It’s been said that business people all keep score on the bottom line. But scorekeepers in the restaurant business also watch such lines as those recording same-store sales, prime costs and gross profits.
It’s also said there can be no bottom line without a viable top line. Indeed, fixed costs and margin necessities demand that minimal revenue hurdles be leaped with regularity.
Still, the bottom line is where business people live or die, and that’s true even for part-time tree huggers and other do-gooders whose mission might be to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or foster ecological sustainability of supplies. After all, those kinds of endeavors can’t be pursued in bankruptcy.
And let’s not forget the “buy low, sell high” paradigm underlying all worthwhile business enterprises—which implicitly speaks to the overarching “give customers what they want” imperative.
All of which lead me to the intriguing concept of selling tap water to diners—potentially for a profit, though possibly only to offset the costs of filtering it, carbonating an optional fizzy offering, and merchandising it in stylish carafes functioning as artful table centerpieces. I pondered that concept after reading my colleague Lisa Jennings’ front-page report in last week’s NRN about restaurants that already are making “house-bottled” water and planning to sell it.
The buyers of such water presumably would be restaurant patrons who’d be convinced of the virtues of paying a few bucks for house-filtered H2O that the proprietor vouched was at least as pure and refreshing as any exotic bottled import and far more earth-friendly. The marketing message: House-purified water from state-of-the-art reverse-osmosis systems yields no possibly unrecyclable glass or plastic waste, nor does it require the continuous pollution that stems from the shipping and trucking of bottled water.
What such house-treated water does require to be economically viable is cachet, particularly if it’s going to fetch those few bucks and begin to make up for the huge profit a restaurant might forgo in promoting eau de tap over fashionable brands that are “bottled at the source” in some far-off land.
Maybe this is all a question of niche marketing. Maybe your restaurant caters to an urbane, Prius-driving clientele of self-consciously “green” gourmets who’d fall all over themselves trying to land a table at your place in order to quaff a specially produced-in-house product that might help save the Earth.
Or maybe your patrons are finicky foodies who’d be easily convinced that a customized, proprietor-controlled purification process resulted in a water so fresh and flavor-neutral that it was the ideal complement to a restaurant’s wines and foods.
Or perhaps mass-market foodservice operations could pitch lower-cost house-filtered water as a bargain alternative to bottled brands of purified tap water.
But with the possible exception of iconic role models of cultural engineering like restaurateur Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., few operators want or can afford to incur house-filtration costs out of a sense of altruism or “green” responsibility.
Most restaurateurs would need to justify such a systemic change by gauging whether consumer demand—either driven by global-warming concerns or resentments at the high costs of boutique bottled waters—would support a pay-per-pour shift to “house-made” water.
If that would fly, just think of the beauty of it: unlimited supplies of a saleable commodity literally flowing into the restaurant without need for ordering, inventory control, storage or risk of shrinkage, and with relatively low, amortizable costs for equipment and filters. Add to that the possibility that people would pay for it all, and then some.
The fact is that countless consumers either don’t trust or dislike the taste of ordinary tap water, though they’ve shown an abiding thirst and willingness to pay for tap water that’s specially filtered, bottled and marketed as pure and flavorful.
Looking forward, high-end restaurants might well expect to see the wholesale cost of prestigious imported waters rise along with related energy and transportation costs. Whatever menu price inflation would result could stunt sales of those products, even as consumers become more inclined toward stemming waste and pollution.
Consider that hybrid vehicles like the Prius once seemed to be niche-type products with limited markets. But their popularity and sales have grown exponentially as gas prices and the public’s environmental consciousness have increased.
As for precedents in the restaurant world for charging customers for mundane items, consider the longstanding tradition in Italy of padding dining tabs with a charge amounting to a few dollars per person for “pane e coperto”—bread and cover—for the basket of bread and tablecloth automatically provided to each party.
Italy recently has sought to outlaw cover charges at restaurants and prohibit their charging for bread unless it’s requested. But many Americans already are accustomed to eateries not serving water unless it’s requested, and advisories about such practices often appear on menus—right in the spot where a restaurant’s new, environmentally driven policy of charging a modest sum for its own special water would appear.
I’m not advocating a sea change in water service, merely observing that a rising tide of market forces could make this unexpected ice-to-Eskimos upshot a give-’em-what-they-want reality.
