Really good restaurant! Our economy is destroying so many good places.
KSBAR is Closing
- Thread starter Farsight Clone
- Start date
I honestly couldn't disagree more. The food was always excellent when we went and the environment was top notch.
Matt is one of several partners in the bar and leaves the decision mostly to the restaurant people.
Food margins suck, the cost of food is killing everyone. Even regular grocery shoppers. Ever since Covid the cost of things is ridiculous.
Sadly, they are no longer. Had one about 6 months ago and it was piss poor. Wendys spicy used to be tGOAT.
I think most objective people agree the US economy today is a mixed picture with positive GDP growth yet people experiencing living cost issues. Those living costs are not the economy. But, are just a part of the picture.
KSBar is closing. Not many people seem to be mourning that fact. I would suggest THAT as the primary factor.
KSBar is closing. Not many people seem to be mourning that fact. I would suggest THAT as the primary factor.
Matt mentioned rising food costs as well as changing trends in customer behavior(bad economy) as the biggest factors in the decision to close the restaurant down. They had an opportunity with Tally Ho closing.
Again, Matt was one of 17 investors in the restaurant and let the restaurant people run it.
Again, Matt was one of 17 investors in the restaurant and let the restaurant people run it.
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Great restaurants close all the time too dude. My friend owns a mom and pop restaurant in eastern ky in a small town. They draw only locals and they pay about 40k each time they order food from the distributor. It’s mostly meat cost.
independent eateries are priced out and on top of that people are eating out less. It’s basic economics. It has nothing to do with the fact that you don’t think their food is that great
Restaurant business is hard. Kudos to lasting 8 years. That’s probably twice as long as most last.
Thing about Lex is that it is a restaurant/foodie town. It’s really hard to get a loyal following of regulars and attract enough tourists, game day, event, horse racing people.
Game day hang out specialty is hard because there’s so many places to do that in addition to being very good long established restaurants.
Then the location. Anything near campus and downtown is going to be expensive in terms of rent.
Really the only shot KSBar had as with most bars/restaurants in that area was to become a place students, faculty, down towners frequent. Not sure that ever was the case.
It relied heavily on the KSR uk fan demographic. You get that on event days but even then, if I’m coming from Paducah for a horse race, concert, or game I’m probably going to Malone’s, Carson’s, etc…
Thing about Lex is that it is a restaurant/foodie town. It’s really hard to get a loyal following of regulars and attract enough tourists, game day, event, horse racing people.
Game day hang out specialty is hard because there’s so many places to do that in addition to being very good long established restaurants.
Then the location. Anything near campus and downtown is going to be expensive in terms of rent.
Really the only shot KSBar had as with most bars/restaurants in that area was to become a place students, faculty, down towners frequent. Not sure that ever was the case.
It relied heavily on the KSR uk fan demographic. You get that on event days but even then, if I’m coming from Paducah for a horse race, concert, or game I’m probably going to Malone’s, Carson’s, etc…
All restaurants face the same economic challenges. All restaurants are not failing.
I could argue the reason it survived as long as it did was because it had a celebrity influence and regular on air advertising to a relatively large market. Many see Matt Jones as a local celebrity. And, KSR did its show from and mentioned the restaurant regularly. Celebrity based restaurants cannot survive on that alone. Eventually, it must compete on food quality, ambiance, and service.
I worked pretty heavily on the distribution side of the business at the finance / supply chain executive side. I spent a lot of time looking at margins made off individual restaurants and chains. My view is a little different:
- The distributors are going to eat your lunch if you're a small independent AND you don't know what you are doing. What do I mean by that?
- You have to understand what is important to your customers. The distributors love selling you high margin items - especially on non-food items. For example, bev napkins with your restaurant's name on it? Super high margin. No one cares. Buy the most basic ones available.
- You should absolutely have multiple suppliers as well as leveraging your local warehouse stores. Sysco would love nothing more than if you give them all their business. Don't do this.
- Negotiate your *** off on everything. Distributors will show you their invoice prices from their suppliers. What they don't show you is the additional discounts suppliers kick back to the distributors. So you may be thinking you're getting something at 10% over invoice, when in fact it's like 40% over invoice.
- Set your menu up to take advantage of high margin items. Filet = Low margin item. Short ribs = high margin item. You want as many high margin items on your menu as possible.
- Chains all know this stuff, but they typically are going to have higher overhead (execs, advertising, etc.). So they are going to be able to negotiate better, but they have a lot of overhead. Plus, these jackoffs have investors that keep pushing the chain to reduce quality and piss off their customers. Independents can get around this by being smart.
@Bluegrass79 - Your first line was this: "This bad economy you're talking about is supply-side economics. We've been using it since 1981."
First of all, demand side economics leads to high inflation. Here are the inflation rates starting in 1979. Reagan came in to fix this starting in 1981. Here's what happened.
1979 = 11.25%
1980 = 13.55%
1981 = 10.33%
1982 = 6.13%
1983 = 3.21%
1984 = 4.30%
1985 = 3.56%
1986 = 1.90%
Meanwhile, we had steady growth during the 80's and the 90's, averaging over 3% per year.
Right now, we are spending $2T more than we take in. That feels pretty demand side to me. Also, we saw during COVID that when we just handed out cash (demand side economics), inflation went through the roof.
First of all, demand side economics leads to high inflation. Here are the inflation rates starting in 1979. Reagan came in to fix this starting in 1981. Here's what happened.
1979 = 11.25%
1980 = 13.55%
1981 = 10.33%
1982 = 6.13%
1983 = 3.21%
1984 = 4.30%
1985 = 3.56%
1986 = 1.90%
Meanwhile, we had steady growth during the 80's and the 90's, averaging over 3% per year.
Right now, we are spending $2T more than we take in. That feels pretty demand side to me. Also, we saw during COVID that when we just handed out cash (demand side economics), inflation went through the roof.
Damn man. Yeah, Wendy’s are damn good too. Good call on that. It’s been a minute since I had one them as well.
Yeah that’s a big part of it.
The niche of UK fandom with uk affiliated people “celebrities” and/or personalities occasionally passing through was going to be hard to maintain and make money on.
Again, other places can claim that.
Even if KSBar excelled at that, it’s an occasional occurrence at best.
Especially since his relationship with UK is funny at times and all the flaming hoop jumping it takes to get people to do things.
Probably be better off just being the studio and hq. Have live shows. Get sponsors and vendors to roll through for a fee.
When Tally Ho closed, they could have seized the opportunity and got the students. KSR had brand recognition and did their radio show at the restaurant. Now they will form a joint venture with another restaurant to have their radio shows.
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This is an important point. Most independent restaurant owners have to work crazy hours to keep the place afloat. They can't afford a full time general manager.
Agree but I’m pretty sure they had multiple owners. Even Ryan was a part owner I believe. They failed because they don’t know jack about the service industry. Imagine the amount of money they wasted last year by closing down and reopening. Should have just shut it down than.
That's exactly the point. A restaurant that size can have one or multiple owners but if they aren't involved in everything from scheduling, cooking and washing dishes, then management and other salaries are killing their already slim profit margin.
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And again, if Cal had stayed at UK, the KSR radio show would have ended. Matt said he only continued because he felt like he could have a working relationship with Pope. Cal was going to do everything he could to use his influence to minimize and even eliminate Matt's role in covering UK basketball.
Cal was even working on getting Matt Jones removed from the post game radio show the next season and removing his media access to UK games. It reached that point, and Matt would have gotten crushed worse than a KS Bar smash burger.
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Matt caught lightning in a bottle because Patrick Patterson gave Matt the type of access in his recruitment that Brian Windhorst had when he covered Lebron James in high school. Plus, Matt used to post on Rupps Rafters every chance he got and link his page before the mods shut it down.
It didn't help that idiots were running haywire with their stimulus checks buy all sorts of ****, and manufacturers ramped up for that, and never recouped the costs.
And a business could be making a marginal profit but not enough to deal with the grind of staying open if you are not receiving a rate of return you want. And KS Bar had 17 investors so not enough profit to go around.
Matt thought the KSR brand would give him increasing returns to scale and dominate market share in the Lexington sports bar market. This should have worked, especially with Tally Ho closing, which was an institution for UK students.
People think the KSR crew are rolling in the money, but like I said earlier, Ryan Lemond has had to deliver food for Doordash to make ends meet.