Stories & resources

Learn how a café can use outside production to expand its menu, reach delivery and pickup customers, and keep margins healthy as sales grow in New York City. Many cafés already have loyal customers but a limited menu, a small kitchen, and a team that is fully occupied at the counter. Café food production can …

A practical guide to measuring what your kitchen can produce, comparing it with your demand, and finding the step that limits your output. Calculating food production capacity means estimating how many units, portions, meals, batches, or kilograms a kitchen can produce in a defined period, based on the resources and conditions of the real operation. …

A practical look at how sales data, customer traffic, and local market conditions help restaurant operators separate an internal problem from a market-wide shift before making location and expansion decisions. A restaurant operator who opens the monthly report and finds sales below the same month last year usually starts by questioning the business itself: whether …

Explore six commissary kitchen locations across New York City, compare neighborhood advantages, and learn which requirements to consider when choosing the right space for your food business. New York offers food businesses access to a diverse customer base, from office workers and residents to tourists, students and families. Finding the right kitchen, however, requires more …

A practical checklist to confirm restaurant expansion demand, test it in a new market, and compare expansion options before taking on new costs. A restaurant that sells well is not always a restaurant that is ready to expand. Strong sales can come from a busy season, a promotion, or a loyal neighborhood that will not …

Learn how to combine customer demand, order data, demographics, competition, and operational fit to evaluate a new market before expanding your food business. Before entering a new market, restaurant operators need more than population data or a list of nearby competitors. A market can have plenty of potential customers and still be a poor fit …