Summers in New York are usually hot and steamy. But for once,
this winter is expected to be hot and steamy, too--in the soup
restaurant business, that is. During the past two years, a host of
newcomers to the restaurant business have been racing to make soup
"the next big thing." Their motto: "We want to be
the next Starbucks." Yeah, well, who doesn't? The thing
is, one of these folks just might do it.
The self-proclaimed leader of the pack is Daily Soup, with eight
locations in New York City and another 10 expected to open on the
East Coast early next year. "We always had multiple locations
in mind when we started this," says Bob Spiegel, 36,
who--along with partners Carla Ruben, 35, and Peter Siegel,
29--opened the first Daily Soup in November 1995.
That same month, something fortuitous occurred. A Thursday night
"Must-See TV" lineup included a "Seinfeld"
episode featuring a soup vendor who served up caustic curses with
his cups of steamy ambrosia, earning him the moniker "Soup
Nazi." That single episode, loosely based on Al Yeganeh, a
real New York City soup seller for more than a decade, left Yeganeh
stewing but inspired several wannabe "soupreneurs."
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"The Seinfeld show was a major impetus for the expansion of
the soup restaurant market," says Andrew Schnipper, co-owner
of Hale & Hearty Soups, who says his soup business was already
underway when the show aired. Now, with four New York City
locations, he says, "If that show hadn't aired, we'd
be one of the only ones selling soup."
With a concept for a soup business already in the works, Pak
Melwani, 48, says the Seinfeld show was serendipitous. In what he
calls a "spoof of a spoof," Melwani and co-founders Kumar
Hathiramani, 38, and Surinder Aggarwal, 49, opened the doors at
Soup Nutsy in 1996, featuring a caricature of a soup chef on its
menus and serving up attitude with the dishes. The restaurant is no
spoof now. In fact, it has attracted the interest of franchising
investors like Boston Chicken Inc. founder George Naddaff, and
plans are in the works to franchise the concept.
Entrepreneurs interested in getting into the market had better
hustle while it's still young. And you'd better know how to
fly by the seat of your pants. Interested in industry failure
rates? Costs of doing business? You won't have luck researching
the soup restaurant market. It's so new, the National
Restaurant Association has yet to come up with any statistics on
the industry.