New York has its fair share of tiny restaurants. Ones where you are basically sitting on top of your neighbor, listening to their conversation, basically sharing a meal with them. Ever wonder why these places were made so tiny? Why didn’t the owner just get a bigger space or design the floor plan better? Well, maybe the owner did plan better, and smarter than everyone else. Look at Talula’s Table, a 12-person restaurant in Chester County, PA. From a practical perspective, a small restaurant is also a smart restaurant. Servers here also do clean-up, saving the owner from having to pay a busboy or busgirl. Chefs also throw the towels in the laundry in the back, saving money that could have been spent on a laundry service. If the food is good enough to charge guests a little more money, a small restaurant can make a profit with less risk than a large restaurant. The rent is cheaper, the build out is cheaper, and the return comes in a little faster. To read more about the business model of a small restaurant and how they offer just as much, if not more than a large restaurant  click here.

Chef Mark Ladner of Del Posto will be leaving the Mario Batali owned Del Posto, in Chelsea next month to pursue his own project. Ladner will be heading into the world of upscale fast food with his new concept, Pasta Flyer. The first location, already under construction in Greenwich Village. Ladner wants to create a place where consumers can get a bowl of pasta — reasonably al dente, appropriately sauced, made with high-quality ingredients — in the same amount of time it takes a Chipotle to roll a burrito and for about the same price. As for Del Posto,the restaurant will introduce a menu in February from the new executive chef, Melissa Rodriguez, who was Mr. Ladner’s chef de cuisine. Rodriguez will be the first woman to head the kitchen of a New York City restaurant that has received four stars from The New York Times. To read more about Mark Ladner and Del Posto, click here.

When operating a restaurant there is one guaranteed expense that will haunt you until the day you close – rent. Rising rent costs have put restaurants out of business. So, any easier way to operate is by delivery service operations. Maple, a Manhattan based food-delivery start-up allows consumers to search through their daily lunch and dinner options, order with the click of a button, and have their meals delivered to their doorstep. However, just like any food operation, food-delivery services struggle too. According to a new report in Recode the delivery app is struggling to expand and make money on the food it delivers, claiming Maple “appears to have lost money on average on every meal in 2015, resulting in an operating loss of $9 million for the year on $2.7 million in gross revenue.” Food costs at Maple were at a high of 63% of revenue in 2015, 26% food waste, and 17.5% for marketing. However, this past March, Maple managed to get their food costs down and allowing the company to turn a small profit of 30 cents for each meal it delivered. To read more about the struggles of food-delivery based operations click here. Also, to sign up for Maple or just browse their site click here.