Let's re-evaluate Comet Ping Pong. Let's go to their website:
https://www.cometpingpong.com/Look at their hours:
Kitchen Hours:
M-TH 5PM-9:30PM
F, Sa 11:30AM-10:45PM
Su 11:30AM-9:30PM
"Bar open late"
Takeaways:
1.
No Lunch Hours on Monday-Thursday - Red Flag; Every small business, pizza joint I know has lunch everyday; Those hours are not consistent with most pizza shop/bars. The restaurant business is extremely tough and low profit margin, so generally a place like this would try to maximize their hours of operation, especially in a high rent area like DC. The area is also quite busy; so to not offer lunch during the week is a bit strange.
2.
"Bar open late" but Kitchen closes quite early - why? I'd understand if it were primarily a bar, but this is a restaurant. I'm sure people would love to order a pizza/finger foods at 12, 1, 2 AM while playing ping pong and drinking a beer. and just like above, rent in that area of Washington DC is exorbitant; every dollar counts.
3. According to this video:
http://www.greatamericancountry.com/video/pizza-at-comet-ping-pong-0207483 "We make 700 pizzas per day."
So, they make
4,900 pizzas per week (estimate from Alefantis' mouth) and the kitchen is
only open 50 hours per week.
That's an average of
98 pizzas per hour. (each pizza takes about 2 min to cook, according to video)
4. Now, if they are cranking out 4,900 pizzas per week (on average*) and each pizza averages $12 =
$58,800/week in pizza aloneThat's
over 3 million dollars per year, just for the pizza. When you add in the drinks, salads, merchandise, ping pong, etc. I'm sure Comet's sells exceed $4 million - $5 million on paper.
If you watched that video, you noticed how small the kitchen/oven are.... there is NO WAY they are cranking out that much food.
Comet Ping Pong is being used to funnel money. The numbers that James Alefantis claims just doesn't add up. If people spend an avg. $10/person toward $5M in revenue, that's half a million annual visitors,
meaning around 1400 customers daily.