The ATX Restaurant 100

According to the 2015 Kauffman Index report, Austin,TX  has unseated perennial favorites in the Bay Area to be named the best city in America for startup businesses. It has become a hotbed of innovation, especially when you look at technology to help retail. With incumbents like BazaarVoice, IBM and Dell to innovative companies such as TabbedOut (who announced they raised $21.5 Million to scale mobile bill pay) or IdealSpot who was a 2015 Red Herring 100 award winner. With over 110 new people moving to the city daily we are being infused with incredible talent and imagination. So it should come as no surprise that Austin will see over 100 new restaurants open this year.

On the list, you’ll find successful food trucks like Via 313, that are now finding a more permanent home, several local chains like Torchy’s Tacos and Snap Kitchen that are looking to expand, national chains like Shake Shack and many independents that hope they will find success. They all have taken time to plan all the details of their business. Select and source the ingredients that will fill their menus. They’ll plan their interiors to set the appropriate mood. They’ll get outside signage to hopefully get the attention of passing traffic.

Location is NOT a minor detail!

Most of these restaurants will fail to invest sufficiently to understand if a proposed location is truly ideal for their customers. They may do some analysis based on stale demographic data and the opinions of biased parties. They will also neglect to take into account the hundreds if not thousands of factors that should influence their choice of location.

The odds are that at least 10 of these restaurants will close within the year. For some of them it will be inadequate  and/ or management, but for others it will be due to a poor location. IdealSpot was designed to lower the risk of failure due to poor locations. Our goal is to support the dreamers, the innovators who support our communities with local jobs and help them find the ideal spot for their thriving business.

We wish all of these Austin restaurants the best of luck as they strive to serve our community. Next year, we’ll look back and examine this list to see if they are all thriving.