Unemployment in the Restaurant Industry
The pandemic has brought American brick and mortar stores and hospitality venues to their knees. Since 2020 when the pandemic started, more than 80,000 restaurants have closed nation-wide, hundreds of those being in Los Angeles alone. Our government has prided itself on being pro-business, especially pro-small businesses since the inception of the United States; however, in recent years, California has been dubbed as being ‘anti-business,’ especially for small businesses. California is known for its booming economy, but it is only booming due to tech and real estate billionaires propping up the economy. During the pandemic, other states offered massive amounts of government aid while California offered pitifully slim benefits. One of the incentives California offered was a $40,000 rent rebate for small businesses falling behind on their rent payments. However the requirements for these incentives were ridiculous, such as having no more than nine employees, and their businesses must be located in unincorporated areas of Los Angeles. These stringent requirements are so restrictive that most businesses were deemed ineligible, thus forcing them to pay full rent during a pandemic which has seriously affected their revenues. Some Angelenos recognized this problem and created platforms in an attempt to promote some of these mom and pop shops, however their efforts were not enough. Luckily for mom and pops there is a new style of food hall which strives to protect as many local small restaurants as possible.
Food Halls and Their New Competition: Bullseye LA
The Los Angeles food scene is one of the best in the world, it is home to some of America’s preeminent restaurants ranging from Nobu to Spago. But LA’s food scene has a major flaw: it fails to publicize its phenomenal ‘hole in the wall,’ family owned restaurants. Some of the food halls in Southern California have attempted to bring such restaurants to light, but have failed due to overcrowding and a lack of congruence within the food and beverage options, causing confusion and annoyance for customers - leading them to pack up and eat elsewhere. This - in conjunction with the aforementioned issues of Covid - has caused many of LA’s mom and pop restaurants to go out of business, leading to unemployment, the furthering of Los Angeles’ homeless problem, and destroying the dreams of small restaurant owners and chefs across the city. Bullseye aims to better the LA food scene, bring LA’s underground food scene to light, and restore the dreams of small LA chef’s with its all new ‘regional food-hall’ concept.
Bullseye will bring Los Angeles’ ‘hole in the wall’ restaurants to light by partnering with some of the best underground, mom and pop restaurants in Southern California and leasing them a space in our food hall. Bullseye is not only fun, lively, and extremely interactive, but it also makes sense from a dining perspective. Bullseye makes sense due to its ‘region specific’ food hall concept, our first location Bullseye Asia will feature 10 Asian restaurants ranging from authentic pho to dim sum to fresh nigiri and every Asian dish in between. While the cuisines are all different and unique in their own ways, the flavors of Asian cuisine go together, the smells are congruent leading to a more enjoyable user experience. In conjunction with having 10 authentic Asian restaurants, Bullseye boasts a boba tea bar, a bakery, a bar, and a specialty sake bar courtesy of our partners at Sawtelle Sake. These added experiences will not only provide more options for our guests, but it will increase customer usership in our food hall and all of our partner restaurants. This is because coffee shops and bakeries will attract customers in the morning, our bars attract bar-goers at night, and the restaurants’ phenomenal food that most Angelenos have yet to try will maintain steady foot traffic all day.
Gatekeeping The Underground Food Scene, Once Maintaining Local Hotspots, Now a Perpetuator of Homelessness
The Underground Los Angeles restaurant scene has been alive and well since the 1990s. Food critics like Jonathan Gold would uncover hole in the wall restaurants and release a beautifully in depth review about each one for his readers to salivate over. With this, people saw that lines would grow exponentially longer after reviews were written, which is great for the business of these small restaurants, however, it caused annoyance with some customers due to extreme lines. When people realized this trend they began gatekeeping (when someone takes it upon themselves to decide who does or does not have access or rights to a community or identity) their favorite underground restaurants. Calabasas’ Shibuya was one of LA’s best kept secrets, everyone kept their mouth shut about the fresh Japanese uni, the melt in your mouth salmon nigiri with lemon, and the yellowtail collar just so they could keep it to themselves - not having to wait in line upon their next visit. That is, until food critics caught wind of it and wrote rave reviews. Locals saw their underground sushi spot turn from a hole in the wall with a 10 minute wait to one of LA’s preeminent authentic sushi restaurants with lines exceeding three hours. There are plenty of other restaurants who have gone down the same path, which has led Angelenos to gatekeep their neighborhood restaurants instead of promoting them, which has proven to hurt the restaurants rather than helping the owners stay afloat.
Thousands of Los Angeles restaurants have been forced to close during the pandemic, whether it be an institutional staples such as Pacific Dining Car or hole in the walls like Stan’s Donut Shop - nobody was safe from the wrath of the pandemic. When looking at the Infatuation’s list of some of the most heartbreaking restaurant closures by neighborhood, the amount of hole in the walls which closed was exponentially larger than that of its more established counterparts. Of the 96 restaurants that were on the list, 81 of them were small, single location, (relatively) low budget establishments. These small restaurants do not have the marketing budgets that restaurants like Nobu or other huge restaurants do, therefore they rely heavily on word of mouth to perpetuate their business. During normal times their storefronts would survive due to random foot traffic and foodies seeking out a new spot to eat, however during the pandemic this foot traffic came to a screeching halt. As previously mentioned, Angelenos love to be exclusive, gatekeeping their favorite local restaurants; but, in turn, it hurts business tremendously for these small restaurants during a time when there is no foot traffic, resulting in their eventual closure. During the pandemic some people tried to promote small businesses and restaurants in their neighborhoods but their efforts were futile, as locals did not eat in those restaurants on a nightly basis. Even restaurants such as Hurry Curry of Sawtelle, who had a strong cult following, had to cease operations permanently stating, “it is with great sadness that we announce the closing of Hurry Curry of Tokyo after 33 years in business. We have lost our lease and will serve our last meal at the end of February.” They had to close their doors for the same reasons as many of the others - their small cult follower base would not eat their food every day, not enough people knew about them, and the government benefits did not apply to them.
Not only has this left hundreds of small restaurant owners without their beloved restaurants, but it has forced many of their employees to resort to homelessness due to layoffs. The LA Times explained “massive job losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic will leave tens of thousands of low-wage workers without homes over the next three years.” Restaurant workers fall directly in that category, as most of them previously made minimum wage and had slim savings - further adding to Los Angeles’ homeless population of nearly 70,000 upon closure of their restaurants. There are a myriad of plausible solutions to the problems of getting downtrodden restaurants and their employees back on their feet such as increased awareness, promotions on Postmates, and further government benefits. But for those who have already gone under, the capital needed to restart is too great, which causes one solution to come to the top of the list: Bullseye Los Angeles.
Why Will Bullseye Fix These Problems?
Restaurants who have already closed due to Covid have little hope at reopening their own stand alone storefront due to the sheer price point. With the average price per square foot of a restaurant starting at around $5 and the average restaurant space at 1,500 square feet, that equates to $7,500 per month just on the real estate alone. On top of the real estate, owners must invest in over $400,000 worth of kitchen equipment, $40,000 for furnishings, $120,000 for inventory and staffing, and another $30,000 at minimum for marketing. That equates to well over $700,000 in year one, a number that most people cannot afford, the barrier entry and sunk costs are too high. Will Donaldson, a world renowned food hall developer, explained “the biggest challenge for most new restaurants is startup costs; if they don’t bring in enough money fast enough to cover these, they flame out.” Bullseye and other food halls offer a much smaller barrier to entry, this is because as the owner Bullseye will hire bussers, janitors, dishwashers, as well as provide chefs with the basic equipment necessary to get their kitchen started (stove, oven, refrigerator, etc.). The only thing our new chefs have to do is decorate their space, pay their lease, bring any additional specialty equipment they may need, and purchase their food inventory - cutting their costs down to less than $200,000, less than ⅓ of the normal price of opening a restaurant. Not only does this cut their costs significantly, but it also lowers their employee count - allowing them to reap the tax benefits of being a small business. Additionally, due to our curation of restaurants in one space, Bullseye will act as an agglomeration economy - garnering more attention for each vendor and furthering the success of our restaurants. After being in the food hall industry for over a decade Ben Mantica, co-founder of the Galley Group, said “many of our vendors have exited their food halls with more capital (and success) than they’ve ever had in their lives,” something Bullseye, too, aspires to do for our chefs.
The food hall market is one that has proven itself to be extremely profitable over the years and people enjoy them, too! Cushman and Wakefield has projected that the food hall market will triple over the next five years, just as it did from 2015 to 2020. Though Bullseye classifies itself as a food hall, its concept is entirely different. Bullseye is a regional food hall, meaning the cuisine that is served is region specific with the restaurant vendors with whom we sign leases. Though we plan to open a plethora of locations ranging from Barbeque to European to Middle Eastern, the first iteration of Bullseye will be Bullseye Asia. As previously mentioned the Los Angeles food scene is one of the greatest in the world, however, the hole in the wall, mom and pop food scene is largely unknown to the general public. Specifically for the hole in the wall Asian food scene, it is highly inaccessible to Angelenos. In order to get authentic Chinese one would need to drive all the way out to the San Gabriel Valley, Japanese: the San Fernando Valley or Irvine, Korean: KTown; in essence, in order to get quality Asian food one would have to drive extreme distances and know exactly where to look: Bullseye aims to streamline this process. Bullseye has partnered with authentic Asian restaurants from all across Southern California to create an all Asian food hall in Venice.
Though limiting the food hall to Asian food may appear restrictive, it is not - the food speaks for itself. In fact, there is another Asian food hall concept in Miami called 1800Lucky which does phenomenally well. This is because of the diversity in Asian cuisine, one could get anything ranging from a chicken karaage (fried chicken) sandwich to nigiri to soup (pho and ramen) to bao buns to boba to beer. At Bullseye, there is something for everyone, especially in a neighborhood like Venice where over 50% of their population are millennial. The millennial culture in Venice largely circulates around art, food, culture, and new experiences - which is precisely why Bullseye will work there. The Venice locals love new experiences, and trying an entire food hall filled with Asian cuisine, bars, boba, and even a coffee shop for the mornings will heavily increase foot traffic. Additionally, some of the restaurants we have partnered with are well known on social media, this will attract customers to the food hall itself which, in turn, will benefit the surrounding community of restaurants within Bullseye.
The neighborhood itself is one that is up and coming, packed with HENRY (an acronym which stands for High Earners Not Rich Yet) renters, but it does have a severe homeless population. Though this would scare away many potential restaurateurs, the Venetian community is still a walking community, increasing the visibility of Bullseye and its vendors. Additionally, the Venice homeless population is one that is filled with people who are new to homelessness and have held jobs before. So, although we cannot alleviate the homeless issue in Venice right away, we can certainly do our part in hiring some people who are experiencing homelessness who are qualified to hold entry-level positions. In this, we are supporting the local economy by adding over 50 employees, while also benefiting from the local crowd of Venetian residents.
How Does This Protect Against a Future Pandemic? Why Not Other Food Halls?
There are dozens of food halls in Southern California, yet there were still thousands of restaurant closures in the past few years - that is because most other food halls have a layout, marketing scheme, and flavor profile that is not conducive to the success of their vendors. Take Grand Central Market for example, they boast over 39 restaurants however their interior is designed like a supermarket - riddled with aisles upon aisles of vendors, little seating, and even less walk space. Not only does this provide low visibility to all of the fantastic vendors within Grand Central Market, but it creates a chaotic environment. The current layout is the antithesis of what is conducive to customers wanting to dine in new restaurants or spend time and money at a property. The segmentation of food halls, especially GCM forces customers to hurriedly make a decision and get out due to the hundreds of people trying to walk through tight halls, inability to see options, lack of an open floor plan and seating space, and a lack of coherence with the food - there are too many options! This was proven during the pandemic as the LA Times cited Grand Central Market as “A Ghost Town, its sad, ugly, and scary,” during the pandemic. All of their restaurants were forced to close their doors.
Bullseye is a better suited partner for these vendors for three main reasons. First, our floor plan will be open, as soon as customers walk into the space they will have a wide lens view of all of the restaurants, and also this provides plenty of interactive seating space which leads to longer stay times and more spending. Secondly, the entire food hall will have partnerships with Postmates and Uber Eats - maximizing profits for all restaurants. Third, our location is in one of the areas with the highest walk-score in Venice, thus increasing visitability for our food hall and all of our vendors. This is in conjunction with our curated stores, designed to attract customers at all times of day, encourage people to stay, and for people to have truly enjoyable dining experiences together, due to the congruence that is brought about by our ‘regional food hall’ concept.
The vendors at Bullseye are as well protected against a pandemic as humanly possible. Our location boasts a lovely indoor-outdoor atmosphere which, in conjunction with its airy aesthetic, is highly functional in terms of mitigating the risk of bacterial/viral infection, which will aid in keeping our restaurants operational during another shutdown. Second, due to our open floor plan, good visibility, and phenomenal marketing, our partnerships with delivery platforms will be highly effective in bringing business to our vendors in any potential future pandemics.
Bullseye seeks to revolutionize the Los Angeles food scene through its ‘regional food hall’ concept. With 10 Asian restaurants, a bakery, coffee shop, and two bars, Bullseye aims to have foot traffic at all hours of the day, making it the preeminent Asian food destination in Los Angeles. Not only will this benefit the local economy, but it will help the small restaurants with whom we have partnered - furthering the success of both their restaurants and their livelihoods. Bullseye Asia is just the first of many locations we plan on opening, with a mission to make the flavors of the world accessible while helping small businesses, Bullseye will continue to expand across the globe!
Bullseye Los Angeles, Coming to a Neighborhood Near You!
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