"La Bonne Soupe was opened in 1973. It was a very simple concept, a casual French bistro mostly serving the Midtown lunch crowd. We always say we’re where workers go when they’re paying for their own lunch, not when they’re expensing it on the company card. So that limits our ability to increase prices much as some of our neighbors. But we pay people the same as everyone else, and our food costs the same as everyone else’s food. So it has been challenging. We’re known for our French onion soup, but the price of cheese has gone up so much — Gruyere has gone up over 50 percent since 2019. But also staples like canola oil, butter, and potatoes have become more expensive, by double-digit percentages. And we have to eat these prices. We probably have fewer people working at the restaurant than we did in 2019. Our staff’s prep lists have gotten a little bit longer, servers might have an extra table or two, and less support on some days. But we can’t lose money. We’re off Fifth Avenue, and near Central Park, so we have tourists that are coming. We get a lot of the office crowd. But it’s usually people looking for a cheaper meal than what else is in the area. But also, the office lunch crowd has changed a lot. You have more people doing flex work and not coming into Manhattan. And for the people that are here, they’re ordering dessert a little bit less, or being more cautious about having a second glass of wine, or not having a drink at all. You can tell people are more cautious of how much they’re ordering. One thing we implemented about two, three years ago, is a 2 percent kitchen appreciation fee. It’s printed on our menus, and 100 percent of that goes towards our kitchen team — in New York, the law is that tips can only go to front-of-house staff. But as an individual restaurant, there’s only so much we can do to really change the model. If there’s going to be a change to the industry, it probably has to come from government regulations that all of us have to follow at the same time. Otherwise, no one is making heavy margins, because if they do, people will see it as a rip-off and go to the place next door." - Jaya Saxena
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