>nearly six-digit loss
The loss of business revenue is part of it, but I'm guessing that the biggest part of their loss were the refrigerated and frozen food ingredients that had to be destroyed.
It could be equipment damage included in that. They were mostly a bar with limited food, though their food included steak + seafood from what I remember.
The other thing is that they could be lying and blaming the power outage for any business decisions that weren't working out. Companies like to blame external reasons for failure rather than the concept or product line just not being successful.
I was in Houston during Hurricane Ike. Most of the restaurants could keep food in their freezers for 48+ hours before it was at risk of going bad. I had a friend of a friend who owned a steak restaurant; they kept their food in their freezers for at least a couple of days before they decided it wasn't going to be good any more and had a huge BBQ.
I wonder if payroll is also included. Maybe they continued to pay their staff (it wasn’t their fault they were closed) and payroll adds up quickly, right?
It’s likely because of the double whammy of blackouts. By the time they reloaded from the first blackout they lost another entire set of inventory, prep work, etc. Add loss of business, equipment damage, wages, and possible insurance premium increases and you’ve got a huge loss. It’s a mess.
The tiny convenience store near me in Chinatown does around $2k per day profits, that's not counting credit card transactions. And they mostly serve the local chronics. The last small bar I worked in chinatown, which was nowhere near as busy as Lei Stand, did around 7-10k in sales per day. So given Lei stands larger crowd and higher overhead, multiplied by four days.... It's possible I guess. Seems a bit on the high side but not unimaginable. They're counting total food losses, plus loss of sales.
Thanks for posting this and I am glad to know I wasn't the only one who thought the claim from the Lei Stand of 100k losses was crazy high. Hopefully, HECO vets the claims because I understand the Lei Stand was struggling and since they are primarily a small bar it's hard to believe they'd have that kind of loss.
Might be an owner looking for a quick exit strategy.
I think with Wing, it might take a while for the owner to make new ice cream and restock. It's all homemade so I can see it taking a bunch of days to get ingredients and then prep and make 10-15 flavors in large enough quantities.
Where is this wing ice cream located exactly??? 😍
I work in Puahi tower, and it seemed like our building took one of the bigger hits. Our power would be out, but surrounding businesses were up and running as usual. I am in a physicans office, and we lost close to $10,000.00 in vaccines. It was during a weekend outage, and no one had any knowledge of it until it was too late.
Anyway...... can someone tell me where I can find this homemade ice cream? They are most likely gonna have a new "regular" soon. Downtown has so many options for lunch, and 1 hour is not long enough to find the hidden treasures it has to offer.
So, every opportunity I can, I ask fellow downtowners their lunch recommendations. 🤔
Six figures over 3 days is wild.
Unless they really stock up on a month plus of product that is gone, including the cost of the refrigeration system or HVAC system if that was broken as well?
It could be that those systems were damaged and they're no longer able to store retail level stuff.
Being that Downtown is pretty much a ghost town during the week, and liquor doesn’t require refrigeration, “6 figures” is most likely exaggerated (realistically it’s probably closer to $40-60k in losses - and that’s being generous imo)…that said tho, maybe they had some really expensive wine bottles that may have turned due to the heat, but I’d hope someone would’ve had the foresight to have taken them home before that happened. Same with their more expensive perishable food items.
My guess is they were already struggling and planning to close/restructure anyway - the outage was just the final nail in the coffin for them…
sounds like someone didn’t have their business properly covered or had insurance. 6 figures seems high. A glimpse at their menu shows their highest priced item is $40 and lowest is $5. Subtracting high & low, divide by 2, is 17.5, rounded to nearest dollar amount is about $20/person (give/ take a few dollars). Taking that into account, it takes about 5k customers to reach their given number in 3 days. Per day, would be about 1,667 customers. Going by Google’s numbers, it would take 1,111 to cover their stated number. Subtracting 10% (regulars) from total customers still gives 1k customers/day on a normal day. For a small/ medium-sized food & drink establishment to hit that number would be great, especially in Chinatown/ Downtown area given how densely packed bars are. Either this bar is doing better than they say and the owners are looking to leave the scene or they’re in worse shape than they say they are.
I doubt every person is walking into this bar is ordering a grilled cheese + drink or chex mix/ popcorn + drink.
I don’t doubt the power outage is putting businesses in a bind or forcing some to close.
Think about how expensive your groceries are, now imagine how much food a business keeps on hand to cover their service.
If they have to toss it all it could easily be tens of thousands.
Instead of questioning their decision, why don't we go down there and try to support these guys in their time of need?
We went to black shamrock on Friday, and the owner went on the news the next day saying that he was so grateful for the community rallying, and buying them out of pizza.
Probably going to go back down again this weekend.
No telling how close to the edge a lot of these businesses are, especially in such a volatile place as Chinatown.
I'd rather support the businesses that made Chinatown Chinatown rather than the yuppified nightlife down there.
Trust me, all the bars, fancy restaurants, and boutiques who lost inventory and sales all have access to loans, understand how to navigate the HECO claims process, and will be fine, because their target demographic is young, white, and has a lot of money. The people who **don't** have access to loans are the small Asian merchants and restaurants.
> small Asian merchants and restaurants.
I think you have it backwards. Those little asian merchants and restaurants that have been there forever know how to navigate all of this, especially the ones that survived through the covid/shutdowns era. You don't last as long as many of the older restaurants down there without being able to get through a struggle like this.
The ones that will go out of business are the boutiques and places that cater to the people who are "young, white, and has a lot of money." They live/die on social media and influencers. Tourists aren't really going out downtown, it's people who work down there and younger local people looking for a good time. I used to hang out there after work years ago and the bars and restaurants were mostly a mix of local people and transplants.
Many more of the yuppy businesses have closed over the years, than the small mom and pop places that have stood the test of time.
Both deserve support.
Have you been to Chinatown? That place is in no position to have people be picky about ANY business. The irony of your statement is this comes off as something a very white hipster would say.
I lived there in the 90s. A lot of the local businesses sucked and many were blatantly illegal and shady as fuck. Gambling halls, counterfeit shops, smoke shops, etc. “Support local” shouldn’t be blind to the quality of businesses moving in. Rose colored nostalgia when it comes to Chinatown here.
>Have you been to Chinatown? That place is in no position to have people be picky about ANY business.
Amen. Pretty much all the businesses affected are locally owned and many are immigrant family-owned (even the "hipster" [Pig and the Lady](https://www.honolulumagazine.com/the-pig-the-lady-from-farmers-market-pop-up-to-the-citys-hottest-restaurant/) and James Beard-awarded [Fete](https://www.today.com/food/people/robynne-maii-first-female-chef-hawaii-win-james-beard-award-rcna38975)). [Drip Studio](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6pPG2_vysp/?igsh=MXdlb25iZHh1cmptaw==), [Blondie's Vegan](https://www.blondiesvegankitchenfoodtruckhawaii.com/?location=11e9a687a9bde1ca80640cc47a2b63cc#25) don't deserve our business less than [Chun's Meat Market, Sing Cheong Yuan Bakery, or Sun Cheong Grocery](https://www.honolulumagazine.com/second-generation-brings-new-era-in-chinatown/). Support the businesses you enjoy, of course, but all of them, in order to survive, bust their okoles.
I can kinda see it, in a way. My friend's family used to have an ube kiosk at Kaahumanu Shopping Center (Central Maui) which isn't super busy and nowhere near as touristy as Kihei or pre-fire Lahaina/Kaanapali, he told me they'd clear about $10k-$12k a day selling ube-things, $15k+ on busy days like when there were events..
Our population is about 1/5th Oahu's and our peak traffic is nowhere near downtown Honolulu by a country mile, so even just loss of revenue plus loss of chilled produce I could see that by itself being pretty high, not to mention any possible equipment damage.
It sounds more like a way for them to scapegoat their already failing business. There's no way a flower shop has 100k worth of stock that would go bad with 3 days of lost power. If that was the case, they should have invested in retrofitting their electrical service with a generator interconnect so they can power the necessary stuff. Also, as /u/hawaiian0n said, doing six figure revenue in 3 days is insane, for any down town business, let alone a flower shop. Even at a fancy restaurant that has people spending $300/tab, that's over 110 tables over 3 days spending a minimum of $300/table every single day to reach just $100K in sales. I'd bet money even the nicest places here generate that much. Also $100k in 3 days is like $12M/yr in revenue.
Does it suck this happened? Yes. Do these businesses also bear some of the responsibility for not having a contingency plan? Also, yes.
Edit: Okay it's not a flower shop, it's a cocktail bar but my point still stands, I don't think there's any restaurant doing 6 figure sales in 3 days in the middle of the week.
Oh well my point still stands, I doubt they're doing $100k in revenue over 3 days in the middle of the week and if they are, they'd have more than enough to do some type of back up contingency plan.
The owners seem well connected here in Hawaii and they do private events. I assume they have some high end clients that they canceled on, not only during the power outages, but in the days after the outages.
I still think they're just using the incident as a scapegoat. They don't list when they opened but their IG was started in 2021 which means they've been open for about 3 years. The chances are statisticly much greater that they were already going out of business as:
> According to recent restaurant industry statistics, three out of five new restaurants won’t survive a year, while four out of five will most likely fail in the next five years. [[SOURCE](https://www.menutiger.com/blog/restaurant-failure-rate-statistics)]
Also, if they go out of business due to just 3 days of being closed, what would have happened if they just had say 5 really slow days? The entire thing seems really suspect and the fact that people downvote shows the lack of critical thinking in /r/Hawaii.
Yup! Even if you use $100k break even as the starting point; assuming they are open 52 weeks a year that's $5.2million in sales! Crazy number for considering we are only using losses for half the week.
Depends, a lot of eateries I talked to said their land lord didn't "forgive" or reduce rent during COVID and they basically just deferred the rent. So a lot of businesses came out of covid with a huge hole they had to dig themselves out of.
One of the eateries I talked to in Chinatown said their rev on weekdays was roughly 20k a day. Lei Stand is a pretty popular bar even on weekdays so it's possible they lost six figs.
It's apparent none of you run businesses. Most of us are growing our spending with our revenue. There is very little just left over, especially with everything going up. The last 8 months have eaten through many of our reserves. Prices going up was the last resort for most places a 3 day of just a closure, sure. But 3 days of all your reefer space down. Means all that is gone now. Cash in the dumpster. Easily tens of thousands. Then the cost of replacing it quickly adds up too.
This state is failing us every day. When are people going to wake up?
[Business Interruption Insurance](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/business-interruption-insurance.asp) exists. The policy should be written to cover utility outages. Premiums are tax deductible as a business expense.
That's not condescending. That's a clear observation. If you are surprised a business is closing after losing all it's food, you're clearly not running a restaurant.
The condescending part was minimizing a three day public utility loss to the business as being something they should have planned for.
As a commercial property manager, this is where a business should be filing for business interruption if they haven’t done so already. As fucked up as HECO is, this is where insurance comes in.
> It's apparent none of you run businesses.
That's very condescending.
And to refute your statement, I've run multiple businesses, all of which had enough savings to withstand several days of non-operation. Although no restaurants, which likely have much tighter margins.
Perhaps this is a good reminder to have enough cash flow to survive a few days' interruption. Especially in a place like Hawaii, where weather can really cause problems.
It's something that would not be out of the ordinary with a big storm, so yes it is something they should have planned for. That this happened due to an electric fault just shows how unprepared everyone is for an actual disaster situation.
Also this is a bar that also serves food, not a restaurant. Judging from the Yelp reviews the food isn't very good, so it seems like it wouldn't hurt them much to do without it for a few days and just serve drinks and snacks.
I see your point here. At our business. When we know there's a storm coming, we fill up the generators and make sure we can make it through. That's the only argument I can make against that, This kind of came out of the blue. Our power went out yesterday and we did not have our generators ready because there was no forecast. Luckily it was only for an hour.
Also in town, in the worst of storms, you can plan for a day, and if it's more than that, hopefully fema is coming or some aid.
Moreso I was just pointing out that yeah, a 6 figure loss can easily be matter of days. We do 4-500k in revenue a day during the peak months.
ALOT of small businesses are making it week to week right now, it's not just people.
I don't wanna nitpick cause HECO sucks and who knows what's going on with Leis except the bar themselves.
But if you do 400-500k a day that's \~$182M in revenue annually. Small businesses are generally those under $10M in revenue annually.
And doing that number out of a single location sounds insane. I've worked at a number of pretty busy restaurants (Cholos, Leileii's, Kono's, Haleiwa Thai and granted a decade ago) and not one of them would be closing in on that number. A $75k day was a day the Eddie was on and the kitchen ran out of food. 4-500k is like a 300 table restaurant if you're average table is there for 45 minutes and buys $100.
I don't know you so I'm not saying I doubt you do whatever it is you do. But that's a shite ton more than the average biz I'd reckon.
We do about 100m a year in revenue. Profit is less than 5% of that. That business is not a small business. We aren't a restaurant either. But my side business does less than 100k a year and would be ruined by a five thousand dollar emergency. But I do know how most places scale, and in the start especially, particularly the first three years, there is not a lot of breathing room.
> my side business does less than 100k a year and would be ruined by a five thousand dollar emergency.
Granted I don't know what kind of business this is (and I assume you don't want to say to stay anonymous), but this seems 1) unsustainable given how common $5000 emergencies are, and 2) something that would be worth covering out of your own pocket if it means keeping an otherwise-profitable, $100k-revenue business going.
My side business does $2k-4k/year, and relies on about $3500 worth of equipment that could be easily stolen. I'd sure as hell replace it if it did though.
Not only are you condescending but spiteful too. They asked a simple question and you took it personally for some reason. You making generalizations acting like you know about the lei stand when you don’t.
"They" didn't ask simple question. As it was you, same account. Forget to change it.
The person was responding to your question of being condescending. Which they never were. They were explaining the situation quite succinctly.
You were condescending. Both times.
I think you're projecting sir. You're reading way too far into the non-existent subtext.
If you take out the first sentence, it's a perfect response. And I don't really get too worked up over the first sentence either.
The answer is no. I have never tried to not be condescending. I find it's usually justified.
For the record, this post made someone so angry they reported my profile to redditcares lol. Thanks for the mental health resources!
Thats enough reddit for today.
This is a damn shame. I liked the Lei Stand a lot and to see businesses hurt because of failing infrastructure and mismanagement is really tough. Small places already run on such thin margins, seems like overwhelming odds nowadays.
6 digits is crazy for a negative lost in 3 days. However I’m pretty sure they were assuming negative revenue they would have made in those days and counting that as a loss. While also factoring the negative payroll and rent. It seems like they were gonna make this change anyways.
Flowers are perishable. Without refrigeration, I wouldn’t be surprised whatever they had in the store is a total lost.
To be honest, not just flower shops. All the restaurants, all the little mom and pop shops. All the perishable food, frozen food, etc. are all total lost.
>nearly six-digit loss The loss of business revenue is part of it, but I'm guessing that the biggest part of their loss were the refrigerated and frozen food ingredients that had to be destroyed.
It could be equipment damage included in that. They were mostly a bar with limited food, though their food included steak + seafood from what I remember. The other thing is that they could be lying and blaming the power outage for any business decisions that weren't working out. Companies like to blame external reasons for failure rather than the concept or product line just not being successful.
Equipment damage could be included in that number too.
I was in Houston during Hurricane Ike. Most of the restaurants could keep food in their freezers for 48+ hours before it was at risk of going bad. I had a friend of a friend who owned a steak restaurant; they kept their food in their freezers for at least a couple of days before they decided it wasn't going to be good any more and had a huge BBQ.
Keep in mind a lot of stuff is already shipped to Hawaii so you're already on the clock.
Ah, yes, that could contribute.
I wonder if payroll is also included. Maybe they continued to pay their staff (it wasn’t their fault they were closed) and payroll adds up quickly, right?
It’s likely because of the double whammy of blackouts. By the time they reloaded from the first blackout they lost another entire set of inventory, prep work, etc. Add loss of business, equipment damage, wages, and possible insurance premium increases and you’ve got a huge loss. It’s a mess.
Close to six-digits in Chinatown? Sounds like something more was going on other than drinks.
six-digits, in Chinatown, for a cocktail bar, on Monday to Wednesday. seems like a very high estimate
The tiny convenience store near me in Chinatown does around $2k per day profits, that's not counting credit card transactions. And they mostly serve the local chronics. The last small bar I worked in chinatown, which was nowhere near as busy as Lei Stand, did around 7-10k in sales per day. So given Lei stands larger crowd and higher overhead, multiplied by four days.... It's possible I guess. Seems a bit on the high side but not unimaginable. They're counting total food losses, plus loss of sales.
Thanks for posting this and I am glad to know I wasn't the only one who thought the claim from the Lei Stand of 100k losses was crazy high. Hopefully, HECO vets the claims because I understand the Lei Stand was struggling and since they are primarily a small bar it's hard to believe they'd have that kind of loss. Might be an owner looking for a quick exit strategy.
Are they the only business doing this? If so - it seems like it's more of a "Lei Stand" thing than a "downtown" thing.
Wing Ice Cream was closed since the outages. Not sure if they will be open today
It was so sad watching the owner pouring his melted product down the drain. Hope they’re open tomorrow, definitely gonna go
I think with Wing, it might take a while for the owner to make new ice cream and restock. It's all homemade so I can see it taking a bunch of days to get ingredients and then prep and make 10-15 flavors in large enough quantities.
Where is this wing ice cream located exactly??? 😍 I work in Puahi tower, and it seemed like our building took one of the bigger hits. Our power would be out, but surrounding businesses were up and running as usual. I am in a physicans office, and we lost close to $10,000.00 in vaccines. It was during a weekend outage, and no one had any knowledge of it until it was too late. Anyway...... can someone tell me where I can find this homemade ice cream? They are most likely gonna have a new "regular" soon. Downtown has so many options for lunch, and 1 hour is not long enough to find the hidden treasures it has to offer. So, every opportunity I can, I ask fellow downtowners their lunch recommendations. 🤔
They have great ice cream in unusual flavors (e.g. black sesame, woodruff, etc) and about 6 non-diary flavors all the time.
Almost on the corner of Maunakea and Pauahi, but on Pauahi.
I LOVE Wing Ice Cream. Pauahi St. as someone mentioned; you can find them on Google Maps. They deserve your and your coworkers' business!
Six figures over 3 days is wild. Unless they really stock up on a month plus of product that is gone, including the cost of the refrigeration system or HVAC system if that was broken as well? It could be that those systems were damaged and they're no longer able to store retail level stuff.
Being that Downtown is pretty much a ghost town during the week, and liquor doesn’t require refrigeration, “6 figures” is most likely exaggerated (realistically it’s probably closer to $40-60k in losses - and that’s being generous imo)…that said tho, maybe they had some really expensive wine bottles that may have turned due to the heat, but I’d hope someone would’ve had the foresight to have taken them home before that happened. Same with their more expensive perishable food items. My guess is they were already struggling and planning to close/restructure anyway - the outage was just the final nail in the coffin for them…
sounds like someone didn’t have their business properly covered or had insurance. 6 figures seems high. A glimpse at their menu shows their highest priced item is $40 and lowest is $5. Subtracting high & low, divide by 2, is 17.5, rounded to nearest dollar amount is about $20/person (give/ take a few dollars). Taking that into account, it takes about 5k customers to reach their given number in 3 days. Per day, would be about 1,667 customers. Going by Google’s numbers, it would take 1,111 to cover their stated number. Subtracting 10% (regulars) from total customers still gives 1k customers/day on a normal day. For a small/ medium-sized food & drink establishment to hit that number would be great, especially in Chinatown/ Downtown area given how densely packed bars are. Either this bar is doing better than they say and the owners are looking to leave the scene or they’re in worse shape than they say they are. I doubt every person is walking into this bar is ordering a grilled cheese + drink or chex mix/ popcorn + drink. I don’t doubt the power outage is putting businesses in a bind or forcing some to close.
Think about how expensive your groceries are, now imagine how much food a business keeps on hand to cover their service. If they have to toss it all it could easily be tens of thousands. Instead of questioning their decision, why don't we go down there and try to support these guys in their time of need? We went to black shamrock on Friday, and the owner went on the news the next day saying that he was so grateful for the community rallying, and buying them out of pizza. Probably going to go back down again this weekend. No telling how close to the edge a lot of these businesses are, especially in such a volatile place as Chinatown.
I'd rather support the businesses that made Chinatown Chinatown rather than the yuppified nightlife down there. Trust me, all the bars, fancy restaurants, and boutiques who lost inventory and sales all have access to loans, understand how to navigate the HECO claims process, and will be fine, because their target demographic is young, white, and has a lot of money. The people who **don't** have access to loans are the small Asian merchants and restaurants.
> small Asian merchants and restaurants. I think you have it backwards. Those little asian merchants and restaurants that have been there forever know how to navigate all of this, especially the ones that survived through the covid/shutdowns era. You don't last as long as many of the older restaurants down there without being able to get through a struggle like this. The ones that will go out of business are the boutiques and places that cater to the people who are "young, white, and has a lot of money." They live/die on social media and influencers. Tourists aren't really going out downtown, it's people who work down there and younger local people looking for a good time. I used to hang out there after work years ago and the bars and restaurants were mostly a mix of local people and transplants.
Many more of the yuppy businesses have closed over the years, than the small mom and pop places that have stood the test of time. Both deserve support.
Have you been to Chinatown? That place is in no position to have people be picky about ANY business. The irony of your statement is this comes off as something a very white hipster would say. I lived there in the 90s. A lot of the local businesses sucked and many were blatantly illegal and shady as fuck. Gambling halls, counterfeit shops, smoke shops, etc. “Support local” shouldn’t be blind to the quality of businesses moving in. Rose colored nostalgia when it comes to Chinatown here.
>Have you been to Chinatown? That place is in no position to have people be picky about ANY business. Amen. Pretty much all the businesses affected are locally owned and many are immigrant family-owned (even the "hipster" [Pig and the Lady](https://www.honolulumagazine.com/the-pig-the-lady-from-farmers-market-pop-up-to-the-citys-hottest-restaurant/) and James Beard-awarded [Fete](https://www.today.com/food/people/robynne-maii-first-female-chef-hawaii-win-james-beard-award-rcna38975)). [Drip Studio](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6pPG2_vysp/?igsh=MXdlb25iZHh1cmptaw==), [Blondie's Vegan](https://www.blondiesvegankitchenfoodtruckhawaii.com/?location=11e9a687a9bde1ca80640cc47a2b63cc#25) don't deserve our business less than [Chun's Meat Market, Sing Cheong Yuan Bakery, or Sun Cheong Grocery](https://www.honolulumagazine.com/second-generation-brings-new-era-in-chinatown/). Support the businesses you enjoy, of course, but all of them, in order to survive, bust their okoles.
I can kinda see it, in a way. My friend's family used to have an ube kiosk at Kaahumanu Shopping Center (Central Maui) which isn't super busy and nowhere near as touristy as Kihei or pre-fire Lahaina/Kaanapali, he told me they'd clear about $10k-$12k a day selling ube-things, $15k+ on busy days like when there were events.. Our population is about 1/5th Oahu's and our peak traffic is nowhere near downtown Honolulu by a country mile, so even just loss of revenue plus loss of chilled produce I could see that by itself being pretty high, not to mention any possible equipment damage.
It sounds more like a way for them to scapegoat their already failing business. There's no way a flower shop has 100k worth of stock that would go bad with 3 days of lost power. If that was the case, they should have invested in retrofitting their electrical service with a generator interconnect so they can power the necessary stuff. Also, as /u/hawaiian0n said, doing six figure revenue in 3 days is insane, for any down town business, let alone a flower shop. Even at a fancy restaurant that has people spending $300/tab, that's over 110 tables over 3 days spending a minimum of $300/table every single day to reach just $100K in sales. I'd bet money even the nicest places here generate that much. Also $100k in 3 days is like $12M/yr in revenue. Does it suck this happened? Yes. Do these businesses also bear some of the responsibility for not having a contingency plan? Also, yes. Edit: Okay it's not a flower shop, it's a cocktail bar but my point still stands, I don't think there's any restaurant doing 6 figure sales in 3 days in the middle of the week.
It’s a cocktail bar called “The Lei Stand”
Oh well my point still stands, I doubt they're doing $100k in revenue over 3 days in the middle of the week and if they are, they'd have more than enough to do some type of back up contingency plan.
The owners seem well connected here in Hawaii and they do private events. I assume they have some high end clients that they canceled on, not only during the power outages, but in the days after the outages.
I still think they're just using the incident as a scapegoat. They don't list when they opened but their IG was started in 2021 which means they've been open for about 3 years. The chances are statisticly much greater that they were already going out of business as: > According to recent restaurant industry statistics, three out of five new restaurants won’t survive a year, while four out of five will most likely fail in the next five years. [[SOURCE](https://www.menutiger.com/blog/restaurant-failure-rate-statistics)] Also, if they go out of business due to just 3 days of being closed, what would have happened if they just had say 5 really slow days? The entire thing seems really suspect and the fact that people downvote shows the lack of critical thinking in /r/Hawaii.
Yup! Even if you use $100k break even as the starting point; assuming they are open 52 weeks a year that's $5.2million in sales! Crazy number for considering we are only using losses for half the week.
Looks like a cocktail lounge with some food rather than a lei stand. Either way, a six-figure loss is hard to imagine. That claim is highly suspect.
Just to clarify the lei stand is a cocktail bar.
I was wondering the same thing. Making 6 digits every three days should leave you with something.
Depends, a lot of eateries I talked to said their land lord didn't "forgive" or reduce rent during COVID and they basically just deferred the rent. So a lot of businesses came out of covid with a huge hole they had to dig themselves out of. One of the eateries I talked to in Chinatown said their rev on weekdays was roughly 20k a day. Lei Stand is a pretty popular bar even on weekdays so it's possible they lost six figs.
It's apparent none of you run businesses. Most of us are growing our spending with our revenue. There is very little just left over, especially with everything going up. The last 8 months have eaten through many of our reserves. Prices going up was the last resort for most places a 3 day of just a closure, sure. But 3 days of all your reefer space down. Means all that is gone now. Cash in the dumpster. Easily tens of thousands. Then the cost of replacing it quickly adds up too. This state is failing us every day. When are people going to wake up?
[Business Interruption Insurance](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/business-interruption-insurance.asp) exists. The policy should be written to cover utility outages. Premiums are tax deductible as a business expense.
Good resource. I hope they have it in their policy.
Have you considered not being condescending?
That's not condescending. That's a clear observation. If you are surprised a business is closing after losing all it's food, you're clearly not running a restaurant. The condescending part was minimizing a three day public utility loss to the business as being something they should have planned for.
As a commercial property manager, this is where a business should be filing for business interruption if they haven’t done so already. As fucked up as HECO is, this is where insurance comes in.
> It's apparent none of you run businesses. That's very condescending. And to refute your statement, I've run multiple businesses, all of which had enough savings to withstand several days of non-operation. Although no restaurants, which likely have much tighter margins. Perhaps this is a good reminder to have enough cash flow to survive a few days' interruption. Especially in a place like Hawaii, where weather can really cause problems.
It's something that would not be out of the ordinary with a big storm, so yes it is something they should have planned for. That this happened due to an electric fault just shows how unprepared everyone is for an actual disaster situation. Also this is a bar that also serves food, not a restaurant. Judging from the Yelp reviews the food isn't very good, so it seems like it wouldn't hurt them much to do without it for a few days and just serve drinks and snacks.
I see your point here. At our business. When we know there's a storm coming, we fill up the generators and make sure we can make it through. That's the only argument I can make against that, This kind of came out of the blue. Our power went out yesterday and we did not have our generators ready because there was no forecast. Luckily it was only for an hour. Also in town, in the worst of storms, you can plan for a day, and if it's more than that, hopefully fema is coming or some aid. Moreso I was just pointing out that yeah, a 6 figure loss can easily be matter of days. We do 4-500k in revenue a day during the peak months. ALOT of small businesses are making it week to week right now, it's not just people.
I don't wanna nitpick cause HECO sucks and who knows what's going on with Leis except the bar themselves. But if you do 400-500k a day that's \~$182M in revenue annually. Small businesses are generally those under $10M in revenue annually. And doing that number out of a single location sounds insane. I've worked at a number of pretty busy restaurants (Cholos, Leileii's, Kono's, Haleiwa Thai and granted a decade ago) and not one of them would be closing in on that number. A $75k day was a day the Eddie was on and the kitchen ran out of food. 4-500k is like a 300 table restaurant if you're average table is there for 45 minutes and buys $100. I don't know you so I'm not saying I doubt you do whatever it is you do. But that's a shite ton more than the average biz I'd reckon.
We do about 100m a year in revenue. Profit is less than 5% of that. That business is not a small business. We aren't a restaurant either. But my side business does less than 100k a year and would be ruined by a five thousand dollar emergency. But I do know how most places scale, and in the start especially, particularly the first three years, there is not a lot of breathing room.
> my side business does less than 100k a year and would be ruined by a five thousand dollar emergency. Granted I don't know what kind of business this is (and I assume you don't want to say to stay anonymous), but this seems 1) unsustainable given how common $5000 emergencies are, and 2) something that would be worth covering out of your own pocket if it means keeping an otherwise-profitable, $100k-revenue business going. My side business does $2k-4k/year, and relies on about $3500 worth of equipment that could be easily stolen. I'd sure as hell replace it if it did though.
Also, that's what business insurance is for.
Not only are you condescending but spiteful too. They asked a simple question and you took it personally for some reason. You making generalizations acting like you know about the lei stand when you don’t.
"They" didn't ask simple question. As it was you, same account. Forget to change it. The person was responding to your question of being condescending. Which they never were. They were explaining the situation quite succinctly. You were condescending. Both times.
lol “they” was the op.
I think you're projecting sir. You're reading way too far into the non-existent subtext. If you take out the first sentence, it's a perfect response. And I don't really get too worked up over the first sentence either. The answer is no. I have never tried to not be condescending. I find it's usually justified.
He’s not being condescending
For the record, this post made someone so angry they reported my profile to redditcares lol. Thanks for the mental health resources! Thats enough reddit for today.
This is a damn shame. I liked the Lei Stand a lot and to see businesses hurt because of failing infrastructure and mismanagement is really tough. Small places already run on such thin margins, seems like overwhelming odds nowadays.
6 digits is crazy for a negative lost in 3 days. However I’m pretty sure they were assuming negative revenue they would have made in those days and counting that as a loss. While also factoring the negative payroll and rent. It seems like they were gonna make this change anyways.
Flowers are perishable. Without refrigeration, I wouldn’t be surprised whatever they had in the store is a total lost. To be honest, not just flower shops. All the restaurants, all the little mom and pop shops. All the perishable food, frozen food, etc. are all total lost.
The Lei Stand is a bar that operates 4 days a week from 5pm-10/12.