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Economy Dooming Fine Dining?

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Over the last few weeks I’ve had dozens of conversations with restaurateurs, managers, chefs, and servers about the coming economic crisis. They all expressed varying measures of uncertainty. Some exhibited more confidence than others, laying out ambitious plans for slimming costs, aggressively marketing on the cheap, and doing all manner of things to maintain a steady – if not quite as profitable – stream of bums in seats. Yet as the closing of Aurora Bistro continues to sink in, I can’t help but worry along with the majority. What do you think? Is the economy dooming fine dining in Vancouver? How can fine dining restaurateurs better weather the storm? After voting in the poll, you can leave your three cents in the comments below and discuss at length in the Tablespotting forum here.

You can pick more than one answer in this poll - "How would you advise fine dining restaurateurs on how best to survive the recession?"

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– above photo taken of a packed Salty Tongue Deli two lunches ago.

There are 7 comments

  2. Just after getting Scout’s Aurora “closing” post on twitter I walked past a busy Earls Paramount. I felt like breaking the window and screaming at the people inside.

  5. Have advertising mediums truly support upstart restaurants and offer better rates for the “little guy” for the first six months of their business to help get them started and make their business viable. The well-established restaurants can afford the ad space but some of the costs requested by some publications are ubsurd and unrealistic for a new restaurant to be able to afford. Smarter advertising is key but it’d be nice to see it work from the other side as well.

  6. I think that creative marketing is in order. I think that any restaurant in Vancouver that has a limited client base should be doing whatever they can to create a known persona. If they don’t, then they are just DOA. I don’t know how many times people said “Where?” when I told them that I worked at Rare. Then they would ask if it was a steakhouse.

    Chambar has always taken their marketing from a different angle. From the beginning, they did not spend loads of money on ads. They have always built their client base from the initial hype, their proximity to GM place, and USING their client list. I get emails from them on a regular basis.

  7. You know, Vancouver and Victoria both over the years have been a great place and a terrible place all at once to open a restaurant. The failure rate at the best of times seems so high. Anyone worth it will have built up a neighborhood of reliable patrons ready to support them no matter what. You can always tell when you walk in to a place like that, the way the staff and the clientèle banter, and the pace is a bit more like a frenetic kitchen party during the rush…

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