The $5,000 Dinner Date

Lots of blogger buzz this morning about the restaurant in the Bronx (sic?!) that invites its customers to stump up $5,000 per couple as "advance payment" for restaurant food--all this in a desperate attempt to feed the landlord dragon (link).

Cute but perhaps not as unusual as some of the commentary would suggest. Isn't this the problem of "the financing buyer," famed in song and story among commercial law professors? Or isn't it like franchising, where the customer (the franchisee) floats some of the capital cost of the franchisor?

Or another variant. There was a fancy restaurant in Palookaville that went broke (surprise!). My friend Hank got together a bunch of doctors and lawyers to buy shares to get it back into being. He once (mis)understood me to be saying that I wanted a piece of the deal. "My god no!" he said. "This isn't an investment!" Translated, the folks were all just paying club dues, and they knew it.

I do like the line that says

If by chance we can make a profit, profit sharing with our "investors" will be discussed.

Now, that's my idea of a prospectus!