I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect you can be all but certain that Grateful Greens will be the next restaurant failure in the former Roost location next to Oso on O Street. Matt Olberding says they will offer "gourmet chopped salads and raw vegan food". Not. A. Chance.
Let's count up all the factors making this a gigantic uphill battle:
- Downtown is a cutthroat place to open a restaurant.
- O Street is hugely competitive and rent isn't cheap. Just opening the doors is expensive.
- The specific storefront has seen several businesses fail already, including the excellent Roost.
- Salads aren't sexy. They're good for dieters -- yay New Year's resolutions! -- but they have limited ongoing appeal.
- Vegetarian food is "weird".
- Vegan food is really weird.
- Raw vegan food is criminally insane.
I realize I know very little about Grateful Greens at this point. It could be the most awesomest restaurant Lincoln has ever seen. Even then, though, I see them going the way of Inna's Pirogi, a perfectly palatable restaurant that never stood a chance in the same location.
I could see Grateful Greens doing fine if only they were to choose a better location. I realize that Downtown is sexy, but it's so risky. Downtown tends to do best with "safe" restaurants -- places that dish out pizza and sandwiches and burgers. Bucking that trend is hard. Very hard.
I just happen to have a better location in mind. I've long hoped that Maggie's would one day join its fellow Haymarketeer The Mill in College View. In reality any good vegetarian or vegetarian-leaning restaurant has the potential to do well there. It's a heavily Seventh Day Adventist neighborhood, and SDAs just happen to tend toward vegetarianism. You've got decent traffic from 48th Street, an SDA college, an SDA church, some cool storefronts ... what's not to love?
But I digress. I wish Grateful Greens the best. Perhaps they'll prove me wrong. If they're going to succeed, they've got a steep hill to climb. I know I'll give them at least one visit to give them a small boost. It's a start.
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I agree with you, on all counts. A restaurant (especially in Lincoln) just can’t make it on salad alone…remember Shadowbrook at 56th and Pine Lake?
I like your idea about putting it in College View.
Shadowbrook was a location problem. I always thought it was appropriate they had Shadow in their name, it was hidden from view of the vast majority of potential customers.
# Vegetarian food is
You aren’t from around here, are you? 😊 I kid, I kid. Here’s my reasoning for the bullets you don’t like:
Take a good, long look at local dining habits. If you still think I’ve mischaracterized the general dining public’s perception of meat-free diets, feel free to come back and show me where I got it wrong. I’ve only looked at the world through a (semi-) vegetarian lens for one year, but it has been more than enough time to learn that vegetarians are handled with a considerable amount of suspicion. You might be ... a PETAn! (Dun dun duuuuuuun!) I can only imagine the look of horror that vegans witness when they tell somebody about their diet.
There are many cultural hurdles to overcome for any “weird” restaurant. A raw vegan joint? Its hurdles are going to be pretty darn big. Not only can folks not get meat, eggs, or dairy with their meal, they can’t even get it microwaved. It’s the definition of rabbit food.
And that, in the eyes of the general dining public, is weird and insane.
I’ll give it a shot because it’s so close to my store but I too raised an eyebrow when I read the description of Grateful Greens. (Also a little too closely named to Grateful Bread)
As for Roost I tried it and found the sandwich to be really small for the cost. The next time I went they had pasta with chicken in addition to sandwiches and we really like that but they closed shortly thereafter.
We have a few of these spots in Lincoln. There are several locations that have been a different restaurant every year or so. The spot directly across from there is the same…Balee 1, Dleon’s, and some other taco place was there before…you have to have big pockets to survive the storm down there…and be willing to stay open late.
I have been VERY impressed with the new Qdoba downtown. No expense was spared…and they are open late into the mornings. They get huge bar traffic this way. If you go downtown…you have to be willing to do the late night to stay downtown…cause late at night is where the traffic is there. Roost could have made it without issue with late hours and a little tweaking of the menu.
“Salads aren
Mr. Wilson,
It seems that Matt didn’t read the fine print on the “raw vegan food” sign. It says “and more” at the bottom. (I should have made the fine print bigger)
Anyway, Grateful Greens will not be a strictly raw, or strictly vegan restaurant. We just want to provide more options for people in Lincoln who choose to eat that way.
We will offer gourmet chopped salads. Most of is naturally raw and vegan, but we will have vegetarian items, meat and seafood on the menu for people who choose to eat that way.
We hope you choose to give us a chance.
Please don’t reply to the email I posted in replying to this post. I almost never check it.
Respectfully,
Jim Larson
Grateful Greens
Gourmet Chopped Salads
1451 O Street
Lincoln, NE 68508
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