I wonder if raising prices quite a bit would have helped.
The new business was primarily one and done visitors anyway. By the time you've made the trip to the foodie Mecca of Portland and traveled across town to try the "country's best burger" would you really be deterred by a $15 price tag vs $10? How much would you have to raise the price to make that work? How do you do this without forever alienating your loyal local customers once you have successfully chased the hordes away?
There are a bunch of restaurant types which just aren't that elastic to changing demand; basically anything which has a longer preparation time and is expensive enough that you can't afford to just massively overprovision. Thinking like slow-roasted meats, most soups/chilis, or fancy pastries like croissants, yeast-raised donuts, etc.
Basically any place that's serving that stuff (and legitimately making it in-house vs warming it up from frozen like a chain) is going to be done when they run out for the day. So handing out cards to locals to skip the line would be a great way of not alienating your loyal customer base.
No, it is inability to deliver the intended experience.
Some people identify with that very, very strongly. Steve is one of those people.
Nail it, or don't bother.
He has a hard choice. Franchises are very hard to get right, and no matter what, they are shadows of the original. Like Vegas presentations are.
Or, go big. In n Out Burger us a potential example. They are growing, and own the culture, experience, even the food ingredients.
Both of those things are very different lives for the family, who prior to this story, were living one they held dear.
I applaud Steve for not placing blame. He knows it was good intent gone bad, and we cannot always know. Good human. And he also closed the loop, sharing it all.
The writer, having come to realizations, did right by telling this story, and Steve seemed to understand the value in all of that.
I enjoyed this piece. There is much to think about, and both writer and impacted person appear to be solid people, sharing their experiences in honest, frank, high value ways.