What’s for lunch in America?
Guest: Noelle Ifshin
Topics: Leasing, real estate
Transcript:
Chris Ressa 0:01
This is retail retold the story of how that store ended up in your neighborhood. I’m your host, Chris Ressa. And I invite you to join my conversation with some of the retail industry’s biggest influencers. This podcast is brought to you by DLC management
Welcome to retail retold everyone today I’m excited we have Noel if she’s on the show, Noel is the director of leasing and sales for Delphi commercial properties, which is an affiliate of DLC management. And she is the president of for Q consulting a restaurant consulting business. No well has been in the restaurant industry for 25 years. I am excited to have her Welcome to the show, Noel.
Noelle Ifshin 0:45
Thanks for having me, Chris. pleasures, all mine.
Ressa 0:49
Why don’t you tell us a little bit about more about you your career and what you’re up to?
Ifshin 0:54
Well, thank you, Chris. So, again, it’s nice to be here. So obviously, I come from a real estate family. I came to the real estate business in a very circuitous manner. I have a BA in economics. I then went to culinary school. surprised everyone went to culinary school, culinary school, the Culinary Institute of America, okay up in Hyde Park, New York. And then I spent roughly 20 years cooking professionally. Then I then I transitioned into the business side of the restaurant and corporate food service industry. I ended up leaving the food service industry and branching out on my own. I opened a food consulting business in 2012. And about a year and a half into that, I realized that the majority of my clients needed retail space to open restaurants that was one of their first if not first question. They would come to me saying I needed a space to open a restaurant. So I then went and got licensed as real estate salesperson in New York and then moved on and got licensed as broker. Awesome. Then in 2018, I came to do brokerage work with you guys over to say
Ressa 2:16
you were cooking professionally for 20 years.
Ifshin 2:21
What? What what type of food were you cooking? Oh, everything from modern Asian cuisine to mostly seafood. I did just about everything except baking. And
Ressa 2:37
what what do you think is your if you were going to face off Bobby Flay in the bobby Phil like, beat Bobby Flay. What would your specialty dish be?
Ifshin 2:47
Oh, I don’t know, Chris. It’s been it’s been a while since I’ve cooked professionally. So I I probably wouldn’t face Bobby Flay and
Ressa 2:57
her enough. Fair enough. But you said you cooked a lot of seafood.
Ifshin 3:03
I did. I for about 12 years, I worked for a restaurant group, where we predominantly and we were based in Long Island, we’ve predominantly focused in seafood. And we’ve started in Montauk and worked our way back towards Nassau County on the island.
Ressa 3:19
And you make a good clam chowder.
Ifshin 3:21
Oh, yes. both red and white.
Ressa 3:25
I’m about I’m putting that on the my notes right now. I’m taking down notes. No, well can make a awesome clam chowder. i I’ll be come November, December when it’s cold outside. I might give you a ring.
Ifshin 3:38
I might have to ship some to you since we’re not working together in an office anymore.
Ressa 3:42
Yes. All right. Well, so you have an awesome restaurant background. Obviously, you have a history in real estate. I want to ask you the million dollar question before we start talking about everything restaurant, everything food business, the million dollar question. I know you’re not going to like the question, but everyone wants to know, ready for the million dollar
Ifshin 4:06
question. Oh, yeah. I’m
Ressa 4:07
Chris. It’s actually a $5 million question. Um, if I give you $5 million. And so here are the rules with the $5 million.
Ifshin 4:17
Okay, ready? One, it has to go to opening a restaurant. Rule two, you have
Ressa 4:26
to open it January 2021. And rule three you have to be have some conviction that it’s going to be successful. What are we doing? Where’s my 5 million going?
Ifshin 4:41
Do you have a location in mind?
Ressa 4:45
It’s a good question. It’s very
Ifshin 4:47
foreseeable as a as somebody who’s licensed in real estate and we’re a real estate company. The location is going to be key. Right. So and with everything that’s going on these days, I think That’s gonna listen, your location is going to make or break your restaurant. So that’s the first determining factor. We’re gonna overshoot.
Ressa 5:07
So that’s a good pivot over food. The location Do you think matters more than the food quality? I think that’s a good talking point.
Ifshin 5:15
Yeah, of course. Listen, there are basics in the restaurant business, or in any hospitality business that have to be there that your customers are going to expect. You can’t open a restaurant without food. Right? So if you’re asking me to open a restaurant, I’m assuming that you’re expecting the food’s going to be good. So that’s a given, right? I’m expecting, you’re expecting that there’s going to be great service, there’s going to be great communication that the staff is going to be knowledgeable, that’s a baseline that we’re going to make the assumption is already there.
Ressa 5:49
Got it? So the location, yes, the location is going to be a growing upper middle income suburb in the United States.
Ifshin 6:00
And that’s a great answer, especially with what’s going on these days. So I think that the restaurant would be on the smaller size rather than the larger size. Okay, just square feet. Even with social distancing requirements, if they’re still in place, we’ll put that aside for the moment, we are going to find a location that was an existing restaurant because the ventilation might still be there. So we don’t have to punch through and build from the ground up. If brands open in three months, it’s September 1, to show it’s going to be zoned appropriately, it’s going to allow for a restaurant, I would prefer it to be a fast casual restaurant rather than a fine dining sit down. Because I think for a while fine dining sit down is going to take a hit a little bit in the marketplace. I would like there to be an ability to have some outside dining, maybe not in January, but as we warm up into the spring have the ability to serve outside. I think people will still remember that we’re in you know, there could be another wave of this or this could happen again. Sure. Maybe there could be a drive thru or a pickup window of some kind for current or curbside area, long vision to the outside space. Maybe we could buy an existing business because $5 million gives you a lot of money to play with. So it could be it could be turnkey, what. And then we just changed the branding, the concept. The food for conceptual, you know there are things that are doing well now are things that did well during the pandemic are the pizza category, that pizza pasta category did very well during the pandemic, they lends well to takeout and delivery. To go, it’s family friendly, it’s comfort food, people are still in that phase, even though people are venturing out more and people are itchy to get out more and want to get out more, they’re still a little hesitant. Pizza pasta has a great profit margin and great food cost. That helps with the profit margin. Yeah. So those categories didn’t actually did very well, during the pandemic. They’re one of the few.
Ressa 8:41
That’s great. Yeah, I think that’s, that’s, I
Ifshin 8:44
mean, that’s a lot in a very quick answer.
Ressa 8:46
Yeah, no, I think it was good. I think it was fantastic. To give the listeners kind of your thought process behind that right and how you went from, you know, one side of it, which was the market, then we went down to the type of location it was smaller when his existing restaurant previously zoned right had existing restaurant infrastructure, maybe potential for outdoor dining drive thru, to go pick up in store. And then you went to a fast casual category and one that you know, has high margins and is comfort food travels well with delivery and is a fan favorite. I think all those are spot on. Good lessons for everyone that we learned in the pandemic. I believe the quick comfort food is here to stay where we’re coming into the fall. You know, there’s going to be some apple streusel is out there and some pumpkin pies about to be you know, baked throughout the you know, and I think as the fall comes in, you have you know, Sunday football as the weather gets gets a little darker, you’re gonna see some you know, fall you’re gonna see some comfort foods stay here. I don’t know that that’s going away. As much as we’re in a health craze in America, you know, there the whole plant based restaurants and food was so hot pre pandemic, as much as we are that were still looking for that comfort and that feel good food that travels well. And it’s quick and easy. I think that’s the other thing that you mentioned that it hit on, it was family friendly. Right? The you know, in my house Friday nights pizza night, you know, that’s, it’s family friendly food, for sure. It’s easy, it’s delicious. It’s quick, and it’s affordable, you know, affordable. It’s very affordable. So thank you for that, that playing my game with me.
Ifshin 10:42
So although just opening a restaurant, three months is challenging to che,
Ressa 10:47
yes, it is. I also liked the concept that you mentioned, if you could buy an existing restaurant, that might be the path of least resistance that that’s good, thought provoking ideas for the listeners out there. And you know, we might see, I’m interested to see on like a national, the major chains. If you see more of that, you know, I you know, I just saw something that burger is buying Johnny Rockets, I think you’re gonna see more of that there might be an opportunity to buy in that world as well. So we’ll see. So we talked, we’ve been talking a lot lately about restaurants. And we talked a little bit before this. And you had some thoughts on some other things that are kind of going on in your head and what you’re seeing and what and what your past experience has told you about restaurants? Why don’t you take us through a little bit on the, for lack of a better word, what might the restaurant industry look like in the future?
Ifshin 11:53
Well, some of the things we I hit upon in in when you threw $5 million at me to open a restaurant on the fly. Some of the things that, you know, the pandemic was definitely a shock to this as to the restaurant industry. And it’s still a shock to the industry, a lot of some restaurants haven’t come back, some are still being very cautious about reopening, depending on where you are. There were a lot of trends happening and market forces happening in the industry prior to the pandemic. And I think that talking about some of those would help put the conversation in context of where we are today. And I think that some of those trends got accelerated. And I think some of those trends stopped dead in their tracks. So I think you know, that the pandemic stopped those from, from moving forward. And I think that some of the things that we talked about, you know, the basic being the basics, for example, when you asked me about, I hadn’t talked about the food and the restaurant, we talked about the location, those will never I don’t think that those will, should ever change in the restaurant business, for example, the quality, the experience, the knowledge, you know, you have to put out a consistent product that the that’s the foundation, right? So you can’t build a restaurant on a crack Foundation, just like you can’t put up when you in your construction team, you can’t put up a building on a crack foundation or the building will fall down, right. So you just like in every industry, you need to have the basics have to be there, regardless of what time you’re in. How you execute those basics might have to change. But the basics are still the basics. Make sense? Right? I think that there’s some demographic changes happening that affect where people are physically, I think there are some demographic changes about how consumers are viewing their purchases. And I think that there are some demographic changes about the biggest decision you’ll make if you want to either open a restaurant or revamp at that restaurant, and we’re talking about, you know, we work with a lot of businesses that have multiple locations, right. So if you’re thinking about opening a restaurant, the first biggest decision is where do you put that restaurant? So a lot of times you talk to your guests on this show about how that story ended up in my neighborhood. Right? Right. So that’s the biggest question. And if you’re seeing people, there was a trend, probably in the mid 2010, where a lot of Americans were leaving cities for suburbs, and that was due to economic growth in the economy coming out of the Great Recession. For the economic rebound, the economy was getting better and better. People were leaving cities anyhow, and the pandemic made accelerated that to a greater extent and made it happen a little quicker. And the question is You know, if you’re planning to open a restaurant in a downtown location, after the pandemic is over, will those office buildings still have tenants in them? Right? So you know, that might affect whether you have lunch business or not. So as an operator, you need to look at all the factors of where you’re going to put your location, if you’re going to have customers, because that’s the first question restaurant operators will ask. The second question is, how many tables do you need? How many turns do you need to make? Because the second question is, how do I break even? Right? So those two questions go hand in hand. On operator, right.
Ressa 15:39
So if we’re if we focus on the first pillar that you talked about, which was demographics, right.
One of the challenges I think, is we have a very mobile world today. Yeah, I was on LinkedIn. And I, I saw a guy and he’s like, this is the these are the 10 cities. I lived in the last six years. Right. So we have a mobile world when you have fixed infrastructure. How, what, how does a restaurant tour get their arms around a more rapid migration?
Ifshin 16:18
I think if you’re talking about metropolis, is there’s always going to be ebb and flow in and out of those cities. Right. So you know, and there’s always going to be Taurus dollars. The question is, you know, at some point, we will come out of the pant, this pandemic. So the assumption is that those flows will flow again. Right, yeah. So it’s just a matter of it’s not just one way, it’s not just one, it’s not just one way Exactly. But I think that there will be a rise and there has been a trend, you have to really look at the trend pre pandemic, because the assumption is that we’ll keep going to the suburbs, because there has been growth in retail, as you know, and in restaurant growth in the suburbs. So you know, the urban sprawl has gotten has gotten farther and further out. And businesses have done very well out further outside of the cities. Got it? So and you couple that with who is spending their money, right? So if you look at the trends, each category of generation spends differently. Right? Right. So millennials spend differently than my generation, which is Gen X spends differently than baby boomers. Right? They want different things. So I would say millennials, and Gen Z, want more organic, healthier, newer, sustainably sourced food that comes from a company that is community focused, that communicates in a digital format, that communicates regularly with our customers on a digital platform that they don’t have to pick up a phone and call a restaurant. Whereas if you get one a baby boomer to make a reservation, they’re going to pick up the phone, right? So you have to be able to cater to both because the baby boomers have all the money. Right? Right. And you have to you know, you have to sort of you have to find the balance between those two.
Ressa 18:30
So you just said a lot there. Right. So we pivoted from the one portion of the demographics of you know, where we want the location, what type of consumer and then collect about, you know who that consumer is now we’re talking about the millennials, and the Baby Boomers and Gen X, Gen Z, all the different generations. And you talked about some of the things that millennials are looking for, which is a restaurant that supports the community. They have. They communicate digitally, and they don’t have to pick up the phone. We talked about sustainably sourced food. So these are things that for some old school restaurant tours are a challenge. You know, the, the restaurant that’s catering to, you know, corporate business lunch on a regular basis. This is very different than how they’ve done business over the years. Yes, but that millennial will become that corporate business lunch client within the next five years. Because the oldest millennial is now 35. Right? So, but do they does the restaurant does the millennial going to shift their buying habit or do they still want it sustained? bliss sourced food.
Ifshin 20:01
Now. They’re not they still want it sustainably and they’re not going to sit down in a restaurant for a two hour lunch. Unless they become the CEO, unless they become the CEO. There you go. Right. And they have to entertain clients, which is, which is not. Which is not undoable, but it’s not the it’s not the majority of lunch consumers, the majority of lunch consumers are workers. Right? Right. So yes, in markets like New York, Los Angeles in Chicago, there are the CEOs that dine out for lunch. The majority of people that eat lunch, eat a sandwich, or go through the drive thru. Right. So let’s talk about lunch. Okay, let’s, let’s, let’s do lunch.
Ressa 20:51
Let’s talk about lunch. What’s going to happen if we have a world where people are working remotely? What happens to lunch in America?
Ifshin 20:58
That’s a really good question. What happens if people don’t go back to their offices? Yeah, right. So you know, you, you asked me to put my thoughts together what the restaurant of the future looks like? That’s a question I couldn’t answer. Would you say that,
Ressa 21:19
you know, once is always a challenging business for restaurants? breakfast lunch are always challenging. I assume lunch is going to be more challenging than ever, at least in the next 12 months. Do you think that restaurants would be except for the quick serve Chipotle plays? And you know, the the pizza guys of the world except for those and pizza females of the world? Except for those? Would you say that? Maybe a way to get through and get to profit profitability is maybe not focused on lunch?
Ifshin 21:58
Yes, or focus on a different segment. So maybe you offer part of because a lot of restaurants, you know, did meal kits for dinner during the pandemic. So maybe part of a meal kit or a family value pack for dinner includes an extra something in your to go order a dinner, so you can eat it the next day for lunch? For like, half the price of what a lunch entree would cost. So like if a lunch entree was $8 for an extra four hours, we’ll you know, send you home with I actually hadn’t seen it. That’s a great idea. You know, we’ll we’ll send you home with an extra, you know, something that packs well that carries well, that can sit in the fridge overnight, and you’ll can eat that as your lunch the next day. So
Ressa 22:54
here’s something that just dawned on me. What do I have restaurant tours figured out? What people are doing for lunch now? Because like me, or any you know, anyone who’s pretty busy like yourself, you know, a lot of people don’t have the time even though they’re home to sit down and make a burrito from Chipotle. What are people doing for lunch now? Do we know yet?
Ifshin 23:23
I don’t know if we know fully. I mean, yesterday, I looked up and it was three o’clock and realized I had to stop to eat. Right? Because sometimes we’re busy or working from home. Because we’re on back to back calls and conferences all day long. Yeah, right. I know people are or are ordering in. I know people are skipping, I hope people are stopping and making lunch. So
Ressa 23:53
maybe that’s an opportunity for restaurant tours. feeding people home, right? It’s a different different business model than everyone coming out of the office building and walking down to your place. Right? The if that’s your business model, this is different but you know, there’s and people aren’t eating together but what do you think it’s possible the the restaurant that restaurant, could they do some sort of, for lack of a better word quick serve lunch during the day and then do their you know their full menu dinner at night? Is that could they could is that a pivot restaurant or could make
Ifshin 24:32
it depends on the restaurant. I mean, I I do know that places like delis and takeout places for lunches are back up and running. Right and they’re doing lots of delivery and takeout orders. As they were they’re just delivering to people’s homes instead of offices. Right. So that business is is back in business. Got it. So
Ressa 24:59
we’ve we’ve got Let’s unpack what we’ve covered. So far. We’ve covered the demographics. Where should the restaurant go? How? How do I break even? We covered the differences in millennials and the Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Z, and then we covered what’s happening with lunch in America. The next one, I guess that leads me into that I just thought of is what’s going on with breakfast? I go on a coffee run every day. So, you know, I’d be lying to say I haven’t picked up a couple bacon egg and cheese is because I have
Ifshin 25:39
I’m a terrible restaurant person. I never go out for breakfast.
Ressa 25:44
You’re a great restaurant person. Never go out for breakfast. Make breakfast.
Ifshin 25:48
I only go out for breakfast when I’m not at home. Like when I’m on vacation, or I’m traveling. I’m not.
Ressa 25:54
I guess my question is what’s, how’s breakfast in America?
Ifshin 26:00
Well, I think breakfast in America is probably the one segment that’s hurting because a people aren’t staying in hotels right now. Right? Yeah, people aren’t going into their offices. Got it. Opposite tenant is is better than it was, say a month ago. But it’s nowhere near what it was in February. Got it? Right. A lot of people pick up breakfast on the way. Sure. Or once they’re in their office, they order or they get it in their office cafe or Sure, bring it with them. Some people bring it with them. But office breakfast was never the biggest category from restaurants to begin with. It was always the smallest. Right. So but breakfast, this problem is hurting.
Ressa 26:51
So we talked about what’s for lunch? What’s for breakfast? What’s, what else is what else is going on with the future restaurant, what else?
Ifshin 27:00
I think that the biggest place that can make the largest leap and innovation out of this pandemic is going to be in the digit digital integration. I think a lot of restaurant tours were very, still very hesitant to fully integrate their systems. And I think that the one thing that this pandemic has taught them is how their systems weren’t speaking to each other. And a lot of instances, a lot of restaurant tours had POS systems and other devices and other systems that didn’t talk to each other. So when they had to figure out how to do online ordering, and have it talk to their POS system and then have a delivery system, take the last mile of delivery, they realized that none of their systems spoke to each other. Right. Right. So
Ressa 27:51
what have they done now? Has that been? Are they rectifying that? Did they rectify it? Are they paralyzed? What’s going on?
Ifshin 27:58
I think some operators were paralyzed. I think that, you know, it’s it’s expensive to fix. I think that a lot of the software companies have put patches in place to be able to make them speak to each other. I think that if restaurant tours are going to make investments in anything, so that we’re prepared for this the next time because there will be other viruses, there will be other pandemics. I think that we were so unprepared for this, just as an industry that I think they’ll we weren’t the only industry but I think in general, we weren’t prepared that anything like this could happen that we would just shut down from one day to the next. Right, be completely shut down that it would help the US be able to stay in touch with our customers. If restaurants were more digitally integrated, there are a lot of restaurants out there that still don’t even have point of sale systems that do everything by hand. Believe it or not. Wow. Yeah,
Ressa 29:01
I know I’ve seen them. But I have also I have also seen like restaurants that you wouldn’t expect where, you know, I bring my daughter to or I did pre pandemic my daughter to a restaurant called the Red Barn in Montville New Jersey. It’s where we go for breakfast every weekend and daddy daughter time. And it is a casual breakfast spot. And they’ve, they’ve hung in there. And they were doing some takeout and now they’ve got outdoor seating. And even then I you know, I asked for a menu last Saturday and they said, use your phone, it’s right here and they had the QSR and I put my phone up and they had the QSR code and the menu popped right up on my phone and I’ve seen everyone’s you know, a lot of groups are pivoting to that. That’s interesting. So the contactless menu and that’s great. Yeah. I was I was impressed that they pivoted to that. So that’s great. And
Ifshin 30:03
but the it’s interesting because it would be interesting to, to know, if when you then place your order on that phone, if it goes directly into their POS system in the kitchen, or if it prints out a receipt and some somebody has to walk it into their kitchen.
Ressa 30:18
That integration wasn’t there. So I didn’t, I didn’t order it from the phone. I just saw them instead of them giving me a menu, right, it was on my phone. And I don’t know why I asked for the menu, I might eggs over easy with Brian Brown’s every time. So
Ifshin 30:36
but there are, but there are now systems where you can scan a QR code, the menu comes up on your phone, you can sit at your table, you can order your meal, you hit send. And that order goes into a computer into the kitchen. And if you ordered a drink, the drink order goes to the bar to the bartender and your order goes into the kitchen. And your order gets made.
Ressa 31:02
Well, then, Steve ition, the former co founder of DLC He and the Father of admission and know well, he wouldn’t have been ordered able to order eggs because I’ve said Steve and Steve said I want scrambled eggs loose. And I haven’t seen one QSR menu that had a checkmark that said you could order the scrambled eggs loose. And he had a conversation with the waitress about how we wanted to make sure the scrambled eggs are loose. And by the way, if you haven’t had scrambled eggs loose, it’s way better. I didn’t have until Steve told me about them.
Ifshin 31:36
There was no worse crime in his life. And if you overcooked his scrambled egg.
Ressa 31:41
So, but but how do you get but I pointed that example because
Ifshin 31:47
there are not a lot of there are not a lot of companies that have that integration
Ressa 31:51
technology. So Right. So
Ifshin 31:53
to solve that, yeah, it is challenging. But that’s where but that’s where the industry is going.
Ressa 31:59
Got it. Okay. And so what else is there besides the integration between them? QSR menus, what other digital innovations are? Where are we going? What else should we expect?
Ifshin 32:13
Um, I think that just getting restaurants digitized, getting the technology in place, getting operators comfortable with the technology so that they can change their menus more frequently. They can have smaller menus, all of the things that we talked about in the when we put together the eBook about being able to reinvent your restaurant, to simply to be able to simplify your menu, right. So in a crisis, if you need to be able to make your menu smaller, to manage your costs your staff, if you can’t, in the beginning of the pandemic operators couldn’t get certain items. If the supply chain was backed up, you couldn’t get certain ingredients, people had to change their menus. If you had too few couldn’t get in into a computer system, you know, with a digitized menu and get in there and change your menu whenever you need to change it every day.
Ressa 33:15
Can I change what I order? From the supplier going online? Can I just order from whomever and say I need this and go online and do that? I would hope that operators
Ifshin 33:25
are ordering placing their orders via a computer and that they’re ordering it online. Not over the phone anymore? Well, some people do. Right? Usually most online ordering systems are from the vendor. So whoever your vendor is your you have a sales rep, they’ll come in and set up an online ordering system for you. It’s usually cloud based. That’s a whole separate point you can tie your inventory to your computer system. Yeah, I mean,
Ressa 33:56
this will help them with more things than just the DEM is the restaurant tours. This is going to help restaurant tours with not just getting through a pandemic this is going to be better for them. You know I’ll never forget from a business efficiency model Absolutely. You know, there was there’s a there’s a casual dining restaurant local demean I would have never expected this. And I knew the owner and it was a diner. And it’s great diner and I the prompt and Queen diner and i i asked him What are you doing today and he was going through the that it was it was around the holiday time and he was going through the best sellers for the year and the worst sellers. And he was taking out the the 10% of the menu that sold the least. And he was going to put some new hot items on coming into the new year and I was like wow, this is this is great that, you know, they’re looking at something like this. And I think that’s, you know, that’s what the digitisation can help with, you know, restaurant tours. So
Ifshin 34:57
absolutely, I mean, there’s no point keeping so Going under menu that’s not selling, you can run a product, what’s called a product menu mix and see what percentage of X you’re selling. And, you know, but that goes back to the basics. Yeah, me, to me in my mind. But you know, I get yelled at all the time saying, Oh, you’ve been in the restaurant so long to you. That’s basic to not everybody else. It’s not basic. So that that’s all part of monitoring your machinery. I think streamlining your menu and your operations can all tie into digitizing, I think that operators have learned through this pandemic to do with last. Right, I think that we all have learned to do with less. Yes, I think that they’ve also, you know, restaurants were always really good at cleaning and health safety protocols, I think that they’re more on top of them now than they ever were before, because the health departments have made them based. So I think you can, people can rest assure that, you know, they’re doing everything to keep everybody safe. And I think that restaurants need to remember, they need to communicate that to their guests. They need to tell their guests what they’re doing to keep them safe. And you can do that easier on a digital platform than anywhere else. Well,
Ressa 36:15
this has been great. We got we went through your $5 million idea. We went through the, you know, where the location based on demographics, and you know, what those people in the different generations are looking for. We went through the, you know, what’s for lunch and breakfast in America, the digitization, and we covered a lot here. Anything else that we haven’t covered that we should cover about restaurants?
Ifshin 36:45
Yeah, listen, the the Father always reminded me that the most important thing in the restaurant business is real estate location. I know you found that surprising. But it’s true. Well, I mean,
Ressa 37:01
commercial real estate, right. So I wouldn’t say that surprising. But I you know, I guess I was putting you know, the quality of food and some of the service. But those are the table stakes. I understand that if you can’t even open a restaurant if you don’t, you know, if you don’t have good food, then there is no restaurant. So
Ifshin 37:16
all right, fair enough.
Ressa 37:19
Well, this was fantastic. No, well, I know you’ve listened before. So we’re gonna go to the last part of our show called retail wisdom.
Ifshin 37:28
Okay, are you ready? I am ready, Chris. All right. So, one,
Ressa 37:34
by the way, you might be ready, but I am. I am going to switch the questions up for you. Okay. So question one. Okay. What is your best piece of commercial real estate advice?
Ifshin 37:52
Find a really good mentor.
Ressa 37:55
Find a good mentor. I love it. sage advice. Yeah, that’s, that is
Ifshin 38:00
and I only say that because I came to the commercial real estate business later on in my career. So I know it blends well with the restaurant business. But I a lot of what I do at DLC is not restaurant focused. So find a really good mentor. It helps immensely. Perfect. Second question. We’re gonna change it up a little bit. Okay. What
Ressa 38:31
extinct restaurant Do you wish would come back from the dead?
Ifshin 38:34
Oh, sure. You’d ask me what retailer. There used to be a restaurant ID. So I grew up in Manhattan. And there used to be a restaurant that never heard of it. Never heard of it. There used to be a restaurant in the village called Joe’s that we used to go to but more than that, there was a restaurant in Little Italy called the villa Penza that my grandfather used to take my father to and then my father used to take us to and I still love that place as a kid. And it’s no longer there. Wow.
Ressa 39:12
What was traditional Italian food,
Ifshin 39:15
traditional Northern Italian cuisine. All right. Last question. Okay. We’ll make it food related. Okay,
Ressa 39:25
we mentioned scrambled eggs. Okay. I’m on whole foods website. Okay, if you Google one of the best I don’t know that I’ve ever had these but one of the best eggs out there.
They say vital Farms Organic pasture raised eggs. What does it doesn’t? Vital forms organic pasture raised eggs retail foreign Whole Foods
Ifshin 39:49
website. There are whole eggs in the shell. Yes. 799
Ressa 39:58
Oh, you are close. 690 No, thank you for playing. Wow. Pretty close. Closer than most guests. All right, no, well, well listen. Thanks so much. Oh, well this was fantastic because I enjoyed it
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