Actually, it looked like his analysis was for what was required to break even, on the average. Invest 10 million (across 10 companies), get back 10 million in profit from the 1 (of 10) that succeeds.
There is no way anyone is going to open ten restaurants simultaneously, fail at 9 of them and earn 9 million in first-year net profit from the 10th. That's not how opening or operating restaurants works.
Some folks have a very high success rate.
I think the failure rate I’d restaurants is more tied to the types of folks who open restaurants than the business model.
The restaurant market is notoriously fickle with considerable risk of ruin. Between opening a restaurant and building its clientele is a lot of uncertainty. It’s easy to look at the surviving restaurants and think that anyone could make a comfortable living at it. The economist must consider both the seen and the unseen — of which the latter in this case is all the restaurants that started and failed.
it's the only marker that others judge you by.
What the f would Peter Thiel know about the joy derived from feeding someone good food?