08/25/2026
Dear Friends & Neighbors,
It is time to return to our Q&A series...I think it's been three months and we have had many great questions. Here is a great one, though the answer is a bit broad....
"What is the hardest part about running a restaurant?"
This is definitely a very tricky industry that requires no small amount of effort, fortitude, blood (literal and figurative), sweat, teers and a strong sense of humor. But, specifically, let's address a few hurdles....
1. A restaurant like ours that uses a lot of fresh ingredients has an inventory on any given day of $20,000 worth of perishable food that needs to be sold, or it rots. This takes a massive amount of organization, oversight and management.
2. In the best of best years, you will bust your ass 100 hours/week for a 1-3% profit. Most years, you will lose money. In 2026 we are hoping and praying to break even. With a massive increase in costs across board, due largely to tariffs and increased wages, it likely won't happen.
3. As a responsible owner, you are on call 24 hours/day 365 days/year. You will miss family reunions, funerals, weddings, children's monumental moments.....and frequently question why. But don't feel too sorry for us as this is part of small business ownership, but it still hurts.
4. One of the hardest parts of the restaurant business is finding great help. At Two Brothers, we focus on the content of an individual's character over experience. The foundation of everything we do is built on a team dedicated to taking care of and supporting each other while producing great food.and beverage. The people with the heart and soul that we look for are sometimes hard to find, and the money to pay them what they are worth is never enough. The hard truth is that on any given day, they can leave us to go work at Middlebury College for nearly the same amount of money, but many more benefits than we can ever provide. Many of our town's most promising cooks and Chefs are now at the college. We cannot compete.
5. If a 20 year old with a perfectly fake ID comes in and procures alcohol from us, the penalties for us could be the potential loss of our liquor license...which means 50 employees are out of work. But what is the penalty for the minor who maliciously perpetrated the crime? No fine, at all. They have to attend a class. So, while we appreciate how fair and judicious the DLC tries to be, the fact is, if we are victimized by these perpetrators, we can lose our business, our homes and our livelihoods while the criminals have to....take a class....for three days. I have so much more to say about this.....
6. Vermont is one of the hardest states for small businesses to survive in due to high operational costs, strict regulatory hurdles, severe workforce shortages and a high cost of living. This is immensely true in Middlebury. None of our team can afford to live here and most of them have to commute from several towns away. And if they don't have a reliable car, which many can't afford, they can't get to work.
7. Social media platforms like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google, OpenTable and more allow midnight keyboard warriors to tear your company apart without accountability. Yeah, we make mistakes, but at the end of the day, the fact that unhappy customers are 10x more likely to trash you online than happy customers are likely to praise you online...is tough.
8. On any given day, 25% of our equipment is not working and 25% of our staff is unable to work. You may not see it from your table or bar stool, but the amount of improvisation it takes to get the doors open each day is extraordinarily amazing.
9. Our food costs are 34%, beverage costs 22%, total labor 40% and fixed costs 10%.....that math doesn't work
10. We love to support Vermont Breweries (36 of our 42 taps), but if we charged what we really needed to charge, every pint should be $11.00. It's really good beer, really good - some of the best in the WORLD. But it is expensive, and frankly, becoming borderline cost-prohibitive. I'm not going to be very popular with this one....
11. ASCAP, DirecTV, DISH & Xfinity fleece us everytime we turn on music or the TV. Most years, we lose money while THEY bring in billions in profits. It costs us $50,000/yer to turn on the TVs and music….
12. If you made it this far, thank you for your support….of all Middlebury restaurants . We are all teetering.
