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Will the last locally owned restaurant please turn off the lights?

Boston Restaurant Talk reports Boston will be getting a Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville Restaurant, which is apparently a chain west of Worcester, sometime this summer. No clue where, but it should go next to one of those Guy Fieri places that are sprouting like mushrooms (or Fanueil Hall Marketplace).

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the margaritaville in key west might be the most depressing restaurant i have ever seen. and strangely it has no exterior seating.

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The Boston restaurant industry and city/state legislation are responsible for the current mess. Low wages and poor working conditions at a time when jobs are plentiful, high licenses and fees doled out by corrupt and 'hungry' bureaucracy are the norm. This in a no/low barrier to entry business where cash flow is everything and differentiation nearly impossible. Complementary products are available everywhere. Profit margins are 2-3% and risk is sky-high. Good luck being a sole proprietor trying to eek out a living and grow a business in this industry.

So who wins? Not the consumer.

The city needs the tax base to pay for pensions, but no pension for the restaurant worker. We need to bus in cheap labor to keep cost down to help the locally owned restaurant; which means building out the MBTA. Affordable housing will balance it off and soon we'll have that cheap labor close to work. Then it will all get better. First we're going to need more bureaucracy and more pension money, but if we all chip in we can stop those nasty chains from polluting our awesome city.

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winding down with some drinks after a day of snorkeling off Cozumel. The waterfront sunset view was spectacular. I think I drank Mexican pale lager. I don't remember anything else about it.

Quincy Market was my first thought as to where this is likely to end up (or at least belongs). The Seaport is my next best guess. The casino, maybe?

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Their menus, service and upkeep are about as compelling as Dick's Last Resort including an overabundance of sour mix in every drink...

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Isn't it good to live in a two-kitchen town?

Seriously - did Todd English curse us or something on his way out of town?

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It was chill and agreeable, playing good (non-Buffett) music. Went to the one in Orlando and it was a freaking nightmare, w a fake volcano that spews frozen margaritas sounding off every few minutes and two huge screens that just keep playing some concert video he made in the 70s playing over and over. If they open one of those here I'll avoid the whole neighborhood.

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These national novelties don't last in Boston. See the "Tilted Kilt" or whatever it was next to Fenway. Even local chains like Uno's and Burtuchi aren't sticking around in the city.

This place will be no different. Locals won't go, suburbanites won't drive into the city for it, and the Tourists want something colonial themed. This place will bank on the conference expense account market which is way smaller than they think.

At least the contractors will make out well.

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...they will have Paul Revere and Sam Adams wearing Hawaiian shirts.

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As the number of potential restaurant patrons in the city vastly outpaces the supply of new licenses, they become increasingly inaccessible to those without deep pockets. This means chains and restaurant groups, and the problem is only going to keep getting worse without a major change to state law. If we want more small, experimental, locally operated restaurants, we need to make those licenses CHEAP and not complicated to get, and stop subjecting them to the approval of the neighbors (especially neighboring restaurant owners, ahem Cambridge).

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