How a Chicago Restaurant Has Stayed Open For Nearly Three Decades

Summary of How a Chicago Restaurant Has Stayed Open For Nearly Three Decades

by Bloomberg

48m•October 24, 2026
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Overview of How a Chicago Restaurant Has Stayed Open For Nearly Three Decades

This Bloomberg Odd Lots conversation explores how Richard Mott built and sustained North Pond, a fine-dining restaurant in Chicago that has lasted nearly 30 years, and how he later expanded into shared kitchen operations through Spark Shared Kitchen. The episode uses Mott’s experience to explain the economics of restaurants, the impact of labor and food inflation, the rise of farm-to-table dining, and why shared kitchens can lower barriers for small food entrepreneurs.

Key Takeaways

  • North Pond’s longevity is unusual
    Independent fine-dining restaurants are typically short-lived, so surviving for decades is rare. Mott frames restaurant survival as closer to a Broadway run than a stable long-term business.

  • Restaurants are extremely hard businesses

    • Low barriers to entry
    • Heavy competition
    • Little room for proprietary advantage
    • Profitability is often undermined by labor, rent, and food inflation
    • Operators who strictly follow labor and immigration laws can be at a cost disadvantage

  • Business-school culture has changed a lot Mott contrasts his era—when business schools mainly prepared students for large firms—with today’s stronger emphasis on entrepreneurship, venture creation, and acquisition entrepreneurship.

  • Shared kitchens are a major entrepreneurial unlock They let food businesses get up and running quickly without having to build or lease a fully licensed facility from scratch.

Richard Mott’s Path Into Restaurants

Early career and entrepreneurial instinct

  • Studied finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business
  • Realized during a finance internship that he did not want a traditional corporate career
  • Chose instead to start his own ventures, even though entrepreneurship was not then a mainstream path at business school

Starting with campus coffee shops

  • Began by running a student coffee shop at Booth
  • Expanded it into a larger campus food business with sandwiches, pastries, soup, and coffee
  • Grew the concept from one location to roughly 20 campus shops
  • Learned by trial and error, especially around:
    • leases
    • hiring
    • staffing fit
    • operating without much formal entrepreneurial training

North Pond: A Chicago Fine-Dining Case Study

How it started

  • North Pond opened in 1997
  • Early on, Mott had to persuade the Chicago Park District to support a fine-dining concept in Lincoln Park
  • The restaurant began more casually and evolved over time into a more formal fine-dining operation

Farm-to-table before it was mainstream

  • North Pond became an early example of what is now called farm-to-table or seasonal American dining
  • The restaurant built relationships with local farmers, fishers, and cheesemongers
  • At the time, this approach was still novel and sometimes confusing to customers

Evolution of the menu

  • Early North Pond was more French-influenced
  • Over time, the menu shifted toward a more international style under newer chefs
  • The restaurant’s identity remained rooted in seasonality and local sourcing, even as taste preferences changed

Restaurant Economics: Why It’s So Hard

Profitability challenges

Mott argues the restaurant business is one of the toughest economic models in business:

  • Highly competitive
  • No meaningful moat
  • Easy to imitate concepts
  • Margins are thin
  • Labor and compliance costs are high

Why many restaurants fail

He emphasizes that many owners enter restaurants for non-economic reasons:

  • celebrity or prestige
  • lifestyle
  • passion for food
  • social status
  • personal fulfillment

That makes competition especially difficult for operators who are trying to run restaurants purely as businesses.

Wine and beverage economics

  • Fine dining often depends heavily on beverage sales for profitability
  • Mott notes that liquor/wine revenue historically made up a significant share of North Pond’s business
  • However, that share has recently fallen as younger guests drink less alcohol

Inflation, Labor, and Changing Demand

Current economic pressures

Mott says restaurants have been hit hard by:

  • labor inflation
  • food inflation
  • ongoing supply-chain and cost pressure

Price increases

  • North Pond has had to raise prices multiple times in recent years
  • The cost structure changes quickly because ingredients are often bought and used within days

Changing customer behavior

  • Dining has become more of an occasion-based experience
  • Fewer guests come in casually on a weeknight
  • More diners are visiting for birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, and other special events

Alcohol trends and alternatives

  • Alcohol consumption is down, especially among younger diners
  • He mentions the rise of:
    • nonalcoholic cocktails
    • cannabis/CBD-adjacent products
    • THC-infused menu items in some settings

Spark Shared Kitchen and the Shared Kitchen Model

What it is

Spark Shared Kitchen provides kitchen space for multiple food businesses, especially:

  • caterers
  • small food producers
  • startup brands
  • entrepreneurs testing concepts

How it differs from a ghost kitchen

  • Ghost kitchen: usually focused on delivery-only brands and optimized for app-based ordering
  • Shared kitchen: a licensed production space that multiple businesses can use, often for catering, packaged goods, or small-scale production

Why it matters

Shared kitchens reduce startup friction by lowering:

  • capital requirements
  • lease commitments
  • licensing delays
  • property and buildout costs

A business can sometimes go from idea to launch in just days or weeks instead of months.

Regulatory and City Hall Experience

Chicago has improved, but it’s still complex

Mott says the city’s licensing process used to be especially difficult and slow. Over time, it has improved:

  • from “department of no” to a more cooperative approach
  • still bureaucratic, but less hostile than before

Shared kitchens as a policy win

He describes shared kitchens as one of the better recent city-friendly tools for encouraging entrepreneurship, especially for small operators who cannot afford their own facility.

Main Lessons from the Conversation

  • Running a restaurant is not just about food; it is about labor, logistics, regulation, real estate, and timing
  • Strong concepts still need the right team and operating environment
  • Fine dining survives by constantly adapting to:
    • changing tastes
    • economic pressure
    • staffing challenges
    • customer expectations
  • Shared kitchens are a practical way to make food entrepreneurship more accessible
  • Long-term success in restaurants is rare, and North Pond’s durability is a major achievement

Notable Insight

“It’s 20% the idea and 80% the team and the environment.”

That line captures one of the episode’s biggest themes: in restaurants, success is rarely just about the concept. Execution, staffing, systems, and adaptability matter far more than the initial idea.