Richard's Rules for Restaurant (Food) Based Revitalization, Salt Lake City and DC's Chinatown

Suzanne and I had a spirited conversation about this in November, sparked by the failure of another SLC restaurant, which opened about 18 months ago.  I wish we were recording it, because we were saying lots of great stuff. 

The fact is Salt Lake City is a small place, population less than 215,000, and even with tourism and business meetings, especially given post-covid Work from Home, the Downtown is dead comparatively speaking,  

Funnily, people talk about the city's current growth and believe it can support a lot more retail while the fact is, each new resident supports less than 7.5 s.f. of retail (it's less than that because of the impact of e-commerce).  So 1,000 new residents support only 7,500 s.f. of retail.

That's not very much.

And complaints about being under-amenitized on the West Side center around a conspiracy against POC but because of lack of population and commercial centers, and historical developments--the west side population was close to downtown anyway, which was the regional business and retail center before sprawl.

Even before covid, the blocks are huge and the downtown business population was small so it didn't matter either.  

Regardless, there and throughout the city in other retail categories, like groceries, the city is way overstored.  E.g., we have more than 20 supermarkets within 5 miles or so of where we live, six within 2 miles alone!  Way more than in DC.

At the same time, post-covid inflation effects on food prices have led to a rapid escalation of restaurant meal prices, further reducing demand.

But restaurants keep opening, and supermarkets rarely shutter.  Plus there are tons of ethnic markets.

This takes us back to my writings on restaurant based revitalization:

-- "Richard's Rules for Restaurant Based Revitalization in the face of a pandemic," 2020
-- "Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Driven Revitalization (updated)," 2005, is the basic piece, with five rules (below) and a list of elements denoting quality restaurants
-- "Revisiting Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Based Revitalization," 2010
-- "Updating Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Driven Revitalization," 2013
-- "DC restaurants, location and equilibrium," 2014
-- "Ice cream shops as commercial district activation devices," 2018

and food-related commercial district revitalization: 

-- "An update to Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Based Revitalization on the failure of wine bar restaurants in DC and Baltimore," 2018
-- "Destination restaurants as a call for revisiting "Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Based Revitalization"," 2017

The basics:

-- you need a lot of customers to support a restaurant, and SLC is already overstored.  Those customers need to patronize the restaurant multiple times per week

-- high restaurant meal prices don't help.

-- Utah has a pretty bland palate (thank you Mormons), so savory concepts don't have the same opportunity to succeed that people think.

-- Being a hot chef isn't enough.  Being part of a restaurant group isn't enough ("Joe Englert, DC nightlife impresario, dies | Lessons about nightlife-based revitalization,"2020).  Standing on past laurels isn't enough.

-- Passion isn't enough.  Wanting "to give back to the community" isn't enough. You have to do retail trade analysis ("Revisiting older writings on the success of independent retail and neighborhood commercial districts,") and figure out if the market is there for your concept.

-- Seemingly seeing "holes" in the market ("How to spot a gap in the market," British Business Bank) leads people to open concepts new to the area.  Sometimes, the holes are there for a reason ("By the Bucket: Hot Spaghetti to Go closes in Sugar House," Salt Lake Tribune).

-- Private equity buys chainlets with the aim to grow them, and frequently dumb down the food in the process

-- Private equity holds chains that probably would die if they didn't get financial life support from PE

-  Food halls are about monetizing space by desperate properties who aren't so attuned to the needs of small vendors, especially wrt rents

-- Work from Home/Return to Office.  Most central business districts have half the daily employee visits that they did before covid.

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So this has entry has been about Salt Lake.  But it pertains to just about everywhere.  DC's Chinatown has few Asian residents anymore--less than 500, so there are few Asian focused businesses.  That includes supermarkets/markets.

When I moved to DC in 1987, there was a small Chinese supermarket in Chinatown.  It was an okay size and in a pretty good location roughly at the intersection of 7th and H Streets NW and across from the Gallery Place Metrorail Station.

It had a decent run, but it closed in 2005 ("Wah Luck House maintains culture in dying D.C. Chinatown," Washington Post, 2011).  There is Da Tsin Trading Company, but it mostly focuses on canned goods, which make up less than 10% of the store inventory.  I sure never got into the habit of shopping there.

If I remember correctly, the three story white building to the right is 

where Da Hua Market was located, around 624 H Street NW.

So I think Kevin Tsien's move to open an Asian market in Chinatown ("Moon Rabbit chef Kevin Tien plans Asian market in Chinatown," Axios) is likely doomed to failure, especially with the significant decrease in downtown office workers post-covid, not that most ventured out much beyond the trip from transit to office anyway.  From the article:

Lofty plans for the still-to-be-named project include: 

• A grocery stocked with Asian snacks, noodles, produce and pantry staples. 
• Chef-y prepared foods, sauces and ready-to-cook items. 
• A front-facing food stall that doubles as a mentorship space, inspired by the James Beard Foundation's NYC food hall. 
• A "semi-hidden" rear tasting room with a handful of seats, like at Brooklyn Fare. 
• An Asian bakery and cafe run by fellow James Beard finalist Susan Bae, Moon Rabbit's pastry chef.

Sounds like a cool, multifaceted concept to me, but it's not just about me.  You need thousands of customers per week to make the place work. OTOH, Tsien does know what he's doing.  But as many concepts as he runs today, he's closed an equal amount.  DC doesn't have a real Chinatown any more, but a dying one.  

Note that while people blame the Capital One Arena, built in 1997, for the decline of Chinatown, it started long ago, especially with the construction of a DC Convention Center in the early 1980s, and at the time, cheaper housing and more safety in the 'burbs, where the Vietnamese settled after the fall of Vietnam, first in Arlington, then further out.

Not to mention, it's typical of residential neighborhoods located next to growing central business districts to be absorbed and reproduced as part of a city's development.

Jenn Tran (center) leads a discussion on efforts to protect longstanding, Vietnamese-owned businesses at Eden Center (below) in Falls Church, Va. Her group, Viet Place Collective, used strategies developed by UMD researchers to impact the city's development plan. Photo by Eman Mohammed, Maryland Today

The DC area's Asiantown is in Fairfax County and Falls Church, with strip shopping centers dedicated to Asian businesses.  There are over 230,000 Asian residents in Fairfax out of a population of 1.2 million.  See:

-- "A New Chapter for the Eden Center?," Arlington Magazine
-- "At the Eden Center, historic businesses stand tall and new ones plant roots, ARLNow
-- "New Tools for Keeping Immigrant-Owned Shops in Place," (University of) Maryland Today