re: Is it morally wrong for me to eat at Stanley?

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First, I worked for three years in his upper management team, working on accounting and budgeting. Second, I don't have an ax to grind because I was actually treated pretty well and left on goodish terms a few year ago. That said, he's not that great of a human being so I don't feel bad shedding some light on this.

"The economics at Stella were simply no longer sustainable," he wrote. "The price we must charge limits our clientele"

Here's why:

The problem wasn't so much that people don't buy expensive food... because they do... all over the world... still. The problem is unneeded, extravagant travel, dining, and lodging for him and his wife billed to Stella / Stanley as "research." Purchase and upkeep of a Ferrari and attending multiple racing events per year, billed to Stella / Stanley as "networking and marketing." Custom tailored Brioni chef's coats, billed to Stella / Stanley as "uniforms." Granted, there is a certain percentage that would be appropriate... but not the ratios they were doing... and certainty not for your wife (granted she was a part owner) who exists mainly to pick out thousands of dollars of your outfits at Rubinstein's, look good on your arm while jet-setting to the Indy500, and choose the flower arrangement for the restaurant--yet she's served no practical operation purpose except to get him out of bed every morning and dress him... I guess that counts for something, though.



The problem was that in order to accommodate this extravagant lifestyle he needed to keep raising the prices at Stella and Stanley. We warned him about pricing himself out of the market and that Stella was quickly becoming a "special occasion" only restaurant years ago but he didn't want to listen to ANYONE.



I can't imaging the base costs for operation of Stella have increased in the last several years. Had they not racked up so much debt at their commissary kitchen in Mid City, their villa at NOLA Motorsports, and all the other things mentioned above, there is no doubt they would've been able to keep the restaurant open and successful. Stella was never a cash cow, because there's not a whole lot of money in owning a medium grade fine dining restaurant but had he continued to operate it like he operated it 5-8 years ago it would be in the black and he would still be drawing a nice salary. Of course it wouldn't be enough to sustain the life they'd become accustomed to, but they'd by no means be living in squalor.



This fundraiser seems like a farce and I'm glad people seem to see it for what it is because run independently Stanley is pretty much a cash cow. If it fails--or is in danger of failing--it's only because of the above lifestyle / poor investments the Boswell's have made over the last three or four years. Again, unless the operational expenses have changed at Stanley in the last few years (which I doubt, because it's the same simple menu, staffing requirements etc for the most part) that business should be in the black by hundreds of thousands yearly--at least it that's how it used to be--even with some of the weird "research," "uniform," and "networking and marketing," choices they chose to make.



Sorry to all the servers, waiters, cooks, bussers etc who got the high hard one on this deal, it was always an epic battle between management and Scott (and the in house psychologist he hired to weed out the "cancerous people"... that was seriously a thing) to do right by you guys and a lot of us even got canned or left when we put our foot down to help keep you guys from getting (as) screwed like Scott wanted. Good luck out there.

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