Her long-time friend also ran a restaurant, for a much longer time, and more well-known in the city. After quite some years, she opened another, at a different part of the city. It struggled for some time, but eventually stabilized as a reasonably profitable place, after, say 6 or 7 years. Several years after that, she started planning to open a third one, and was saying that this would stretch her thin, and she's very reluctant, but the demand was apparently there.

This is exactly the kind of business VCs run away from: inevitable slow growth, no way to put in more money and scale the business to get more revenue. Large companies also often shy away from that. This may be a huge opportunity if you hold it right.

If you can find such a niche that pays you enough for your needs, it's really great because competition is low: few know about it, and of them, even fewer want to overtake you.

There was a great breakfast place near me ran by the guy who owned basically all the commercial real estate on the block - the breakfast place was only open in the mornings 6 days a week and occasionally the owner would come in and serve, it was basically a passion project and he wanted to make enough to pay for it. After 15ish years of running he started hosting popups at night and another 4-5 years after that sold to one of the popups. It was a real restaurant and widely love by those in the know.

You could say El Bulli fits the bill of don't expand, they shut down after a while and converted the space into food research and events center. A little different, but I was trying to think of a more famous "real restaurant".

For this restaurant this adding a new room or a new location in another town.

For a solo founder, this might be when you finally start hiring to free up your time for other tasks.

It's not necessarily never grow. It's about growing on your own terms when you can afford to do so.