Gigi’s comanager Hugo Hivernat said that 25 percent of the US$40 revenue is spent on raw ingredients — including quality chicken from upstate New York — and the rest goes toward rent, bills, salaries and other expenses
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By Ben Turner
/ AFP, NEW YORK
Hugo Hivernat’s restaurant was only open for a few days before he got dragged into New York’s cost of living row for pricing a half rotisserie chicken at US$40.
For some, the cost highlights how dining out has become prohibitively expensive in one of the world’s culinary capitals. However, Hivernat insists that steep overheads leave little room for profit.
“We are at the mercy of the affordability crisis,” he said at Gigi’s, a small, wooden-floored restaurant in a trendy Brooklyn neighborhood.
Photo: AFP
“Maybe people think we’re driving a Porsche in the Hamptons on the weekends with our US$40 chicken, but we’re like everyone here,” Hivernat said, referring to a wealthy beach resort in the New York area.
The cost of living is a worry across the US and is acutely felt in New York, where leftist Mayor Zohran Mamdani was elected largely on promises to counter the problem. Its restaurants are not immune to inflation, from operating costs to wholesale food prices.
Menu prices in the city rose by 43.6 percent in the decade up to 2023, compared with 42.8 percent nationally, a report released by the state’s fiscal watchdog in February showed.
“People have a very strong idea about how much things should cost in the restaurant industry, but they have absolutely no idea what the real cost is,” Hivernat said.
The 36-year-old, who co-ran the esteemed Fulgurances restaurant in Paris and New York before opening Gigi’s last month, said his pricing falls in line with industry standards. He said that 25 percent of the US$40 revenue is spent on raw ingredients — including quality chicken from upstate New York — and the rest goes toward rent, bills, salaries and other expenses. Anything left helps pay down the US$500,000 debt incurred from opening the restaurant, Hivernat added.
The chicken row gained traction after a local lawmaker alluded to the US$40 menu price in an exasperated Instagram post that received more than 9,000 likes.
It prompted one local food outlet to produce a “half chicken price index” ranking the dishes from below US$10 all the way to US$78 at a French restaurant in affluent Manhattan.
However, a stream of online commenters defended Gigi’s and pointed to the financial pressures for small businesses.
“Many restaurants aren’t even making money. They’re just getting by,” New York City Hospitality Alliance executive director Andrew Rigie said.
Rigie noted a confluence of factors including insurance premiums, slow economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and higher food costs — the latter partly due to tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump.
Menu prices would inevitably reflect those pressures, he said.
“It costs so much to run a small business in New York City that our beloved local restaurants are forced to charge these prices just so they can survive, not even thrive,” he said.
Underscoring the issue, almost half (46 percent) of more than 200 restaurants surveyed by the New York City Hospitality Alliance reported making fewer sales than expected in the final quarter of last year. Their chief concerns were labor costs, the price of goods and services, and a lack of customers.
At Gigi’s, head chef Thomas Knodell is glad the controversy over the US$40 half chicken has prompted a much-needed conversation about affordability.
“It’s blown up, because it’s a discussion about the cost of everything, the overall frustration that people have,” he said. “I get it, it is expensive. We agree with you, but this is the reality that we’re in now, unfortunately.”
Knodell, 35, believes that policy changes are needed — such as price caps on how much food wholesalers can charge — to stem the ever-growing costs at restaurants.
“It’s good that it’s a discussion, because, you know, that actually makes change,” he said.
