new and old sprouts

A bustling time in the Richmond dining scene. A rough count shows around a dozen or so new restaurants sprouting up in just the last couple of months. I'm not sure if its the new kid syndrome (seen regularly in RVA), a consequence of various “natural events” or simply bad luck, but over the last couple of weeks, we’ve had to postpone trying 3 places on this list because of hour+ waits. And these were on weeknights !! Unprecedented. Will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Amidst all this newness buzz, one could almost miss out on some rather sad news – “Sprout” in the VCU area is closing on Sep 5th. While I would not count myself a regular, I have had the pleasure of watching this sprout grow. We have eaten there several times all the way from its seedling stage (back in June 2010) when they were still setting up, to their reclaimed wood furniture stage, to a stage of some maturity and menu stability. I have gone through like-bleh cycles with it – quibbles with execution at times, really enjoying the food at others and all the while appreciating and wanting to support them. They even amused with their menu-in-LP-cover bit. The locavore movement is all the rage these days, and it is rare that a restaurant in the city doesn’t proudly proclaim some aspect of their menu that is locally and/or VA sourced. Sprout was a nice “early adopter” of sorts, which was always something I liked. In a wee bit of nostalgia for me, it also served as the setting to bookend some remarkable personal life episodes. A veritable loss for the area. Good luck.

While I have no idea why Sprout is closing and wouldn’t wish to speculate, I read a rather interesting paper on restaurant turnover rates in the country (“Why restaurants fail” by Harsa et al, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly August 2005, 46, 3, pp. 304-322, doi: 10.1177/0010880405275598). Bottom line – 26 % fold in the first year, 19 % in the second year and 14 % in the third year. The three-year cumulative restaurant turnover rate for franchised chains was 57 %, and 61% for independent restaurants. A bit of data for the statistically curious but its hard to draw any conclusions. Even El Bulli closed because it was bleeding money.

Ending on a non sequitur. I recently had the pleasure to encounter a “pay what you want” concept that I just found simply fascinating - “Decide afterwards for yourself what a fair price is for the eat”. While I’ve heard of this idea before (with even Panera getting into the game), this was a first I’d seen for a relatively “high-end place”, if one can call it that. At some level, the restaurant has a minor bar against abuse via a strict no walk-in policy. Every dinner “sells out” and the food is spectacular and innovative. I wonder though, how this would work as a general business model? In Richmond?
It would certainly make for an interesting behavioral experiment.