majority came and left every year implying business isn't good one wouldn't expect that to last for a long time and eventually more and more spaces would be for lease ... but that's not the case. So I don't think that's the answer or at least that's only a small part of it.
 
Jonny5 said:
They don't stay in business. At least not most of them.

I'd say on those strips, at any given time, about 20% of the restaurants are less than one year old. There are always a few institutions that have been there forever (The Standard Club, Astoria etc....), but the rest of the strip is always mostly places 2-3 years old.
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I'm not sure that's true of the Danforth, at least the Broadview-Pape stretch. It's mostly the same old, same old. There hasn't generally been a lot of turnover. If anything, more turnover would have been nice, because it's hardly the most interesting/dynamic restaurant scene. That's why the recent raft of new places is a pleasant change.
 
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Skeezix said:
I'm not sure that's true of the Danforth, at least the Broadview-Pape stretch. It's mostly the same old, same old. There hasn't generally been a lot of turnover. If anything, more turnover would have been nice, because it's hardly the most interesting/dynamic restaurant scene. That's why the recent raft of new places is a pleasant change.
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All I know is there's barely anything for lease in the eastern stretch, not sure of an exact street - basically at a certain point it get's a little more mixed and not only restaurants, past that area there's more spots available, not a huge ammount though.
 
Skeezix said:
I'm not sure that's true of the Danforth, at least the Broadview-Pape stretch. It's mostly the same old, same old. There hasn't generally been a lot of turnover. If anything, more turnover would have been nice, because it's hardly the most interesting/dynamic restaurant scene. That's why the recent raft of new places is a pleasant change.
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I admit I don't go to Danforth often, probably only twice this year, but this thread on Chowhound already has about 10 restaurant closings on Danforth so far this year.
 
Yep I've seen that ... but a lot get replaced really quickly with something new.


Anyway, regardless my initial question was where does most of the demand come from ... I'm sure there are closing / openings every year so all of that is really a mute point because it's not like the density around this strip has changed ... and it's not like all these restaurants have only been around recently (I'm not referring to one particular one but overall).

Maybe it's just local demand i.e. a lot of people in the area eat out and when they do they stay put on the stretch, couple this with the others who come to the area and maybe that explains it.

The only thing that gets me is I assumed lunch time service on this stretch would be pretty poor as there's so little employment, maybe dinner is enough though for these places to be sustained.
 
I'm not an expert on restaurant economics, but I think I can guess what is going on.

Danforth (and Little Italy) are very well known for their concentration of restaurants. They are destinations for people who like to go to walk around, enjoy the atmosphere, see what's available and then decide where to eat. A lot of people travel a much greater distance than they normally would to eat in these areas because there are so many choices. This makes these areas a safer place to open a new restaurant. You have a lot more hungry people walking past Pape and Danforth than Pape and O'Connor. So more restaurants open and it becomes a bigger destination drawing in even more people.

As for the lunch crowd, the marginal cost of being open for lunch is probably pretty low. If you regularly have a large dinner crowd, you'll probably have staff in your kitchen around noon anyways to do prep work, take deliveries, do inventory etc. It probably doesn't affect profits to have two servers getting minimum wage on the off chance you can sell a few lunches.
 
Jonny5 said:
I'm not an expert on restaurant economics, but I think I can guess what is going on.

Danforth (and Little Italy) are very well known for their concentration of restaurants. They are destinations for people who like to go to walk around, enjoy the atmosphere, see what's available and then decide where to eat. A lot of people travel a much greater distance than they normally would to eat in these areas because there are so many choices. This makes these areas a safer place to open a new restaurant. You have a lot more hungry people walking past Pape and Danforth than Pape and O'Connor. So more restaurants open and it becomes a bigger destination drawing in even more people.

As for the lunch crowd, the marginal cost of being open for lunch is probably pretty low. If you regularly have a large dinner crowd, you'll probably have staff in your kitchen around noon anyways to do prep work, take deliveries, do inventory etc. It probably doesn't affect profits to have two servers getting minimum wage on the off chance you can sell a few lunches.
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Gotcha, so basically lunch isn't as important really as they can drive enough revenue during the dinner service and the cost of being open around lunch isn't that high anyway.

I know for some places it's clearly the opposite i.e. in the financial district.

The only part that's kind of funny to me is for a semi isolated strip - in terms of employment, I haven't really come a across a place with as many restaurants in any of my travels to other large cities!
 
taal said:
Gotcha, so basically lunch isn't as important really as they can drive enough revenue during the dinner service and the cost of being open around lunch isn't that high anyway.

I know for some places it's clearly the opposite i.e. in the financial district.
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That's actually a pretty good example, though it looks like that is now changing. Earls at King and York frequently has a line to get in at 7pm and it's a huge space inside. The new restaurant across the street is almost set to open. If that can pull in the same size crowds, I'll be willing to say the FiDi officially has some night life.
 
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