Restaurant sharpening business – article

[Josh]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/04/business/04knife.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

This is a good Wicked Edge day Tuffy!! lol!

A couple of things that caught my eye in the article:

• “The service costs $2.50 to $3.50 per knife.”
• ” Most knives go through a simple process. First the hollow grinder, which thins the knife. Then the honing machine. Higher-quality knives are sharpened on a grindstone, then buffed, then hand-honed on a stone that Mr. Ambrosi expects will last throughout his sons’ careers.”

1. How do they charge so little, is there some type of initial leasing/contract fee?
2. Is the “hollow grinding” process here described what people like me and other sharpeners have to end up repairing?

[Daniel maloon]

Just the volume alone. 8000 knives a week at $3 average per knife . They could charge whatever they want to. That’s impressive

[Josh]

Dan, they still have to balance time, business expenses, and income. They cannot charge whatever they want… for ex. could they charge $.01 per knife? No, because they would go out of business. Even if they got sharpening time down to 2 min per knife, that would take 266 man hours… if they are doing this per week, divide that by a 40 hour work week, and you would need at least 7 full time sharpeners – each of which are getting paid x amount per year. =) it is a good business though! or else they wouldn’t be doing it!

[Ziggy]

“The service costs $2.50 to $3.50 per knife.”[/li]

” Most knives go through a simple process. First the hollow grinder, which thins the knife. Then the honing machine. Higher-quality knives are sharpened on a grindstone, then buffed, then hand-honed on a stone that Mr. Ambrosi expects will last throughout his sons’ careers.”

[/ul]

1. How do they charge so little, is there some type of initial leasing/contract fee?
2. Is the “hollow grinding” process here described what people like me and other sharpeners have to end up repairing?

To #2 … yep, that’s what I was referring to. To the cheapo restaurant loaners, I never do them as they are not the shop’s.
But, it’s regular folks that can’t find a sharpener, use whoever supplies knives to the restaurants, and they will not think twice about doing the same to a $125 blade as a $5 throwaway.
When they finally find me, its a sad moment when the customer realizes they killed their whole set, hollow ground Scalloped Santokus and all! Repairable, but never again the same knife. The scalloped ones are the worst, always ground all the way into the scallop, not even a safe knife for much other than cutting lettuce.

Here they supply places sometimes under $2 per knife, sometimes 3 for $5 including cleaver.
They hit a small strip mall and they can bag $20+ dollars and usually have the whole town.

And they come all the way from PA.

I guess just volume and enough stops in a certain location and I’d bet you could do $500 cash in a day trading out, then figure the same stop weekly. X how many drivers covering a state or 2?

Not something I’d be interested in 🙂

[Leo Barr]

Thankfully there are those that prefer a face to deal with rather than a MacDonald’s type sharpening company especially when they will happily wreck good knives .
I wonder if they are covered for damages to good quality knives (or at the very least replace them) if and heaven forbid I wrecked a knife I would replace it .
Still so many people including chefs are completely ignorant about their knives . I have heard three chefs saying they have had corns on their hands from using Globals(saying they won’t use them because of this) they will make your hands sore if they are blunt! One chef since I convinced her to have her knives sharpened monthly has no problems with her Globals .(Globals in spite of the fact that they are pressed steel do actually use pretty durable steel and take a good edge as good as Shuns).

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