Having worked in restaurants, this is a big red flag for me. Those hours are not consistent with most pizza shop/bars. The restaurant business is extremely tough and low profit margin, so generally a place like this would try to maximize their hours of operation, especially in a high rent area like DC. You have to sell a lot of pizzas to pay for shipping a heavy/large pizza oven from Italy. (I won't even get into the fact that the pizza oven looks like a bizarre alter, and I've never seen anything like it before).
Most pizza shops WOULD be open for lunch Mon-Thurs.
You're paying the same rent, insurance, etc regardless if you're closed or open Mon-Thurs over lunch, so why not maximize your revenue in order to bring your margins up???
Closing your kitchen while keeping your bar open makes sense maybe after 11 or so, but 9:30???? It seems like you would sell a lot of pizzas between 9:30 and 11pm on Fri/Sat. Your bar staff has to stay late, so why not sell pizzas to drinkers past 9:30. Strange.... unless you're waiting for the normal pizza eaters to clear out before the Satanic pizza rituals start.
This simply doesn't look like the hours of operation of a normal pizza place. At a minimum, this is a rich kid's hobby and he's doing it for the bar scene and doesn't care about his P&L. Worst case however, it looks like a front for a more nefarious business operation.
I hadn't heard that but I'm calling total BS on that number. 700 pizzas/day x 7 days = 4900 pizzas/wk. At an average of $12/pizza (from looking at this menu prices that's very conservative)....
$12/pizza x 4900 pizzas = $58,000/wk in pizza sales plus at a minimum he would have an extra 30% in salads, soft drinks, bar sales = $76,440/wk x 52 weeks = almost $4m in sales.
For that size restaurant, and those hours.... there's zero chance Comet has $4m in sales.
I wonder how many tables they have, and how many phone orders they take. Should be good and easy information to obtain. Plus, how many pizzas can an oven bake per day? And they probably have purchase orders from their suppliers (Sysco, or whatever). The suppliers should have matching records.
In another thread I pointed out that restaurants are a tough business precisely because they are the most obvious ways to run fronts for operations that need not be profitable. But I got on with a different research project. I'm glad somebody did the basic math. We need to start here.
This is a great way to call out Alefantis (and force Democrats to admit whether or not they care about tax returns?). Really, this is quite binary: either this restaurant is an honest operation, or there is a ton of money to be laundered!
At the end of the day, the math should be relatively easy. The pizzas alone come to around $3M, but there are the extras and there is a bar. We are probably talking $4M to $7M (I'm estimating higher than you as a proportion to pizza sales having worked at a restaurant years ago).
Not only that, but a group of observers might stand outside a block down and watch patrons walk in and out. Just count! If people spend $10/person toward $5M in revenue, that's half a million annual visitors, meaning around 1400 daily. Catering or delivery might be a little tougher to estimate, but not terribly. The delivery drivers should be obvious.
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pizzaequalspedo ago
Here are Comet's hours of operation straight from their website:
Mon-Thur 5-9:30pm Fri-Sat: 11:30am-10:45pm Sun: 11:30am-9:30pm "Bar open late"
https://www.cometpingpong.com/
Having worked in restaurants, this is a big red flag for me. Those hours are not consistent with most pizza shop/bars. The restaurant business is extremely tough and low profit margin, so generally a place like this would try to maximize their hours of operation, especially in a high rent area like DC. You have to sell a lot of pizzas to pay for shipping a heavy/large pizza oven from Italy. (I won't even get into the fact that the pizza oven looks like a bizarre alter, and I've never seen anything like it before).
Most pizza shops WOULD be open for lunch Mon-Thurs.
You're paying the same rent, insurance, etc regardless if you're closed or open Mon-Thurs over lunch, so why not maximize your revenue in order to bring your margins up???
Closing your kitchen while keeping your bar open makes sense maybe after 11 or so, but 9:30???? It seems like you would sell a lot of pizzas between 9:30 and 11pm on Fri/Sat. Your bar staff has to stay late, so why not sell pizzas to drinkers past 9:30. Strange.... unless you're waiting for the normal pizza eaters to clear out before the Satanic pizza rituals start.
This simply doesn't look like the hours of operation of a normal pizza place. At a minimum, this is a rich kid's hobby and he's doing it for the bar scene and doesn't care about his P&L. Worst case however, it looks like a front for a more nefarious business operation.
Singleservename ago
Still he (self-)reportedly sells 700 pizzas/day. That is or would be a lot of profit even in low margin biz.
pizzaequalspedo ago
I hadn't heard that but I'm calling total BS on that number. 700 pizzas/day x 7 days = 4900 pizzas/wk. At an average of $12/pizza (from looking at this menu prices that's very conservative)....
$12/pizza x 4900 pizzas = $58,000/wk in pizza sales plus at a minimum he would have an extra 30% in salads, soft drinks, bar sales = $76,440/wk x 52 weeks = almost $4m in sales.
For that size restaurant, and those hours.... there's zero chance Comet has $4m in sales.
Htaed ago
Math checks. Get the irs in on this.
eyeVoated ago
I wonder how many tables they have, and how many phone orders they take. Should be good and easy information to obtain. Plus, how many pizzas can an oven bake per day? And they probably have purchase orders from their suppliers (Sysco, or whatever). The suppliers should have matching records.
Theupsidedown ago
Right...that's called "money laundering."
Singleservename ago
Well I agree, but he does make that claim repeatedly in the food show video.
pizzaequalspedo ago
Yeah, I know you're not arguing his point.
4900 pizzas per week / 50.5 hours would be 97 pizzas /hour based on his hours of operation. I would take the under on half that amount.
This is a front for something.
HomeboyChrisBanned ago
No way he is selling 100 pizzas an hour the way the kitchen is set up. Too small. Thats almost 2 pizzas a minute.
Infopractical ago
This!
In another thread I pointed out that restaurants are a tough business precisely because they are the most obvious ways to run fronts for operations that need not be profitable. But I got on with a different research project. I'm glad somebody did the basic math. We need to start here.
This is a great way to call out Alefantis (and force Democrats to admit whether or not they care about tax returns?). Really, this is quite binary: either this restaurant is an honest operation, or there is a ton of money to be laundered!
At the end of the day, the math should be relatively easy. The pizzas alone come to around $3M, but there are the extras and there is a bar. We are probably talking $4M to $7M (I'm estimating higher than you as a proportion to pizza sales having worked at a restaurant years ago).
Not only that, but a group of observers might stand outside a block down and watch patrons walk in and out. Just count! If people spend $10/person toward $5M in revenue, that's half a million annual visitors, meaning around 1400 daily. Catering or delivery might be a little tougher to estimate, but not terribly. The delivery drivers should be obvious.
This needs to be a priority project!