Archived postings from June, 2009...

Whither Independents

Posted: Mon, June 29, 2009 at 6:01am (CDT)

Some time in the next few years, assuming that current trends hold, decades of movement in the restaurant industry will finally result in a majority of U.S. eateries being part of a chain. But the independent restaurant will never die, and that's largely because of people like David and Christina Macfarlane.

One week before Christmas last year, David was called into the office of the foodservice manufacturer for which he worked and was told he was being laid off. When he got home and told his wife, Christina, her reaction was, to say the least, atypical. "Good," she said, "Now we can open a restaurant."

As it was, Christina had been pushing David to open a restaurant—the two had both spent years in the foodservice industry, and David had long dreamed of owning an eatery. They found a spot in a closed Minneapolis wine bar, and then visited numerous banks seeking SBA financing. None would approve them—even though they had good credit and more than 50 percent collateral. ...continue reading.