THE PROBLEM
Currently in downtown Lynn, there is very limited late night food available, limited healthy food options in general especially for lunch, limited bar seats and zero female chef-owner-operated restaurants. There are also zero restaurants able to compete with the Boston restaurant scene as far as style and quality of food and beverage, outstanding service as well as a relevant and trendy image.
THE SOLUTION
Nightshade Noodlebar is a 25-30 seat boutique restaurant nestled in the heart of downtown Lynn, MA offering cafe style food + service by day and progressive Vietnamese-influenced small plates, eclectic noodle dishes + Viet-Cajun crawfish by night.
We plan to offer takeout at all open hours, and to serve food until 12am on select nights. Our beverage program will be spearheaded by one of the industry’s leading professionals and will set a new standard for bar culture in the area with an all natural wine list, hyper-seasonal cocktails geared specifically to our food and the best of both the local and current Asian craft beer scenes.
WHY NIGHTSHADE NOODLE BAR?
The owner/CEO is a long time resident of downtown Lynn and is very familiar with Nightshade Pop Up as well as the neighborhood we hope to join. Stainless Communications will be our marketing team for this project. They will be promoting us before the restaurant opens, and will be fixed into our costs.
A few of the aspects this firm will help us with are media planning and management, social media strategy and planning, public relations and reputation management and website design and development. Nightshade Pop Up has built a reputation and brand in town and in surrounding towns via pop ups, and this firm will help us to grow our niche and further define our market. We will continue to do pop ups monthly per usual until the restaurant opens.
MARKET ANALYSIS
There will be a large influx of people including (mainly) young professionals moving to downtown Lynn over the next two years, and we intend to offer a more exciting and edgy dining experience to this clientele as well as our current local population while keeping prices more approachable to the lower-income population due to lower rent than in the immediate Boston area.
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
There are a handful of restaurants in downtown Lynn, two of which are near the price point of Nightshade Noodle Bar. These more popular restaurants in the neighborhood are the Blue Ox and Rossetti Restaurant serving appetizers in the $7-14 range and entrees in the $21-42 range. We plan to stay on the low end of the spectrum. We will rarely have menu options exceeding $20 as this is a small plates/tapas style atmosphere.
There are about 55 restaurants listed as members of the Lynn Area Chamber of Commerce and several more non-members. Downtown Lynn is saturated with different types of eateries with only a few that could be treated as an every-day neighborhood dining experience and a special occasion restaurant at the same time. Our competition will be close in proximity but out of context in terms of atmosphere, as we aren’t intending to compete necessarily- but bring a new spin on this genre of food and urban dining to the community while attracting outside clientele from neighboring towns and Boston.
BUSINESS MODEL
One of the major resources needed to get our product to market prior to opening besides the marketing team listed above and the continuation of pop ups + private events is a strong opening staff willing and able to deliver the best possible experience throughout the obstacles of a new restaurant.
We intend on bringing in the most talented cooks and service professionals we can find. We intend to offer a different staffing and pay structure than a conventional restaurant, including a 3% gratuity added to each check for the kitchen staff. Rewarding the kitchen directly for the success of the restaurant is an incentive to keep great cooks and porters. Because we will be open 5 days per week, modern processes such as the added gratuity as well as a 5-day work week with two consecutive days off will better ensure a consistently great product and attractive energy within the restaurant.
