• Tasty Startup Story: Chez Panisse

    Foodie fans of fine French cuisine from all over have been known to schedule trips to the Bay Area just to get a table at Berkeley's Chez Panisse . Alice Waters , the celbrated owner of Chez Panisse, started the business back in 1971. She has been honored with the prestigious James Beard Award, a Bon Apetit lifetime achievement award, and most recently accolades from the French Legion of Honor, for her contributions to cuisine . Getting the food right was one challenge. But the bigger challenge was learning how to run a business. Waters shares her Startup Story at CNNMoney , and she says the beginning, as with most startups, was rocky: "In no time I had 50 employees, and I didn't know how to manage any of them," Waters says. "We were open seven days a week from 7:30 a.m. to 2 a.m., serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. It was too much. We were hemorrhaging money. I had to lay off half of my staff, and we stopped serving breakfast and closed on Sundays." She turned things around, and the business started to make a profit...after eight years. Read How Chez Panisse Began here .

  • Restaurants Struggling Through Recession

    If there was any doubt as to how restaurants are doing in this recession, a few recent developments have made the struggles of dining establishments clear. Last week's National Restaurant Association Show--its 90th annual show-- drew just 54,000 attendees . That's a 24 percent drop from last year. And the cable tv news station TV1 found in a poll that half of New Yorkers have stopped eating out . Monica Bertran of Bloomberg spoke about the challenges for restaurants with Julia Stewart , chairman and CEO of DineEquity . DineEquity owns Applebees and IHOP, and Stewart tells Bertran that the restaurant is probably paying the price for overbuilding during the last decade. But she is optimistic that things are turning around: Meanwhile, New York restaurateur Danny Meyer tells the Wall Street Journal's Katy McLaughlin that many eateries will have to accept lower margins, as he has. And he expects more and more higher end restaurants to close in the coming months, as the economy just isn't supporting expensive meals: I don’t think there’s going to be sustainable demand for restaurants that force you to spend hours there. Long tasting menus will continue to be elected by some but cannot be legislated by the restaurant. We’re going to have more bistros and trattorias. People will have luxury items—caviar, foie gras, truffles—less frequently, having done without them for a year and a half, but they will come to appreciate them more because it won’t be at every bar and grill in the city. Read A Future with Fewer Reservations here .