Day Two. The Plan Changed
April 30, 2026 · Jay De Natale
I took the keys December 1st with one intention: learn first, change later. Run it as-is for three to six months. Understand what Abbot's actually was before I started telling it what to be. That was the plan.
Day two, the plan changed.
The landlord required a deposit I wasn't expecting. Welcome to premier real estate in Los Angeles. Not a complaint, just the reality of Abbot Kinney. But it meant my runway got a lot shorter, a lot faster. Years of losses prior to my arrival had to stop immediately. Not in six months. Now. So I got to work.
Twenty-nine menu items sounds like variety. In a small operation it's waste, it's inventory you can't move, it's money walking out the door every night. I looked at what was actually selling. I cut what wasn't. The classics stayed, the ones Venice already knew and loved. Everything else got evaluated on one question: does it earn its place? If not, gone.
Cuts are never easy. There's a customer who's been coming here for years and their favorite just isn't on the menu anymore. That's a tough sell for the new guy. I own that. But a business that loses money every day doesn't survive to serve anyone.
Same thinking applied everywhere. Too many vendors. Too many third-party relationships with no accountability. Too many inefficiencies baked in from years of nobody looking closely. I consolidated, renegotiated, cut what didn't make sense.
Then the infrastructure. New POS. New website. New prep tables and smallwares. The tools you need to actually run a tight operation. Not glamorous. Necessary. The one thing I protected through all of it, the staff. The people who showed up every day through years of uncertainty. The culture they built is real. That doesn't get touched.
The plan was patience. The reality required urgency. Both can be right. Same corner. The work continues.