A POP-UP RESTAURANT AND THE USTA. By Javier Palenque

A good friend of mine is a fabulous cook and asked me for advice on how to help transition to the restaurant business. I suggested we let the market be the judge of her culinary skills and designed a pop-up restaurant-pizzeria. What is a pop-up restaurant, you may ask? A pop-up restaurant is a new restaurant concept that is temporary. They are typically situated in unconventional spaces, such as private homes or existing restaurants. Pop-up restaurants may also operate during festivals or other events.?As the market in different events approves or disapproves of her product selection and skills, the concept is finding its way into the California Marketplace.

In the service business, the key component is of course workers, friendly servers who know the product line, and the concept, and do one or two jobs at the same time. The only permanent employee is my friend. The rest of the 4-6 employees are hired in advance and paid well so they are always available for the next event and have consistency in the complete offering. I designed for my friend a plan to make the concept go from idea to exit over a period of ten years. There is a goal in mind and that is to grow the concept until the restaurant opening is a minimum risk.

Now you may think that is a puny business, what on earth does it have to do with the $550M per year USTA? Once again, I will, through this example, highlight all that is the right thing to do and all that is what the USTA Ol’ boys do.

Just as my friend’s pop-up restaurant shows up for events on certain days in Napa Valley, the US Open pops up for two weeks in Queens NY. Of course, payroll costs are important to control and since all of the food is outsourced and the sponsors are on long-term contracts, paying people for 365 days when the work is only a few months makes no sense does it?

It is the equivalent of my friend’s pop-up restaurant having her six-person company being paid full-time when they only have work for a few days a week. She would go broke, never accomplish her mission, and her people would get another job while collecting from my friend. Granted my friend must pay herself to keep the business going but not everyone is needed during the week. Funds are limited and must be properly used and respected.

Imagine a $70M payroll and of that only $6M is part-time. That means $64M is spent for 365 days of work but at best there are only 90 days of work for a few of the employees. This is called the status quo and neglecting the actual mission. Now Imagine what the people at the USTA think and do between the end of the tournament and July of the following year. You see spending other people's money is very easy to do and growing the bureaucracy of the welfare club is justifiable in their minds. My problem is that with so many resources tennis is dead, and the reason? well abusing the very sport they are trusted to protect. Could you look at the graph below and tell me how different one is from the other?

Now imagine all the waste that the USTA’s CEO approves of, and the board looks the other way. After my morning walk, the tennis courts in parks in my area (Miami) will still be empty, and in your area too. Yet the weekly payroll of the bureaucracy of $1.4M will be honored. This to me is unacceptable.

This makes sense only to the welfare in a suit people who also get the tax benefit of pretending to be not-for-profit. That is two-for-one doing the wrong thing.

How likely do you think that my friend is to open her restaurant if she is paying people for months not to work? You see the mission we set out was to have a restaurant open once the market approved of her product. It will never happen if she follows the USTA way of doing business.

Finally, you understand that tennis cannot possibly grow if the Ol’ Boys continue to show their complete lack of competence, care, and judgment.

I say NO to ineptitude and YES to growing the game.

By the way, do you know how much could be used to grow the sport from the $70M payroll? Easily half, that is $35M, now imagine this for the past 10 years that is $350M, add the other $350M they wasted in player development plus other easy savings that can be had. That means that the USTA leadership wasted $1B on the wrong things, wrong people, wrong causes, wrong campaigns. Why are they anywhere near the sport if they have proven incapable for years?

Do you still want them to control the game? I want them all, every single one of them OUT!

I can be reached at [email protected]

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