Ariel Arce: The Spreadsheet Came Before the Concept

Josh Kopel (0:00)

I'm going to ask you a question that might sting a bit. How many holiday parties do you have booked for the month of December? Not like, how many do you expect? It's how many are on the books right now with the deposits collected and the contracts signed. And for many of you, I worry that the answer is not enough. And here's why that matters. I think that the companies that are going to throw those parties are picking their venues right now. This is a sweet spot between August and September. And by the time you start thinking about December, the decision has already been made. You're not losing those parties in November. You're going to lose them this month. And that's why I built the Private Events Engine. It's a simple three-part system that leverages AI to do most of the work for you. And this month in the Marketing Masterclass, I'm going to walk you through it. It's going to show you how to package events, how to get in front of the people that are booking them, and how to close them without discounting. And you get the whole thing for free. So show up to this month's Marketing Masterclass. Go to restaurantbusinessschool.com today to sign up. Now here we go.

SPEAKER_2 (1:08)

I really think you have to have a why for your what.

Ariel Arce (1:13)

I mean, if you're not asking why you're doing something, then I don't think you're doing something with intention. And there's no real success to doing something without intention.

Josh Kopel (1:28)

Welcome to FULL COMP, a show offering insight into the hospitality industry, featuring restaurateurs, thought leaders, and innovators. Served up on the house.

What if your entire restaurant concept should have been designed backwards, starting from the check average that you need in building from there? Today's guest had 16 seats, and no way to predict what anyone was going to spend. So she solved for that number first. $65 a head, two turns a night, and then she designed an entire guest experience to deliver exactly that, down to a rule that every song has to be at least 3 minutes long. In this conversation, we get into why she refused to change what the market would pay for for nearly 10 years, why she now plans the closing date of a business before it opens, and how the real asset in her SoHo townhouse turned out to be the three floors themselves. If you built your concept first and hoped the numbers would follow, this one's going to give you a better blueprint.

Ariel Arce (2:36)

My career had been in champagne up until this moment. So I was in a basement at 127 McDougall Street, working with a man named Robbie DeRosi, who owns a whole bunch of independent restaurants all over New York City, Claim to Fame, Death & Co.

He opens a champagne bar called Riddling Widow, and he calls me at some point and said, I have this place, it's doing abysmal numbers. I feel like maybe the person who's running it is drinking me under the table. I don't know what's going on, but I need somebody to come in here who knows a thing or two about the economics of champagne and tell me how to run this place.

So to paint a picture, it's a 16-seat basement bordello of a space that is shelling champagne at pretty much close to cost. And I had spent about eight years up until that point really focused on champagne specifically. I had gotten to work for really great people like Chef Grant Atkins and Pops for Champagne, which was this place in Chicago that was the largest family owned and operated champagne company. And I understood the economics of how to sell a bottle of champagne, whether it was how to keep it, how to store it, how to sell it, how to market it, and so on. So I go to work in this place. I work four days a week. It is closed the other three days. It did not make sense for anyone to work there besides me.

I spent two years pretty much, like, pouring my heart and soul into this project. And halfway through it, Robbie says to me, this business, I don't really care about it that much. I want to move it. I want to sell it. I'm going to explore what that looks like. And I said, what does it look like for me to buy it from you? And he said, throw me out a number.

So I got one of the best pieces of advice I think I ever got was I called a friend of mine who had been working in the business at a couple of restaurants at the time, Fast Casual Things. And he said, you're going to have to do three things at the exact same time. You're going to have to raise the money. You're going to have to convince somebody to give you this lease.