When Chasing Your Passion Goes Wrong

If you've ever dreamed of opening a restaurant, now could be the best time. The entire industry is reorganizing. AI is hollowing out white-collar work. The mediocre middle is slowly dying, and new opportunities are emerging in the wreckage.

The restaurant industry is brutal. It's always been brutal. Most places close within a year despite back breaking labor and razor-thin margins. I know. I grew up in the industry. It’s made every job I had after seem easy in comparison to restaurants.

But right now, a wave of closures is hitting a specific subspecies, the mediocre, mid-tier, sit-down chain. Legacy brands like Denny’s, Applebee’s, TGI Fridays, and Red Lobster are shutting down hundreds of locations, with more coming in 2026.

@jonathandmaze

Why so many #restaurant chains are closing locations on this #fastfoodminute. #business #news

These franchises once occupied the sweet spot of the American middle class, a reliable, low cost, neutral ground. A place where families or couples could eat at a low cost. But that isn’t the case anymore. Dining habits are changing.

75% of restaurant traffic is driven by the drive-thru or delivery app. These mid-tier chains closing down aren’t optimized for being delivery places. They are designed for people to dine in.

When people do choose to dine in, they are increasingly going to nicer places or going alone. In 2023, 25% of American adults ate every meal alone, up from 17% two decades ago. Among those under 30, solo dining has doubled since 2019.

For someone eating alone, these franchises are not a comfortable place. There is friction in being asked "Just one?" by a host before being led to a sprawling booth designed for four. Modern winners like Cava or high-end ramen shops prioritize bar seating and perimeter counters. They understand the solo dining trend happening now.

@mysolopov

Have you ever eaten alone at a Restaurant? #alone #lonely #nofriends #sad #eating #pov #fyp

Beyond the seating and food, there is the Atmospheric ROI. Lighting is a biological trigger that manipulates memory and mood. How you remember your meal isn’t directly influenced by just the food. Restaurants are aesthetic environments. Legacy chains often rely on high-glare, flat lighting that feels like a pharmacy or a DMV.

A Violent Reorganization

This isn’t new. The restaurant industry has reorganized before. A century ago Prohibition wiped out alcohol sales, the real profit engine of most restaurants. There’s a reason why two wine glasses are already on the table the moment you sit down. The restaurant wants you to order wine. Without those margins, fine dining collapsed almost overnight. Restaurants all across America closed down.

What replaced it wasn't better food, but a survivalist business model. The Diner. These were quick-service hubs built to endure without alcohol by leaning on massive menus, sugar-heavy desserts, and food focused on function over refinement. Eventually they became part of American tradition. Today, we are seeing a similar shift. The casual franchise dining model of the 90s is the new victim, and it’s being replaced by fast casual and experience first hubs.

@dinertheory

The 17 Kinds of American Diner #diner #Americana #history #foodtok #americanfood

The Big Leap

One of my favorite articles ever written is about a man who did what most people only dream about. He opened a restaurant. Not because he wanted to get rich, opening a restaurant is one of the worst ways to make money. He did it because he needed to. He needed to be a restaurateur the way some people need to be writers or artists. It was existential, not financial.

This man had a great life. A good corporate job, a stable family, a comfortable salary, and a secure retirement on the horizon. But he loved to cook, and he had this dream of opening up a restaurant.

So he did what other people don’t. He took the leap. He quit his job, cashed out his retirement, took out bank loans, and poured everything into building a place of his own.

The work almost destroyed him. He lost weight, couldn't sleep, developed health problems fueled by pure cortisol. His marriage frayed. His savings evaporated. The restaurant playlist looped endlessly in his head. At night, soaked in sweat, he'd thrash in bed, his thoughts caught in a vicious feedback loop of garbled conversations with customers.

But, against all logic, it worked. The Beech Tree earned four stars from the Toronto Star, one of only a handful in the last decade. Lines snaked out the door every night. The reservation book was packed weeks in advance. They were pulling in between $2,500 and $3,500 a night. He had achieved the impossible.

Then he made one mistake.

In August, at the peak of a sweltering summer, he was running on fumes. Exhausted and burned out, he decided to close the shop for the last week of August. He needed to catch his breath. Give everyone a vacation. Spend time with his neglected wife and kids. He assumed the momentum he'd worked so hard to build was a solid object, something that would stay put while he rested. He thought his customers would wait.

They didn't.

In the end, he admitted it was a novice mistake. He hadn't learned that restaurants are fragile. America is not Europe, you can't just shut down in August without killing your business. He hadn't yet learned the specific fragility of a new restaurant's reputation.

He had to shut it down. Everything was gone, the retirement fund, the house, the corporate safety net he’d spent decades weaving.

Someone with experience would have never closed those doors, no matter how tired they were. He had worked off sheer ignorance.

The Amateur Advantage

The tragedy is that he failed because of what he didn't know, but he only succeeded in the first place because of that same ignorance.

Orson Welles famously said his greatest advantage making Citizen Kane was not knowing what was impossible. This is the amateur advantage. Without the rules dictating what you're supposed to do, you see problems with fresh eyes. Experienced people know all the reasons things don't work. The amateur sees the essential problem because they aren't yet distracted by past failures. Ignorance gives you more bravery than confidence will ever give you.

@kinolime_official

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This is how a lot of innovation happens. You can create something new with movement and ignorance. Movement lets you try things. Ignorance keeps you from ruling them out prematurely.

But ignorance is a high-interest loan. It may create motion, but it radically shortens the runway. It only works as a strategy if you can learn the mechanics of survival before the bank account hits zero. To lengthen the runway, you need the kind of knowledge that can't be taught, the kind that only comes from experience.

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