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The Thrill of Losing Money by Investing in a Manhattan Restaurant | The New Yorker

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If you live in New York City long enough and appear to be successfully employed in an industry that Bernie Sanders dislikes, you will be asked at some point to do three things: sponsor a table at a vanity fund-raiser, become a “producer” of a Broadway play, and invest in a restaurant. I had no trouble declining the honor of hosting a benefit or helping “Hedda Gabler” back to the stage. I did the restaurant. And while I am not dumb enough to have imagined I’d make much money as a passive, partial investor in a New York City restaurant, I was dumb enough to think that I could probably earn my money back-ish, while at the same time helping some decent young men fulfill their dream. (Also, it seemed more fun than investing in a municipal-bond mutual fund, which cannot, thanks to the killjoys at the S.E.C., give investors free beers.) But of the many failures of logic and foresight of that investment, which I made in 2010, the one that stings the most is not realizing that so few restaurant

Save this story Save this story New York restaurants merge the low-margin world of food businesses like grocery stores with taste-predicting industries like Hollywood. PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER MARLOW / MAGNUM If you live in New York City long enough and appear to be successfully employed in an industry that Bernie Sanders dislikes, you will be asked at some point to do three things: sponsor a table at a vanity fund-raiser, become a “producer” of a Broadway play, and invest in a restaurant. I had no trouble declining the honor of hosting a benefit or helping “Hedda Gabler” back to the stage. I did t

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