Want to go broke? Open a restaurant

Did you know that in the United States two out of three restaurants that open for business will fail to become commercially viable and fold up within three years. This phenomenon was first noted more than 40 years ago by the famous economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who later became ambassador to India. While working as a professor at Harvard, he noticed that one young couple after another opened a restaurant in his neighborhood only to pack up and leave after a year or so , although Galbraith tried to help them by patronizing their business. The learned professor offered convincing reasons for these repeated failures which I do not quite recollect; suffice it to say that it had to do something with fluctuating demand, and costs of operations, especially labor costs.

More than 40 years after Professor Galbraith wrote this piece, guess what: the New York Times in the story dated 27 August reconfirms the same sad tale. It tells the story of a lady Charlita Anderson who went to law school in Cleveland, and has worked in the legal field for 20 years, but she always wanted to run a restaurant that would feature her mother's recipe for gumbo, which she believed was truly out of this world.

So in 2002, Charlita opened Pepper Red's Blues Café in Lorain, Ohio, and did everything from making gumbo to scrubbing floors, singing, while still putting in a full day as a magistrate.

Sadly, Charlita's restaurant is no longer in business and she has resumed her previous career, and of course she had to pay off substantial debts incurred during her 15-month stint as owner of a food establishment. She occasionally suffers from withdrawal symptoms and wants to start all over again but she has resisted temptation thus far. And so the people of Ohio have to do without the most yummy gumbo this side of the Mississippi.