Should you buy that restaurant? 3 restaurateurs weigh in
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5 Min Read
It could be a good time to buy a restaurant. And entrepreneurs looking to purchase an established restaurant have their pick.
There are anywhere from several thousand to well over 10,000 restaurants listed at any point, according to the business broker We Sell Restaurants, which has seen a 15%-18% increase in listings, thanks to factors like demographic shifts.
“A large number of restaurant owners are reaching retirement age without succession plans,” said Robin Gagnon, the cofounder and CEO of We Sell Restaurants.
Across the country, restaurateurs have been the beneficiaries of those demographic shifts and have found benefits in taking over established restaurants. These restaurants help entrepreneurs quickly establish restaurant groups and find synergies and savings in their growing businesses.
“As far as independent restaurants in general go, I really feel like there’s a period of opportunities that are similar [to mine],” said Jimmy Stockwell, a brewery owner who recently bought the rights to three restaurant brands along with real estate in Athens, Ohio, where he’s based.
The original restaurant owners wanted to take a step back from work, he said. “There are certain restaurateurs or groups that are aging out of their restaurants, and I would like to see more of those restaurants continue. … Your business just doesn’t end when you’re done with it; it continues,” he said.
The Village Bakery and Café, one of those brands, continued running as Stockwell took ownership. He appreciated being able to learn how the place operates on the business’s strong foundation. “On the financial side, knowing the numbers going into it was really nice. Also, there’s a built-in clientele,” he said.
Established restaurants often come with established customers, reputation, staff, and equipment. Of course, those established diners have come to expect certain things, as chef and owner Marc Forgione discovered. Forgione has run his eponymous restaurant in the Tribeca area of New York City since 2008.
In January 2020, when Forgione took over Peasant, a beloved New York City restaurant, he wanted to pay homage to the restaurant’s past while making it his own.
Some regulars stopped coming when they realized Marc wasn’t doing the menu from the original owner Chef Frank DeCarlo. “I knew there was going to be some backlash,” he said.
“But I didn’t waver,” added Forgione, an award-winning, former “Iron Chef America” contestant. “If somebody was like, ‘Can you make Frank’s mushroom risotto?’ I would very kindly just say, ‘You know, I’m not Frank, but you can try the mushroom ravioli with cordyceps and sage that we just put on the menu.’ Some people bought into it, and others I haven’t seen since. But I couldn’t open it and try to pretend to be Frank.”
Ultimately, going his own route was the right move for Forgione. Through various tweaks, including a pandemic pivot to pizza, the restaurant has found its way and its own regulars.
“When the dust settled, that’s when we really started to be a version of who we are now, and we’re still evolving. It’s been a wild, wild ride, but knock on wood, we’re having our busiest first quarter,” he said back in March.
Learning curve
For Krista Cole, a James Beard semi-finalist for Outstanding Restaurateur, the regulars came with the restaurant. Cole purchased Gather, a restaurant set in a Masonic Hall in Yarmouth, Maine, in 2023. The location was just a 20-minute drive from Portland, Maine, where Cole’s award-winning restaurant Sur Lie was located.
When she bought Gather, she kept the name but freshened up the logo, branding, and interior. The menu is completely different, too, but still focused on local producers and straightforward dishes. We’re “finding that really nice balance. But I think people were kind of excited to see a change there, to be honest.”
Even with their close proximity, Cole has found that the restaurants operate very differently.
Portland brings in tourists who frequent Sur Lie, but the restaurant still has its fair share of locals. Being a local restaurant in Yarmouth, however, means something different. Many diners come to Gather multiple times a week. And the reservation books look different at both restaurants. Reservations are rarer at Gather, and Krista notes that taking credit cards to hold bookings at Gather, which is a necessity in Portland, would never fly in a small town.
“At Sur Lie, we’ll book out reservations for the whole night,” she said. “So pretty much what you’re looking at in the books, minus walk-ins at the bar, that’s pretty much what you’re going to see for covers, whereas at Gather, it could look like no one’s coming in, and then the whole town comes in.”
But there are efficiencies. Both restaurants use the same tech, and much of the staff is trained to work both locations. While it’s rare to have a regular at Gather visit Sur Lie, the restaurants are a short enough drive for employees.
“When you have a dishwasher call out, I can literally get a dishwasher from Sur Lie to go up to Gather,” she said. “Or we run out of napkins at Sur Lie, or we can’t meet a minimum with our distributor to order … we’ll just tack it on to the other restaurant’s delivery, and I can run and grab it.”
While there’s been a learning curve, Krista often finds that differences between the two restaurants can work in her favor. The slower summer at Gather is “nonstop” at Sur Lie. And she can sometimes convince a large group that won’t fit at Sur Lie to make the drive to Gather.
“I can kind of punt between the two, which is really nice.”
A version of this article previously appeared on In the Weeds a new publication covering the business of independent restaurants.
