Above: Yousef Alzaidi welcomes guests at 7 Flag Halal Restaurant & Cafe at 107 W. 3rd St. in downtown Los Angeles. The restaurant is coming up short at the cash register, however — and needs a boost in traffic to keep moving forward. Photo: Erik Skindrud

By Erik Skindrud, InfoWise.org

There are no shortcuts to good falafel — like 7 Flag Halal Restaurant & Cafe serves in downtown Los Angeles. The chickpea balls take a brisk bath in sizzling oil. Finished, they’re delightfully crisp on the outside, steaming inside.

Some fast-food joints pre-fry the balls, then nuke them in a microwave before serving. It’s not real falafel.

Replacing the fryer oil, as falafel requires every few days, costs $40 a pop, 7 Flag proprietor Yousef Alzaidi said recently. There are a lot more expenses too, since the family launched the venture in October, he explains.

“Life here is expensive,” said Alzaidi — originally from Amman, Jordan. “There are a lot of costs. We’re coming up $10,000 short each month.”

Yousef sat as a guest finished a falafel pita, adding numbers on his smartphone. Customers average 10 to 15 a day. Dollars per customer — $10 to $15. It adds up to $300 a day and $9,000 a month. It doesn’t come close to the $20,000 the family pays in rent and expenses each month. Launching the operation in October cost $400,000 — for refrigerators, kitchen gear, refurbishing, and assorted expenses.

Above: An unidentified visitor posed with 7 Flag’s chicken shawarma combo in October. Photo via 7 Flag Halal Restaurant & Cafe’s Yelp page. The restaurant’s Instagram can be visited here.

What 7 Flag needs now are customers — and fast. Yousef has passed out flyers. But the neighborhood sits by Little Tokyo and the Toy District. Homelessness is a reality you can smell. Commercial real estate in downtown Los Angeles plummeted an average of 43 percent in value in 2023 alone. It may hemorrhage another $70 billion over the next decade, a 2025 study predicts.

That will deny the city and county $353 million in lost annual property tax revenue, the same study says.

The Downtown L.A. business community doesn’t mince words.

“Civic workers, get your asses back in the office,” said Adam Daneshgar of Langdon Street Capital, owner of Los Angeles’ Grand Central Market. “We’ve got to bring (government workers) back.”

Voices like Daneshgar’s likely lurk behind Gov. Gavin Newsom’s push to yank close to 100,000 state office workers into their Sacramento, Los Angeles, and other offices two more days a week. The governor’s RTO drive has met with pushback, however.

Civic workers, get your asses back in the office!” –Adam Daneshgar, Langdon Street Capital, operator of Los Angeles’ Grand Central Market.

Especially shrill cries come out of Sacramento, where Mayor Kevin McCarty is an RTO booster.

Interestingly, some in the RTO community already credit unions with a win on the question.

“SEIU has tremendous power and they’re putting a full court press on right now (so) that none of their workers ever have to come back,” Barry Broome of the Greater Sacramento Economic Council complained to PBS station KVIE.

“SEIU to Democrats in California, it’s like the National Rifle Association in Texas,” Broome fumed.

For a moment, we might just wonder — would office workers boost businesses like 7 Flag if return-to-office prevailed, instead of meeting endless roadblocks?

It’s unlikely. Yousef Alzaidi said he’s never seen a government worker in his establishment — before one walked over from the nearby Caltrans building in February. And that building houses several hundred workers. Most are already assigned there two days a week — including several dozen Arabic speakers.

Restaurants are on the ropes from the country’s affordability crisis. Just look at the sad places Chipotle, Wahoos Fish Taco, Jack-in-the-Box, and many others are today.

On the other hand, hardworking families still make California a Land of Opportunity. But can they create opportunity Downtown — outside the trendy Arts District?

“Eaters don’t want to waste their money on just OK food in this economy,” L.A. Times columnist Gustavo Arellano pointed out last month. “The coolest spots since the rise of social media are mom-and-pop regional eateries.”

Hopefully 7 Flag can forge ahead, gain notice, and join that class of flourishing businesses.

Erik Skindrud works in a Downtown Los Angeles office two days a week. @Erik_Bookman on X.