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.
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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.
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.