Industry
Part of Why Restaurant Ventures Can't Be Judged by Opening Night
Restaurant ventures timeline: names, dates and context
A dated timeline of celebrity restaurant ventures, from the first entity filing through licensing, operator changes and the closure that ends the record.
What to take away
- Entity formation, licence grant, opening, operator change and dissolution are separate dates, held by three different registers.
- The best documented celebrity case is the Spotted Pig: opened 2004, closed 2020, company wound down after that.
- Casa Cruz filed a New York entity and never traded, so no licence date exists for it.
- Dissolution of the venue entity is normally the last dated event, and it lands long after the final service.
- Where a date is not published, name the gap rather than supply a remembered number.
The sequence a venue follows
- Heads of terms with a landlord. Rent, term, break options and the guarantee are fixed here, before a menu exists.
- The venue entity is formed. This is the first public date, created under the rules for registering a business. It dates the vehicle, not the venture.
- The lease is signed. The guarantee beside it matters more than the rent, and the restaurant ventures page explains why the guarantor carries the real exposure.
- Planning and fit-out. Change-of-use applications and building permits are public in most US cities. The fit-out spend is not, and it stays with the landlord's building.
- The licence application. A retail food permit is issued locally under an adopted version of the FDA Food Code, so the issuing body changes by city.
- Pre-opening. Payroll runs before any takings, and rent may already be running. Announcements usually land here.
- Opening. The one date coverage reliably records.
- The opening curve. Weeks or months of demand borrowed from curiosity.
- The trough. The first stretch where demand means repeat visits alone. Undated, and it decides the outcome.
- The first rent review or break option. The lease fixes the date, and affordability at ordinary demand becomes a decision.
- An operator change, a renegotiation or a sale as a going concern. The licence register usually moves first, which is why the acquisitions and exits article warns that a venue sale rarely means what coverage implies.
- Dissolution or strike-off, months or years after the room stopped trading.
What each register dates
| Milestone | Record that carries it | Lag between event and record |
|---|---|---|
| Entity formed | Company register | Days |
| Change of use or building work | Planning register | Weeks to months before opening |
| Licence granted | Local licence register | Weeks before opening |
| Opening | Coverage only | None, and coverage is the only record |
| Operator change | Licence register, then company register | Weeks to months after |
| Closure | Licence surrendered or lapsed | Around the last service |
| Entity dissolution | Company register | Months to years after closure |
| Lease or supplier litigation | Court docket | After the relationship has failed |
The trough has no row. It is the decisive stretch of a venue's life and no register captures it. It appears only in hindsight, as a later closure or a later operator change.
Money moves before trade does
Cash goes out first and in bulk: deposit, fit-out, pre-opening payroll, opening stock. Then it comes in fast, because guests pay on the night and suppliers extend terms. The first months flatter the operation.
The cash calendar
- Money out first: deposit, fit-out, payroll, stock
- Money in fast: guests pay, suppliers extend terms
- First months look better than they are
- Supplier terms catch up, opening curve fades
- Rent set against ordinary demand
- Survive trough or close before guarantee called
Supplier terms catch up and the opening curve fades. Rent never moved, and it now sits against ordinary demand. If the trough is survivable at that rent, the venue reaches the first rent review. If not, the operator closes before the guarantee is called or after.
Example: a filed entity with no licence
Casa Cruz opened in London in 2018. Its New York venture formed an entity and did not trade. That is the cleanest test available: an entity on the register with no licence behind it is a stalled project, not a venue. There is no opening date to find because there was no service.
The portfolio case studies method is built for reading that gap between a filed company and a trading room.
Named cases and the dates that exist
Tribeca Grill opened in 1990 on Greenwich Street, from Drew Nieporent with Robert De Niro as an investor. It outlasted its opening curve by decades, and the lease rather than the name set the life span.
Nobu opened first in New York in 1994, from Nobu Matsuhisa with De Niro and the producer Meir Teper. The later structure is licensing and management, so brand dates and one restaurant's dates have to be read apart.
The Spotted Pig opened in 2004 with Ken Friedman and April Bloomfield. It closed in 2020, and the company was wound down afterwards. Those two dates bracket the file.
Fatburger sites are franchised, so the Item 20 tables in the Franchise Disclosure Document carry unit openings and closures by year. The FTC Franchise Rule sets what that document must contain, and a brand press page is no substitute.
Reading an age off three registers
Coverage says a venue is two years old. The entity may be three, the lease may have four years left with a break option in one, and the licence operator may have changed six months ago.
A room trading well may already be on its second operating company, licensed after the first one dissolved. The celebrity companies overview covers why the entity, not the name, is the thing whose age you measure.
