Third-quarter earnings results had a common theme among limited-service restaurant chains: Consumers are pulling back on dining out.
But how are independent restaurants doing?
In Minneapolis, restaurateur Gavin Kaysen said his restaurants are as busy as ever, and that’s a good thing, because his restaurant group is about to double in size.
Kaysen’s Soigné Hospitality Group is known for Spoon and Stable, which opened in 2014 and has racked up an impressive list of “best restaurant” and James Beard Award nominations.
So has the smaller, but higher-end 20-seat Demi (2019) and the Mediterranean concepts Mara (2022) and Socca Cafe in the Four Seasons Minneapolis.
Coming before the end of the year is the new concept The Merchant Room, scheduled to open in a Naples Beach Club, Four Seasons Resort in Naples, Florida. It will borrow elements of Spoon and Stable (for the snowbirds who know the brand), but present it in a stunning 175-seat venue with a patio overlooking the bay with a steady supply of gorgeous sunsets.
A rendering of The Merchant Room coming to Naples, Florida. | Rendering courtesy of Soigne Hospitality Group.
Then back home, Kaysen is scheduled to open two locations of the bakery café concept Bellecour.
It was a concept he first launched in 2017 in nearby Wayzata, Minnesota, that closed during COVID. But to keep people working during the shutdown, he opened Bellecour as a popup at a cooking retail store.
That popup lasted for five years, until Kaysen found a proper home for the concept again.
Actually, two locations. And he didn’t plan it this way, but both are expected to open in the next couple months.
“I didn’t really have a choice. Construction dictates this stuff,” he said.
One Bellecour location (in Edina, Minnesota) will be breakfast and lunch only, featuring the pastries the brand has been known for, as well as quiches, coffees and perhaps a tuna salad sandwich with a glass of rosé.
The second (in North Loop) will be also open for dinner as a French bistro, with steak frites, croque madam, duck confit and other French classics that Kaysen said he loves to cook.
An alum of the New York kitchens of French chef Daniel Boulud, Kaysen returned to his hometown of Minneapolis and is often credited with sparking a fire under the city’s restaurant scene. (The marketing and public relations firm af&co., which publishes an annual hospitality trend report, named Minneapolis the U.S. Food City of the Year for 2026.)
Some of the hottest chef/restaurateurs across the city have come up through Soigné Hospitality Group, like Adam Ritter and Jeanie Janas Ritter, for example, of Bûcheron, a James Beard Award winner this year for Best New Restaurant.
Like Boulud, Kaysen takes a certain pride in having played a role in developing new talent. But the many chefs who graduated from Boulud’s Dinex Group restaurants mostly moved to other cities to start their own concepts, while Soigne alums tend to stay in Minneapolis, he said.
“What I have often struggled with is how does it make me feel when I see others go off and do really well,” he said. “And the truth of the matter is, you’re always No. 1 until you’re not. But what dictates that is an illusion. It’s done by the media. It has nothing to do with reality.”
What really matters is how busy your restaurants are, Kaysen said.
“As long as all of the restaurants are consistently busy and doing well, we’ve succeeded,” he said.
The challenge, of course, is making money.
Rent and labor costs have gone up exponentially since the pandemic, he said, and Minnesota does not allow a tip credit, with a high minimum wage.
Add to that lingering supply chain issues that make opening new restaurants particularly difficult.
“Supply chain issues are still an issue (since COVID), just nobody talks about them anymore,” he said. “The numbers for which we are charged for material, like wood and steel, I think they’re made up. We have to buy, so we buy it, but it’s robbery.”
COVID also knocked a lot of “generational talent” out of restaurants in general, he said, forcing many people just to shift to other careers and not come back.
“Honestly, in my opinion, that has helped our profession become a little more calibrated,” he said. “I get offered opportunities to open restaurants in different cities 25 times a year, and you say yes to just 3%. The question is not do I want to do it, but whether I could find talent to support me to do it.”
Now Kaysen said he has a deep bench of talent. He has built a team ready for growth.
“It’s very, very hard to go from one restaurant to two, but then it becomes—easier is the wrong word—it becomes more workable when you have the infrastructure,” he said.
With the pressures all restaurants are facing now, one thing is certain: Guests are very sensitive to menu pricing.
Bellecour, for example, will be a more moderately priced concept within Soigne positioned for growth, though Kaysen said he has to be careful not to undercut his own higher-end concepts, which are clustered near each other.
In today’s economic climate, Kaysen argues that limited-service restaurant chains face a harder road ahead.
“If you’re cooking in a restaurant where you’re providing more than a transactional meal and there’s an experience alongside it, I still believe in my heart of hearts—and I see it—that people are willing to pay for that experience,” said Kaysen.