The cost of renting a café these days is out of this world. A chef needs to have a degree in business as well go to culinary school. He or she needs to know finances, publicity, and building management. A few of us came up with a way to reduce some of this overhead.
We just needed a little training for breaking into a locked restaurant or café. We don’t break windows. If we can’t do this without damaging the property, then we try another place. Naturally, this involves a little planning and testing. If there’s an alarm system, then we need to work with someone on the inside who has access, which we are willing to pay for. Otherwise, go somewhere else.
We operate more like a caterer because we don’t store anything where we cook and serve our menus. We load up our van at our warehouse (at an undisclosed location), appear after the place is closed, break in, turn on the lights, set out our own menus, and serve the people.
That’s what it’s about—serving the people. We serve the best dishes imaginable. Unlike a traditional place, a Michelin review doesn’t help us at all, so we focus on our guests. It’s a late meal, but people have all kinds of schedules these days that a 10-8 pm schedule doesn’t accommodate.
Some people talk about the meaninglessness of private property, it being a vestige of the aristocratic and feudal class system, but I don’t. I know that we are committing a crime. Trespass. Well. That’s another overhead. Maybe eventually we will find a few cafés that want to make a legal arrangement with us. One kitchen, two restaurants with different chefs, different menus, different schedules.
We try to leave the place cleaner than when we found it, and we always leave twenty percent of our profit for the evening, preferably in cash. We can also leave instructions for receiving funds in a PayPal or Venmo account.
Monologues