Over the years I've come up with a few restaurant ideas. Some of them are completely silly and do not require deep thought. Others I think are actually brilliant in a way. Some are in between, but beware that in general some things that sound crazy might be a great idea that people are just not expecting to hear (So crazy it just might work). I had a new one recently that I think might be the best. I'll list all 4 in chronilogical order.

The restaurant where "You Get Your Check By The Time You're Done or Your Meal is Free" and that's the name of the restaurant. That basically sums it up. This one requires no thought about what a terrible name that is or how you'd deal with desert. It is just something I like to say when I'm sitting around waiting for a check, that this place should exist.

My next idea isn't actually mine. It was based on an idea of Monzy's. You know that carival game where you shoot the water gun into the clown's mouth and the balloon blows up? The idea is to build that game into urinals in a men's room. This would make a great gimmick for a bar. People would come because it's such a crazy gimmick and they'd have to drink lots if they wanted to play. Plus they might have better aim. It was Monzy's concept to build a urinal game. In fact he built one, called You're in Control (Urine Control) and published a paper in a human-computer interaction conference.

My third idea was a chain themed restaurant where each branch has a different theme. If you've visited one Hard Rock Cafe you've seen them all. There's no reason for me to see then one in Miami when I'm there if I've been to the Boston one. But with my restaurant, if you like it you might want to see how the others are different. Would the food themed or the same? What about the same food but different themed names? The tricky part is to make them different while still feeling like a chain and not just a bunch of different restaurants that I happen to own all of.

Finally, my greatest, and most recent idea. I call the idea the Open-Source Deli, although I probably would not actually call the place that. Like most normal lunch places they'd serve sandwiches as well as salad bar, soup, and all the typical stuff. The focus would be on the ability to design your own sandwich. There'd be pads with sets of choices to check off (or maybe it could be a computer touch screen). There'd have to be a wide variety of breads, meats, toppings, sauces, etc. This isn't unique, lots of places do this like K2 and ABP that Alex and I used to go to. First of all, this place would focus on that and thus do it better. Secondly, what this place would have that would make it great is some way to get the sandwich you design up on the board. I'm not sure the mechanism but if you did, you'd get to name your own sandwich and then there'd be some kind of incetive program where you got a free sandwich every 10 someone ordered or something like that.