Word: owners
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...kitchen-design store, a café that bears a passing resemblance to Starbucks, a bright yellow mobile-phone kiosk that's open 24 hours a day and Jackpot, a slot-machine arcade that marks Kaluga's attempt at glamour. "You can see people have more money," says Alexander Kuptsov, owner of Bellissimo, a shoe boutique that stocks a range of little-known Italian brands alongside a few famous ones like Valentino. In a good month he sells 150 pairs, far more than he did just a couple of years...
Turning the screws even tighter, developers of new malls and shopping centers are less willing to take a chance on an independent without deep pockets, shutting small restaurants out of prime real estate. "The game has changed," says Rick Bolsom, owner of Tin Angel in Nashville, Tenn. "You have to be more aware of things outside your four walls to succeed...
...message went to the e-mail list of the local chapter of Dine Originals, a trade organization that bands together independent restaurants, and caught the eye of Robert von Rutenberg, co-owner of a nearby steak house. Von Rutenberg and his brothers served up the solution: though they barely knew Lathrop and her husband, the brothers offered to share their kitchen with them and their Wisconsin Cheesecakery staff until they could find something else. "They did it out of the goodness of their hearts and wouldn't let me pay for the space," says Lathrop, who ended up staying four...
Enter Luria, a co-owner of a Southwestern restaurant in Tucson, Ariz. He took over as president of Dine Originals in 2004 and has made it his second full-time job (unpaid at that) to help independent restaurants thrive. He travels at least once a week, cultivating new chapters. And so far, every city that has asked him to speak has become a member. "If independent restaurants were to disappear, then everywhere you go in this country would be the same," says Luria...
...many chapters had developed their own local buying programs. Under Tucson's plan, in which restaurants buy in bulk at common suppliers, Luria's Café Terra Cotta saved $100,000 on food costs last year--3% of its total sales for the year--without changing its menu. Andrew Hutto, owner of Baxter Station Bar and Grill in Louisville, Ky., used the savings from his chapter's buying group to help pay his gas and electric bill, which more than doubled, from $2,500 to $5,100 a month last winter...