February 6, 2008
A Million-Dollar Idea?
No. It’s not a million-dollar idea. But it’s a good idea, if I say so myself! And, because I’m that kind of guy, I’m only posting about this idea because I can’t figure out any way to make money off of it!
As a new parent, and having watched many other parents, I know that romantic dinners with your spouse seem to disappear once the kids arrive. I recently made reservations for my wife and I for Valentine’s Day, and it’ll be her, myself, and Wyatt out for the evening. Luckily, Wyatt is still young enough that he’s reasonably well-behaved (and immobile) at restaurants, so we shouldn’t have much trouble. But it’s a pretty nice restaurant, and if he was anywhere between 18 months and 4 years, I’m guessing we’d probably get our asses thrown out of the place.
But there’s a problem. Luckily for us, we have family in the area, so if we really wanted a night away, there are people we trust to leave in charge of Wyatt. And grandparents are known for volunteering for that sort of thing. But not long ago, we were living in Georgia, and there were only a very few people we knew well enough to leave as a babysitter. Trying to get a babysitter, at what we have learned is a relatively large cost ($5-10 per hour, which can add up quickly), would make it nearly impossible for us to go out for a “nice” dinner on a whim. And society has become more like we were in Georgia, with young couples moving away from family to follow jobs, than it is for us now, where young couples live in close proximity to family.
So how can “nice” restaurants, the ones who cater more to romantic dinners than your loud obnoxious family-friendly everyday eateries, cater to these young affluent parents? I think the answer is simple: have a room and a small staff devoted to taking care of kids!
Imagine, you want to take your wife to a nice steakhouse, but you know that your two-year-old won’t sit still for the 90-120 minutes that it will require to have a fine dining experience. You could leave your child with a babysitter, but then you constantly worry about what’s happening at home, and you have the thought in the back of your mind that even if you “got a call”, it might be 15-60 minutes before you could make it home. More often than not, you’re probably going to forego the dining experience in favor of something more convenient and accessible to a family with children. If you do choose the dinner, you know it will be a stressful experience where you spend more time worrying about whether your babysitter is watching R-rated movies while your child cries in a corner than tasting succulent medium-rare filet. And worst-case, you can bring your kids with you, which will probably ensure you spend your whole meal embarrassed by their behavior while the tables adjacent to you mutter nasty things about your lineage under their breaths.
But what if the restaurant had a “kids room”, staffed with one or more people who are good at entertaining children. Throw some toys, some books, and maybe a few TV’s in the room, and the kids will be more than occupied. Feed them some chicken tenders and let them play with other kids, and they’ll be excited to go out for a nice dinner. And if you worry about what they’re up to, you can go over to the room and check on them, because they’re barely out of arm’s reach the whole time!
The restaurant gets increased business from patrons who otherwise might not visit. The other patrons of the restaurant get a noise-free environment where they’re not subjected to the screaming kids. You get a great meal with your spouse, without having to worry about what some babysitter is doing in your home. It’s win-win-win!
As I said, I can’t necessarily call this a million-dollar idea, because I can’t figure out a way that I can make a million dollars from it. But I’m sure that the aggregate profit that could be realized by high-end restaurants due the increased business they attract could be well in excess of that million dollars. While I may never get credit if this idea is realized, I’ll rest easy knowing that I can enjoy the results: stress-free dining when my kid(s) aren’t around (but other parents are), and stress-free dining when I bring my kid(s) with (because I know they’re being cared for and entertained right around the corner).
December 18, 2007
The Price Of Government Comes Home
The government believes you should use ethanol as a fuel. They have enacted policies to incentivize ethanol production. Those policies, as I pointed out here, have unintended consequences:
But let’s look at what’s happened. First, we started hurting poor Mexicans by threatening their access to affordable corn tortillas, a staple of the diet for the impoverished in that country. Then, it was found that the high cost of feed corn for animals will end up resulting in high costs and lower supply of meat. And now, it’s spreading to milk. You know, full of calcium, the stuff we tell children will give them strong bones? Great work, Congress!
And now it’s hit me square in the gut, in my beer supply:
I’ll explain what’s happened to the price of Malt and Hops and why, what can be done about it, and why you are going to see prices jump likely between 15 and 25% on the retail end for Craft brews in a matter of weeks.
…
In late September I was told by another brewery that malt was going up about 40% and hops 30 to 40%. I started calling suppliers and they confirmed this was true, and also that they have no prices locked in yet. Additionally, I was informed that many farmers are not honoring their contracts to the fullest extent (don’t blame the farmers please) due to the crazy price situation that’s evolving in crop farming, with corn being twice the price it was last year.
What does corn have to do with it? Our supplier tells us that with Uncle Sam’s push and financial support for ethanol the price of corn has doubled and many farmers grew corn instead of barley this year. In the UK, where the EU has also required ethanol production, rape seed is the crop of choice and again, a lot more profitable than growing barley and wheat. Couple this with bad weather and growing conditions this year and in Europe and you have a crisis in barley supply. We were told this was coming in early summer, but we assumed our malt company might have meant a 10 to 15% increase in price, not this. When we finally got nailed down pricing last week, one malt price was up 45% and the other up 56%.
As a homebrewer, I just felt this pinch. I knew it was coming eventually, but wasn’t sure how soon or how drastic it would be. I needed to buy some malt for this weekend’s brew session, and went to my usual supplier, who usually has the best prices on just about everything. I was shocked to see that malt prices had jumped 30-50% (depending on variety) since my last order in November.
I’ve been further dealing with the effects of a worldwide shortage of hops, as supply has become inconsistent and prices have shot up, but I can at least blame that on the market. There are some very natural supply-and-demand forces that have affected that market over the last decade, and the market will respond to increase supply. And, to be fair, there are weather-related reasons that the barley crop was not as plentiful as past years. But when government steals my tax dollars and uses them to further exacerbate shortages in the things I want to buy, it’s a double-whammy, and it makes me resent them even further. Instead of having natural supply-and-demand, there is entirely unnatural and inefficient government-created demand that is taking away the incentive to supply malt.
The last thing I need is government policies creating additional cause for shortages. It may be rather “unimportant” that I homebrew beer. And after all, as a hobbyist, I’m willing to spend plenty of money on my hobby, as my constant equipment purchases show. But I look at brewing as a potential future career, and watch as struggling breweries are now forced to deal with this shortage and hope that their consumers are willing and able to afford price increases.
For me, this is an annoyance. For some craft brewers, this might be the difference between being able to stay afloat in business and shutting their doors. It may just be beer, but as I pointed out when discussing the milk, tortilla, and meat price increases:
Simply put, look at how the cost of government is affecting your food. In addition to all the farm subsidies, price supports, and all the other nonsense, they decided to make a completely separate mandate regarding ethanol in the energy supply. What happens? Your cost of living goes up, and your standard of living goes down.
They’ve made some lobbyists and farmers very rich with these policies. And being politicians, they’ve been using your money– not theirs– to do it. They take your taxes, use them to create incentives which make what you want to buy more expensive, and then (especially in the example of beer) tax the hell out of the end product anyway.
I realize some of our readers are in favor of government. So please, can you even attempt to justify this? Why should I be paying three different ways for the government to make some farmers very rich?
October 10, 2007
Moving On Up!
Well, today is my last day at my current job. Starting Monday Oct 15th, I’m moving on to new things and new challenges. I’m not going to get too deep into the specifics, as I do have coworkers who read this blog, and I like to keep my work and online life separate, but it should be a very good thing in the next few months. With the new job, I do expect to get some traveling, so some of you (particularly those from “real” life) might hear from me if I’m going to be in town…
In other news, the reason I’m taking a few days off between jobs is the Sam Adams competition. Tomorrow morning I leave for Denver for the Great American Beer Festival, and I think it should be a very fun time. Unfortunately, if I’m reading the tea leaves* properly, I’m pretty sure my neighbor and I did not finish in the top two… But either way, I’m quite pleased that I’m getting a chance to visit the GABF and see Denver for the first time. Regardless of winning or not winning, it’s still quite an honor to finish in the top four finalists out of over 2000 entries, and I’m going to do whatever I can to ensure that I can someday use that accolade when I open the South Swell Brewing Company.
July 31, 2007
Bad Business Books
I’m reading Sam Calagione’s “Brewing Up a Business”, a story about the success of Dogfish Head brewery. So far I’m enjoying it. It’s definitely interesting to understand exactly how he got to where he is today, and how his business grew.
But I’ve got a complaint. The book is designed to be a primer to aspiring entrepreneurs on how to start their own businesses, but the overall tone of the book seems to be “be as unique as Dogfish Head, and for all the same reasons”. There are definitely good points there, and I’m starting to think less about “I want to be a brewer” and more about “What will I be able to to do to distinguish my beer from other brewers’ beer?” I think this is one of the typical problems with books written by entrepreneurs, though, where they write about what made their successful and market it as a description of what will make other businesses successful.
A book about the experiences of other entrepreneurs is still quite helpful, specifically since it was written by someone in the industry I’d like to enter. I’m learning lessons left and right, and count it as a useful tool in getting me to my goal.
But I want something more. Learning from experience can be very helpful, but too often people focus on learning from the success of others. Books written from the perspective of a successful entrepreneur tend to be biased towards how well the decisions worked out, rather than how difficult the decisions were at the time.
So I’m looking for other books. I don’t want books written about successful entrepreneurs. I want books about failure. I want to hear case studies of unsuccessful businesses, and learn as much from the “what not to do” stories as I can learn from the “what to do” stories. There are a lot of reasons why businesses fail, and understanding those pitfalls, written honestly from the perspective of the person who made the wrong decisions, has to be a great tool.
I know these books are out there. While my readership on this blog is pretty tiny, I know some of you have probably read them. So let’s hear some suggestions. What books do I need to read?
Brad,
Join a country llub. Surely you remember Darrin and I bitching once a month about “Kids Night”. It was exactly what you describe. Also, I have recently joined a bowling league with some people from work, and the bowling alley has a staffed kids room that is monitored at the registration desk.
Comment by Nick M. — February 7, 2008 @ 6:20 pm
Okay, “country llub” = “country club”. And, the point of the bowling alley anecdote is to show that you may be behind the curve.
Comment by Nick M. — February 7, 2008 @ 6:23 pm
Brad,
The way I see it, with your beer brewing prowess, you have only one option: open up a family friendly microbrewery/restaurant. The parents could have a nice, sit down dinner with their finely brewed beer while the kids enjoy an evening playing.
What could be better?
Comment by Quincy — February 8, 2008 @ 8:52 am
I like Quincy idea….. Fraser and I took Bonnie on our anniversary dinner when she was a little baby. She behaved well but it was NOT a romantic dinner. As we had more children we realized that we HAD to have time to ourselves so we had baby sitters, that we trusted, come to the house and watch the kids. Also, our neighborhood had a baby sitting club that worked tremendously…..If you want to know how it worked, let me know and I will send you the details. The good thing about the babysitting club is that we traded babysitting duties and only cost us a start up fee. It worked great. I hope you have a romantic dinner, with Wyatt in toe…..
TF and I learned very quickly that we had to have some “quiet, alone time” together.
Comment by Lucy Stern — February 8, 2008 @ 3:45 pm
Great idea!With what parents pay for babysitters anyway, seems like a great idea.
Or, how about one of these day care facilities opening up for Friday or Saturday evening? They already have the facilities, they are licensed– seems like a McDonalds-does-breakfast extension!
Comment by Tony Iovino — February 10, 2008 @ 8:36 am
Tony,
That’s a great idea. It seems like it would do well, but it wouldn’t solve my issue, since Joanna’s not working, so we don’t work with any day care centers on a regular basis. But in today’s two-working-parent households, that’s a very good idea. I’m surprised they haven’t thought of it yet!
Comment by Brad Warbiany — February 10, 2008 @ 6:34 pm
The first downside I can see is staffing. How does a restaurant pay the employee who’s there watching the kids? Do you pay them by the hour? If nobody shows up, the restaurant still has to pay the staff. If lots of people show up, then the “babywaiter” might be overworked.
I guess you could solve both problems by having specific nights (dubbed “family nights”) that could be booked well in advance with only a few spots available, but now you run into another logistics problem: where do you put them?
The restaurant owner is now forced to devote square footage that should be used for money-making dinner tables and using them as a nursery. Worse yet, what if the owner has to build a separate room w/ walls and sound-deadening. Of course, that takes up floorplan space as well. You can’t very well put the kids in a closet (although I hate kids so I would find it amusing), and you don’t want infant-chatter spilling over into the non-parent dining population’s dinner conversations.
Paying the babysitter is a little costly, but then the big kicker is the cost of insurance. The restaurant is taking a huge liabiliyt risk in volunteering to watch the kids–it’s not like the McDonalds PlayLand where the parents are eating right next to the ball pit.
Not to be a bummer…just my $.02
Comment by Sober John — February 12, 2008 @ 5:52 pm
There is a restaurant in Newburyport, MA that does just this thing and it is very popular, so I have heard. I have the upmost confidence in my babysitters (luckily) and don’t have a problem going out for a night out at $15/hour
Comment by Hoover — February 14, 2008 @ 10:19 pm