"Why Aren't You Open More?"

Sometimes I consider adding a "Frequently Made Complaints" section to our website. While most of the feedback we get is positive, a few comments come through with a tone that borders on a complaint, even if they're framed as questions. This is the first in a series of FMC blog posts.

One of the most common FMCs we hear is, "Why aren't you open more?"

I hate this question. It’s like asking me to breathe more while holding my head underwater. And then repeatedly telling me to breathe until the bubbles stop.

First, because I've answered it hundreds of times. It's often delivered with a hint of incredulity, like we're just being stubborn or lazy by not opening five or six nights a week. Most of the restaurants people compare us to have significantly more space and staff. For example, the one we’re most often compared to has over ten times our staff, and I wouldn’t be surprised if their space is just as much larger.

Running a scratch kitchen, particularly a vegan one, is labor-intensive. We start our "meats" and "cheeses" from beans, nuts, and grains, and our sauces and vegetables are prepared entirely from scratch. We do this in a space so small we don't even have a walk-in cooler. Unless you count me walking into the sharp edge of one of our reach-ins. Why is every corner in a kitchen an incredulously honed blade? But I digress.

Then there's the lunch crowd. And by "crowd" I mean the handful of people whose sleep routine starts at four in the afternoon. We often hear, "You're never open," or "Every time I try to come by, you're closed." Inevitably, these folks show up at lunch. We've had the same dinner hours for nearly six years, and yet this misunderstanding persists.

We used to serve lunch on weekends. It never worked out. We didn't bring in enough to cover the costs, which have only gotten worse since COVID. Even pre-pandemic, our setup made weekend lunch service a logistical nightmare. Unlike larger kitchens, we don't have separate prep and service spaces. Weekends are a mad dash of grocery runs and line prep, and adding a lunch shift to that was like asking a marathon runner to sprint the first few miles. Did I pass out from exhaustion a couple of times? It's best not to say.

We even gave it a shot last year, promoting the return of our brunch hours for Mother's Day. We hired extra staff, a Herculean feat in the current industry, only to serve a single table of two. We took a deep financial hit that week, a sharp reminder of why we dropped lunch in the first place.

So, as millions of people died due to a virus that by all likelihood spread from consuming animals (never a good idea), a small vegan restaurant killed their lunch hours. And that's the real tragedy? Wait, what!

Running a small business means wearing every hat. There’s ordering, pickups, cleaning, accounting, food prep, equipment maintenance, staff training, recipe development, marketing, and a dozen other things I'm too tired to list. If you ever wondered what's under those tall and ridiculous looking chef hats, it's just hats. All of the hats. In bigger restaurants, these tasks are divided among many people. In even bigger restaurants, you know, the ones everyone loves, the "chef" doesn’t actually work there. He’s at the commissary, or the board room, or he’s a spinning glass plate that occasionally gets dislocated, beeps aggressively, and is called Mike. He’s a microwave. You’re paying a teenager to pop a potato into a microwave.

Meanwhile, over here in my little actually "chef-led" restaurant, I’m still answering the same question over and over again. It's exhausting. I'm exhausted.

Look, I'd love to be open more. I'd love to have the space, staff, and financial stability to pull it off. But until I find a landlord willing to offer affordable rent in a space I can fit an actual walk-in cooler, or until Cleveland Heights miraculously gains the population density and economic health it had in its heyday, we’re sticking with the hours we've had for nearly six years.

Okay, maybe I'll get the courage to cut the menu down at some point, which in turn might make it possible to expand our hours. It's unlikely, but let's not pretend I don't think about cutting those damn tacos every other week. We'll also have to ignore the consequences we've experienced when cutting menu items in the past.

"I hope so and so is okay, we haven't seen them in ages. Oh wait, they only ordered that one dish from the last menu."

Running a small restaurant is a constant grind. If you're a fellow small restaurant owner, you get it. If you're not, I imagine this rant may be a bit out there. We’re all just trying to keep the lights on.

So, yeah, we're still open for dinner. Same hours, same corner of Cedar and Taylor, where our amazing regulars travel from across Northeast Ohio to find us. Not sure when we're open? After all I've said, I don't know what to tell you. Have you tried searching the Internet? I keep our little corner of it pretty well updated, you know, between everything else I've got going on.

To be honest, it's an exhausting question to answer, so let's give it a rest. In other words, I'm exhausted and I'd like to rest.

Life is hard. Have a laugh. And a sandwich. Have you tried the sandwiches? They're not just for lunch.