Location-Based Pricing Could Change the Restaurant Game
(Photo: Gina Cella; insest: Jason Clark)
At the Venice, California, restaurant Gjelina, a hip love letter to vegetables set a few blocks back from the beach, salads are no afterthought. Consider the kale with shaved fennel, radish, and ricotta salata. It sounds delicious. It costs $13.
Across town, in South L.A., a little grab-and-go place called Everytable serves a kale chicken Caesar with shaved Parmesan, cherry tomatoes, and whole wheat croutons. It sounds delicious. It costs $3.95.
“Everything we’ve done with Everytable is about trying to make healthy, delicious food as affordable as it can be,” said David Foster, cofounder of the company along with Sam Polk. But Everytable, which opened its first location in South L.A. at the end of July, isn’t just about making food cheap—it aims to upend the restaurant pricing model altogether.
The company, which has plans to expand to numerous locations in Los Angeles and beyond, uses a variable price model, with the pricing for each location based on the surrounding neighborhood’s income level. In South L.A., more than 40 percent of households earn $20,000 a year or less. To be affordable and to be competitive with local fast-food options, nothing on Everytable’s menu there costs more than $4.50.
When the second location opens in more affluent downtown L.A. later this year, that same kale Caesar will cost $8 — still a value compared with neighborhood fast-casual options. It’s a model the founder of nonprofit L.A. Kitchen called “one of the most exciting experiments of food democracy in L.A. and in America.”
The magic to the model, Foster said, is the centralized kitchen where all food is prepared and the small storefronts staffed with just two on-site employees. The kitchen makes the most of batch cooking and economies of scale, while the storefronts keep rent and other overhead costs low. For every store that opens in a lower-income neighborhood, another will open where incomes are higher. Each location is intended to be profitable on its own.
“The model for Everytable is really one that’s unlocked by people across the map buying in,” Foster said.
It doesn’t require a leap on the diner’s part. With the chic logo, the sleek interior, complete with potted succulents, and a chef from New York’s Le Cirque designing the menu, the overall experience is akin to dining at a much more expensive restaurant. There’s even La Croix.
“We really wanted customers to have this incredible experience where the food is delicious but also the environment was beautiful and showed a tremendous amount of respect for the customers,” Polk said.
The concept for Everytable grew out of Polk’s nonprofit, Groceryships. The six-month program is “a scholarship for groceries,” offering financial assistance to low-income families in South L.A. coupled with weekly education and support sessions in nutrition, cooking, and shopping. Groceryships filled a gap of access and education, but Foster and Polk realized there was another gap that needed filling—the modern problem of time poverty. The dream is healthy, home-cooked meals. The reality is convenience.
“It’s not just about not having a grocery store in your neighborhood in South L.A.,” Foster said. “It’s about not having the time [to cook].”
So customers don’t just buy lunch at Everytable; they stock up. Executive Chef Craig Hopson sources organic and local ingredients as much as possible for a menu that was developed with some of the Groceryships families. Since opening, Foster has seen “a good return business” of people buying several meals at a time, often walking out of the store with two or three bags. The average check size is double what the team forecast, ringing up at between $7 and $15.
That early success runs contrary to the thoughts of some critics, who don’t buy the build-it-and-they-will-come approach to bringing healthy food to low-income neighborhoods. “I just don’t think the poor people of color will buy this,” wrote one Yelper, who did not mention the food he or she ordered. “My guess is this will be a USC grad student staple and another attraction in the gentrification of the area.”
It’s the kind of comment Foster has heard a number of times over the years, and he believes it’s refuted by the “huge, pent-up demand for healthy food” he’s seen working with Groceryships. That program has a waiting list of more than 100 people.
“Anyone who wants to see the proof in the pudding should come by the store and see the diversity of people who are coming in,” he said.
Everytable hopes to open four locations by the end of the year and more than 10 by the end of 2017. For the foreseeable future, the company is focused in Los Angeles, although Foster sees the issues as critical national ones.
“Everyone deserves equal opportunity and access to be healthy, and food is a huge driver of that,” he said.