A restaurant is a notoriously difficult business. Places open and close at the drop of the hat due to various reasons. Those who manage to stay in business, remain successful, and eventually become icons are few and far between. Chef Laurence Jossel and Nopa have undoubtedly achieved that and more. Born in South Africa, Chef Jossel moved to the United States in 1978. Not an academically gifted person, he began cooking in San Francisco back in 1991 and has been a chef in town ever since. When he started Nopa in 2006, it was open seven nights a week until 1 AM in addition to serving two brunches. The initial target audience was those who worked in the restaurant business—servers, bartenders, cooks, and others—who finished
their shifts after 10 o’clock before visiting the establishment. At its peak, it served almost four thousand customers weekly. As time moved forward, however, San Francisco changed. It became a much more technology-driven town and is now too expensive for restaurant people to call home. A lot of food and beverage workers moved outside of the city limits. It seemed like cooks and other industry workers had disappeared from San Francisco. “When you have to get on a bridge and drive for a little bit, you're not going to come in and have a beer. You're going to get home,” he says. As a result, he saw a steady decline in the number of restaurant guests. So, he dialed back the hours five years ago to close at midnight during the weekend, and 1 AM for the weekends.
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