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Wardour Street
Sep. 12th, 2007 08:56 amIt's been some time since the update on the food situation in Wardour Street.
Contrary to many expectations, the Hummmus Bar - theoretically located in the restaurant of death — has been quite a success. I wonder if this might in part be to Mezzo no longer being Mezzo. Its "name" is gone and the place is now just another restaurant. Hummus, meanwhile, has the brand. The upstart wins.
No such luck at our old favourite, 139 Wardour Street, which is "closed for refurbishment", long-term, again. The location, opposite Busaba Eathai, is great, but the shape of the space inside is currently all wrong. Unfortunately, most restarateurs don't come in equipped with the capital for major structural renovation. Hence the four owners in five years.
The old Goth pub, the Interpid Fox, remains boarded up. This really is a travesty. The pub was always busy, was highly popular, and some cunt owners just moved in and shut it down, gutting it and doing nothing with it. When they eventually do do something with it, the place will doubtless be a Spiga/Slug & Lettuce-like clone - as if we don't have enough of those already.
When the Movie Cafe closed down it became an Olly Olsen, and lasted all of six months. It's now shut again. Another example, without doubt, of racked up rental charges/leases making it uneconomic to run most types of food outlet. Commercial landlords are universally moronic, because even the dumbest landlord should know that a few months' "dead time" takes forever to make up in slightly higher rents. 100% occupancy is what matters.
Airlines know this, but then screw up by assuming that customers are morons. So they go for high prices and then low prices, or vice-versa. This causes two people sitting next to each other often to have paid vastly different prices. If you aren't clever enough to set the right price in the first place, then you should be doing another job. Slashing prices at the last minute to put bums on seats might work in the short term, but in the long term it causes customers to wait before they buy, until you are once again forced to slash the prices to put bums on seats, but this time you have to fill more seats, because the shrewder customers have "held off".
Can no airline work this out?
Contrary to many expectations, the Hummmus Bar - theoretically located in the restaurant of death — has been quite a success. I wonder if this might in part be to Mezzo no longer being Mezzo. Its "name" is gone and the place is now just another restaurant. Hummus, meanwhile, has the brand. The upstart wins.
No such luck at our old favourite, 139 Wardour Street, which is "closed for refurbishment", long-term, again. The location, opposite Busaba Eathai, is great, but the shape of the space inside is currently all wrong. Unfortunately, most restarateurs don't come in equipped with the capital for major structural renovation. Hence the four owners in five years.
The old Goth pub, the Interpid Fox, remains boarded up. This really is a travesty. The pub was always busy, was highly popular, and some cunt owners just moved in and shut it down, gutting it and doing nothing with it. When they eventually do do something with it, the place will doubtless be a Spiga/Slug & Lettuce-like clone - as if we don't have enough of those already.
When the Movie Cafe closed down it became an Olly Olsen, and lasted all of six months. It's now shut again. Another example, without doubt, of racked up rental charges/leases making it uneconomic to run most types of food outlet. Commercial landlords are universally moronic, because even the dumbest landlord should know that a few months' "dead time" takes forever to make up in slightly higher rents. 100% occupancy is what matters.
Airlines know this, but then screw up by assuming that customers are morons. So they go for high prices and then low prices, or vice-versa. This causes two people sitting next to each other often to have paid vastly different prices. If you aren't clever enough to set the right price in the first place, then you should be doing another job. Slashing prices at the last minute to put bums on seats might work in the short term, but in the long term it causes customers to wait before they buy, until you are once again forced to slash the prices to put bums on seats, but this time you have to fill more seats, because the shrewder customers have "held off".
Can no airline work this out?
