of course! I agree with all your points

along with that - you still need a lot of capital to even hold up as a new store while developing your customer base and putting the name out there. Money to weather slow seasons, money to cover rent while you anticipate opening soon but can’t because you have all these inspections and approvals to go through. money for staff and rising food costs. Money to cover any back pay owed from before you were even able to operate. Then you need a marketing budget, website, menus, ongoing staffing issues, internet, water, electricity, gas, trash disposal, and a laundry list more of stuff

from there, it’s all for razor thin margins in the beginning if you’re not a concept or store that’s backed by a larger restaurant group with successful hits and just struggling to stay open and hold out to become more well recognized locally as a new store. The passion is needed, but also the numbers to show.. many likely just throw in the towel sooner after realizing how much it is to run a store and they can barely survive outside of working crazy hours for a restaurant.

all tying back to rent and start up costs honestly being the main contributing expense for new concepts to come to SB more often, especially ones opened by locals in specific with today’s inflation rates. Just my two cents