REAL POUTINE
the menu is just thrice cooked potato chips
REAL gravy (the restaurant buys hundreds of pounds of pork bones every week and makes an actual stock, no gravy mix or additives - just pork stock reduced with wine, salt, and thickener and maybe some herbs
and optional toppings of course like cheese curds (and maybe you could get fried cheese curds on top too), bacon, anchovies, pineapple, carrot shreds, green hot sauce, salsa, and pickled veggies
oh and homemade mayo available on the side or just with plain fries if you wish
and that's the whole menu
most places don't make their own french fries or gravy from scratch - and if you did, even if you charged 30 dollars for a large full-topping plate of it, I think you would be quite successful.
picture unrelated
>>21424032 (OP)There's a place like that a five minute walk from my house. It seems to do okay.
>>21424043pork has more flavor than chicken but is cheaper than beef bones
>>21424045the gravy is fake as fuck
also i mean in america
>>21424046>pork has more flavor than chicken but is cheaper than beef bonesthat's not poutine gravy though.
non-Canadians shouldn't try to make poutine.
>>21424046If you're not going for beef gravy just don't bother. I mean don't bother either way, even in Canada these places are barely popular enough to stay open. Poutine is trash food for when you're drunk, it's not something to base a whole business around. Especially if you're not going to do it right.
>>21424048ok fine call it fries with gravy i dun care
the point is to have REAL gravy, which most restaurants don't do cuz its cost prohibitive
>>21424049beef bones are absurdly expensive you would have to charge like 40 dollars a plate if you made real beef reduction gravy
pork has wonderful flavor and can be done for a bit cheaper, it would still be a very expensive concept if you used quality ingredients
gourmet poutine is the future
>>21424053Yeah, then don't bother. Pork gravy tastes like shit. If you're not putting something good on your greasy potatoes there's no point from the get go. Holy fuck you Americans suck.
>>21424057no, it's genuinely delicious and I also would add a soft red wine for extra flavor
Ideally the fries wouldn't be too greasy and they would do the third fry to order.
>>21424060Go for it then, maybe other burgers will enjoy your fake poutine slop. Good luck.
>>21424064I would just not call it poutine if Canadians are this autistic.
>>21424053>gourmet poutine is the futureit's really not
there are already places in Quebec that serve bougie "gourmet" poutines. it's not popular because that's not what people want from poutine. it's slop food for drunk people, and it's best that way. even regular poutine shops aren't super popular. it's usually just something you serve at a bar or something. this isn't a new idea, maybe to Americans it is, but once the novelty wears off people will get bored of it.
>scratch gravy and fries
It would just be more expensive than everywhere else because of cost of labor. Consider how many potatoes a single wagie can french over an over. How many hours it takes to make a good pork stock and gravy. You need to pay some gormless fuckstick $16 an hour to watch the pot or run the potato machine.
If your wagies french 20 potates an hour (generous estimate) that means you'll be able to satisfy 6-7 cucks an hour, maximum. That's not very high, you're not remotely close to hitting break-even at that point, so you'll either need multiple wagies dividing potatoes or to invest in some kind of machine. (increased wages or capital/start-up costs).
End of the day your daily roster will look something like: 3 prep cooks, 2 fry cooks, probably 2 counter girls and a high-traffic location that'll actually give you business and not some place like bumfuck Granby.
Once you factor in the price of spuds (~$.35 a serving.) cheese curd, ($5 a pound, there's a debate on how much per serving but we'll compromise with 3/5 of a pound, giving ~$3 per serving.) and gravy (buckets of sysco gravy are $7 a gallon, we're just being cost-optimistic). So at a material cost of around $4 a unit, you're looking at a comfy $25 profit per unit, assuming anyone actually buys anything at that dogshit price.
So you're already behind the eight-ball paying 9 employees (roughly) $1000 a day. That's not bad, all said, but it means you need to sell at bare minimum 40 units of Poutine at a price of $25 profit per unit just to pay for your labor force. Your staff would need to push upgrades HARD to make any profit, because that doesn't include the cost of living for yourself, rent, electricity, water or any other legal bullshit you're going to be paying weekly.
You'd do better with actually consumer-approachable prices like $8 per unit and focusing on throughput.
>>21424050the type of gravy wasn't chosen randomly. quebec has plenty of pigs but the proper gravy is beef/chicken. the consistency is important too, it should be light and thin and lightly spiced to allow the delicate taste of the curds to come through. and if you're not within a days drive of a creamery you won't get good curds so don't even bother in that case. your list of toppings is so bizarre I wonder if you've even tried poutine yourself.
>>21424045Smoke's is awful and has only gotten worse with expansion.
>>21424032 (OP)Yeah i don't know anything about food business but I've heard restaurants make all their profit on the booze. You want peope eating salty delicious fried shit to make them drink, and you want them drunk to get hungry for more shit, in your case poutine.
If you can't do the booze what I've seen food truck people do is park their truck in a bar/brewery patio type of location. Plus you can relocate during the day, during the week, season, etc.
Gourmet poutine seems like a food truck thing. I'd personally be extremely wary of testing out some novel poutine only restaurant idea in a brick and mortar.
