After two years of bleeding during the Great Recession, the local restaurant scene was upgraded to stable condition in 2010, but the past year also saw online “vultures” attack and new state legislation take a bite out of business.
The proliferation of daily-deal sites such as Groupon, LivingSocial and Eversave have helped consumers get up to half off at participating eateries, but some owners view them as the new scourge of the industry.
“They are deflationary weapons of mass destruction and are very, very dangerous for the restaurant industry to get involved in,” said Jeff Gates of Aquitaine Group. “I don’t think restaurants realize how challenging the bottom line is without giving half off to your customers. (They) lose track of what they’re giving away.”
None of Aquitaine Group’s six restaurants - including Aquitaine Bar a Vin Bistrot, Metropolis Cafe, Union Bar and Grill, and Gaslight Brasserie du Coin - offer the deals.
To Gates, the top restaurant story of the year is the proliferation of Groupon-type “vulture buying groups.”
The sites particularly strike a nerve with Gates because he’s hounded almost daily with their “flop sweat” marketing pitches.
“We won’t have anything to do with them, but it just amazes me how much they’re calling,” he said.
Free food is good for consumers, but for restaurants it can mean giving a prime seat at 8 p.m. on a Saturday night to a customer paying with a coupon.
“The restaurant business can’t afford to underwrite it all,” said Gates of Groupon and the others.
Restaurants also felt under siege from the state’s “gift ban” that prevents pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers from paying for meals for health-care workers outside of their offices or hospitals.
Steve DiFillippo, CEO of Davio’s, lost 20 percent of his function business when the state enacted the ban in August 2009.
“You can’t just make that up,” said DiFillippo, who joined the Massachusetts Restaurant Association’s unsuccessful lobbying attempts to repeal the ban, a fight they’ll take up again next year. “That was a huge hit for us.”
But there was also plenty of good news last year. Restaurants generally rebounded after two challenging years that included the Wall Street meltdown and the loss of the corporate diner.
“There’s definitely an upswing in the restaurant scene compared to the last two years,” said Mark D’Alessandro, manager of Columbus Restaurant Group’s Mistral in Boston. “The business clientele are definitely back, and they’re asking for the big wines again. There seems to be a lot more confidence in the public about dining out.”
Richard Brackett of Towne Stove & Spirits and Scampo at the Liberty Hotel, both Lyons Group restaurants, agrees.
“People are ordering appetizers, people are ordering desserts, people are ordering after-dinner drinks,” Brackett said. “When people cut back, those were the first things to go.”
DiFillippo said a great Christmas brought business up overall into the low single digits compared with last year. Now, it’s all about the weather for the next three months, said DiFillippo.
“It’s all about the snow and when it comes,” he said. “Is it going to come on a Monday or Tuesday or a Friday or Saturday? This last storm was perfect.”
The proliferation of daily-deal sites such as Groupon, LivingSocial and Eversave have helped consumers get up to half off at participating eateries, but some owners view them as the new scourge of the industry.
“They are deflationary weapons of mass destruction and are very, very dangerous for the restaurant industry to get involved in,” said Jeff Gates of Aquitaine Group. “I don’t think restaurants realize how challenging the bottom line is without giving half off to your customers. (They) lose track of what they’re giving away.”
None of Aquitaine Group’s six restaurants - including Aquitaine Bar a Vin Bistrot, Metropolis Cafe, Union Bar and Grill, and Gaslight Brasserie du Coin - offer the deals.
To Gates, the top restaurant story of the year is the proliferation of Groupon-type “vulture buying groups.”
The sites particularly strike a nerve with Gates because he’s hounded almost daily with their “flop sweat” marketing pitches.
“We won’t have anything to do with them, but it just amazes me how much they’re calling,” he said.
Free food is good for consumers, but for restaurants it can mean giving a prime seat at 8 p.m. on a Saturday night to a customer paying with a coupon.
“The restaurant business can’t afford to underwrite it all,” said Gates of Groupon and the others.
Restaurants also felt under siege from the state’s “gift ban” that prevents pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers from paying for meals for health-care workers outside of their offices or hospitals.
Steve DiFillippo, CEO of Davio’s, lost 20 percent of his function business when the state enacted the ban in August 2009.
“You can’t just make that up,” said DiFillippo, who joined the Massachusetts Restaurant Association’s unsuccessful lobbying attempts to repeal the ban, a fight they’ll take up again next year. “That was a huge hit for us.”
But there was also plenty of good news last year. Restaurants generally rebounded after two challenging years that included the Wall Street meltdown and the loss of the corporate diner.
“There’s definitely an upswing in the restaurant scene compared to the last two years,” said Mark D’Alessandro, manager of Columbus Restaurant Group’s Mistral in Boston. “The business clientele are definitely back, and they’re asking for the big wines again. There seems to be a lot more confidence in the public about dining out.”
Richard Brackett of Towne Stove & Spirits and Scampo at the Liberty Hotel, both Lyons Group restaurants, agrees.
“People are ordering appetizers, people are ordering desserts, people are ordering after-dinner drinks,” Brackett said. “When people cut back, those were the first things to go.”
DiFillippo said a great Christmas brought business up overall into the low single digits compared with last year. Now, it’s all about the weather for the next three months, said DiFillippo.
“It’s all about the snow and when it comes,” he said. “Is it going to come on a Monday or Tuesday or a Friday or Saturday? This last storm was perfect.”