22 Hours in Balthazar

Balthazar is one of the most popular restaurants in New York City and this article goes into great depth of what makes this restaurant a cash cow.  Balthazar is a French Brassiere that opened its doors in 1997, it is located on Crosby and Spring Street in Soho. Balthazar is one of the first restaurants opened by famous restaurateur Keith McNally.  However, it is more than a restaurant it is an efficient large business due to its large number of 200 employees and its large volume of customers.

This restaurant is open almost 20 hours a day and it is packed or almost always packed. The restaurant on average feeds 10,000 guests a week and they spend $90,000 a week on food alone. Their main focus is on dinner as dinner prep begins at 6:30 in the morning before they even open for breakfast. Balthazar’s most popular dish is their steak frites and they sell about 200 of these a day. The fries in the steak frites are made out of Idaho Russet potatoes and they have one prep cook whose entire job is to peel potatoes, he peels an average of 8 potatoes a minute. Other prep includes making 50 gallons of chicken stock which lasts only two days and boiling dozens of pounds of haricot vert.

At 7:25am the shift manager yells doors open and customers fly in. There is a very large floor staff at Balthazar there are waiters, food runners, busboys, and even a coffee runner whom just runs coffee. The reason for this is because they want the waiters on the floor as much as possible selling specials and as much wine as possible. If a waiter sells a certain amount of specials they receive a bonus such as a free drink or an appetizer; this incentive really does work as it allows the restaurant to make more profit.  Overall the restaurant can be summed up as a machine that never stops.

Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/magazine/22-hours-in-balthazar.html?ref=dining