When a Pop-Up Uses a Restaurant Space, Who Really Profits? #DetroitFood
Pop-up chefs say Framebar, which bills itself as an “incubator” for young businesses, leaves them with little in return
Metro Detroit’s pop-up community is buzzing since the announcement that two popular ventures recently pulled out of engagements at Framebar in Hazel Park. In separate posts published on Instagram on Tuesday, May 15, both Khana and Street Beet shared that they were canceling with the venue due to financial concerns.
The situation reveals strains within the local scene — complicated by economic headwinds that have left many restaurant owners struggling to find their footing — as well as a view into the financial realities of pop-up management.
Both Khana, a Pakistani pop-up launched in 2018 by Maryam Khan, and Street Beet, a vegan fast-food pop-up helmed by Nina Paletta and Meghan Shaw, were scheduled to cook at Frame as part of a month long series called Mixtapebar. The programming was billed as a collaboration with WDET host Ryan Patrick Hooper, who would curate a weekly playlist catered to the tastes of each participating pop-up — Vinyl Tasting, Khana, Street Beet, and Pink Flamingo — taking over the bar’s kitchen.
The disagreement hinged on how profits from the series would be split. Paletta and Shaw, and other pop-up operators familiar with the venue, claim that Framebar’s terms make it virtually impossible to profit. According to Paletta, Frame initially proposed that Street Beet split profits 70-30, meaning Street Beet would keep 70 percent of the revenue, with the rest going to Frame and WDET (WDET ultimately declined to partner in the series, according to Hooper). However, Street Beet’s partners say the terms changed in the days leading up to the event, with Frame asking for 40 percent of the pop-up’s revenue.
“The way that they were proposing it to work out with us and Khana was that they would take 40 percent of our profits, and on top of that, we still have our own labor to cover and our own food costs to cover. Typically, labor’s about 20 percent, and food costs are about 20 to 30 percent. So that literally leaves us with nothing when you break it down,” Paletta tells Eater.
Street Beet had never hosted a pop-up with Framebar and Paletta and Shaw agreed to participate in the Mixtapebar event when they learned that Hooper would be involved in the project. Khan has participated in at least three pop-up events at Frame, including most recently a ticketed five-course dinner in February in the space’s larger, communal dining space — though the profit-sharing model on this side of Frame is different.
Frame’s management, owners Joe and Cari Vaughn, contend that the events provide pop-ups a glimpse of what they should expect it to cost to operate a restaurant, without the significant financial risks associated with opening a full-scale restaurant from scratch.
“We are a restaurant incubator, not a bar that hosts a food truck. That’s the difference between us and a bar that hosts pop-ups,” says Joe Vaughn, a longtime metro Detroit editorial photographer. “The people that understand and get what they need out of it really embrace what Frame and Framebar is.”
Hooper tells Eater that Frame agreed to compensate him in exchange for producing a series of playlists and reaching out to some of his favorite local chefs to invite them to participate, but says he wasn’t involved in negotiations between the chefs and Frame.
“From where I was sitting, [with] all the pop-ups involved and Frame, it all seemed pretty legit,” says Hooper. “I’ve seen friends’ dinners in the past and it seemed like a lot of people worked with them and I was like, this seems cool. And then as things went on, Khana and Street Beet bailed, it was like, this is less fun.”
Khan and chef Jermond Booze, co-founder of Vinyl Tasting, both declined to comment on their experiences with Frame. Booze and co-founder Amber Beckem kicked off the Mixtapebar series with Vinyl Tasting service Wednesday, May 8, through Sunday, May 12. When Eater reached out, Booze had already committed to going forward with a Detroit Food Academy pop-up event at Frame, the youth cooking program’s advanced capstone project, which took place last weekend.
For more than a decade, Detroit’s pop-up scene has been a bright spot in the industry where innovation thrived with low overhead. Chefs and other industry and non-hospitality professionals often use them as a proving ground for new menus, to build clientele, and to offer unique experiences to their communities that might not otherwise thrive as full-scale restaurants. Their appeal includes the low barrier to entry, with short-term cooking stints perhaps utilizing a bar or restaurant’s kitchen. Typically, the bar takes in revenue from drink orders and the pop-ups take home all of the revenue raised from food sales. During the pandemic, many people who abruptly found themselves without work turned to pop-ups as a temporary means to make ends meet when restaurant work was scarce. Very occasionally, these pop-ups become permanent restaurant or food truck fixtures, but often they’re ethereal — disappearing as quickly as they launch. Different venues have emerged over the years attempting to formalize pop-ups within a specific venue by offering ticketed dinners or routine schedules; these have included Pop, Yemans Street, Menagerie Kitchen, Revolver, and Frame.
Frame debuted in March 2017 alongside a sibling restaurant originally called Joebar, which occupied a street-facing section of a building on John R Road, just a few steps from Mabel Gray. It featured a full bar area with a kitchen. Takoi took on the first Frame residency, occupying a sprawling communal dining room with a view of an open kitchen. To this day, the larger dining room is dedicated to hosting ticketed dining events and frequently draws in big names from across Southeast Michigan and beyond. The venue also hosts cooking classes and other food or drink-related workshops. One pop-up operator who hosted ticketed events at Frame in 2021 and 2022 told Eater that the profit split in this space involved Frame taking 20 percent of profits. Frame confirmed that the 20 percent charge is an overhead fee. The remaining proceeds are split 50-50.
In fall 2021, after a short-lived concept, the space was reimagined as Framebar, a place where chefs could take over a small kitchen area for monthlong residencies. Each month, pop-up chefs or operators design their own a la carte menus and test-drive them with Frame customers and fans.
Part of the appeal of popping up at Frame and Framebar is the access to a full kitchen, equipment, and food supplier — which in effect gives pop-up chefs the experience of what it might be like to run a restaurant. But how much operators pay for this access has fluctuated over the years.
Initially, according to Cari Vaughn, Framebar did not intend to hire servers in the bar area and the split with its first batch of pop-up operators was 80-20.
“We were trying to figure out how we could share revenue, and try a new concept,” says Cari Vaughn. But she says their customer base wanted a full-service dining experience and were willing to pay a higher check average.
“So we thought, ‘Okay, well, now we need to hire a whole new staff of qualified servers,’” says Cari Vaughn. “Every time that we tried to do something more casual at that 80-20, our guests didn’t want it. Our guests didn’t want a pop-up in the back. They want to sit down and want to be served. That’s why we’re a restaurant, we’re not a pop-up bar and that’s part of where the percentages keep changing.”
Frame tells Eater that it takes on the financial responsibilities of a normal restaurant, including staffing the front of the house, rent, insurance, and the point-of-sale system. Those costs are passed down to the operators in the form of the current 60-40 split.
Khana was scheduled to take over Frame for the second week of the series on Wednesday, May 15, through Sunday, May 19. Just days before the engagement, Khan had pitched a Khana restaurant in the Hatch Detroit contest. For her Framebar engagement, she was planning a menu of mango gazpacho, charred meats, eggplant halloumi, and other entrees, according to the Frame newsletter. Street Beet was to take over on week three of the event and pop up at the venue for three days, Wednesday, May 22 through Friday, May 24, followed by a pop-up by Meiko Krishok of Pink Flamingo featuring a Korean Italian menu Wednesday, May 29, through Sunday, June 2.
The day before Khana was scheduled for her event, Khana and Street Beet announced on social media that they were pulling out.
“As much as we hate making last minute changes that affect schedules outside our own, this change comes as a way to continue ethical practices and protect our business,” the opening of Khana’s statement, posted Tuesday afternoon, read. The post went on to detail options for customers who already made reservations for Khana.
“We do our best to operate under conditions that are constantly evolving, but our priority is to remain committed to building community on equitable terms,” the statement continued.
Street Beet’s statement also apologized to fans for the last-minute cancellation, while maintaining that the startup’s “top priority [is] to maintain a healthy, ethical, and equitable operation for all those involved with Street Beet.
“Getting back on our feet requires delicate care, and the terms of this event could have put us in an uncertain and dangerous place financially,” the statement said.
The venue replaced those pop-ups with a tapas menu by Frame’s executive chef Michael Barrera without addressing the switch; the pop-ups’ statements fueled speculation about the reason for the abrupt cancellation.
The Vaughns tell Eater that they had 200 reservations lined up primarily for Street Beet, as well as a smaller number for Khana, but immediately issued deposit refunds once they were informed that Khana and Street Beet were pulling out of the series.
Joe Vaughn says that Frame acts like a bank for chefs, where the business fronts all of the costs associated with implementing a pop-up — the food, front-of-house staff, and other operating expenses.
“If a chef doesn’t show up ... we would have to take the responsibility for that food. If a chef got sick or a chef didn’t come, they’re not on the hook at all. It’s us,” Joe Vaughn tells Eater.
Val’s Pizza, founded in late 2020, was among those early pop-ups that flourished during the pandemic. Partners Vallery Markel and Erin Wilson began selling Neapolitan-style pies from their home in Detroit’s Old Redford neighborhood. As word spread, Val’s caught the attention of former Detroit Free Press restaurant critic Mark Kurlyandchik, who covered the pair for a 2021 edition of Hour Detroit magazine. Val’s was also one of the first to participate in the monthlong Framebar residencies in February and early March of 2022 when the space transitioned to pop-ups.
Markel and Wilson say they were told that Frame would take 20 percent of food sales from the dining room and 35 percent of carryout order sales — during a time when diners were still largely opting for takeout due to the pandemic. They say the bar also insisted that Framebar servers receive all of the tips from Val’s food orders — a departure from what the couple typically offered their team.
“We had a tip-sharing structure where everyone got paid the same and we all took home the same amount of tips ... So when we entered into this agreement with them, we’re like, ‘Okay, this is kind of against our beliefs,’” Markel recalls.
“They didn’t want to share any tips,” Wilson adds.
“They had servers in Framebar who were making a ton of money off of our food sales and we didn’t think that was fair,” says Markel.
Joe Vaughn tells Eater that just before the launch of the Val’s pop-up, he agreed to split the tips between his staff and theirs.
“We basically have our staff that we need to take care of,” Joe Vaughn says, adding that if tip-sharing is how “your business is run, we’re probably not a good fit for you. I know that Val’s basically pressured us right into the last second, basically said they were going to drop out if we didn’t tip their staff. So we had to share tips from our staff to their staff. And again, it’s not our business model, but Val’s isn’t in business anymore, so I guess it maybe didn’t work.”
Markel says in an email to Eater that Frame agreed to allow Val’s to take 100 percent of the tips from carryout orders in exchange for Frame taking 35 percent of carryout sales, but none of the tips for the dining room were shared.
Despite the conflicts, some pop-up operators see the value in the platform that Framebar provides them. Longtime restaurant fixture Eddie Vargas says the benefits outweigh the costs. Vargas, a veteran metro Detroit restaurant manager, has done three separate monthlong residencies at Framebar. He tells Eater that since his first stint taking over the kitchen in 2022, interest in his work has increased exponentially.
“Every single time I do a pop-up at Frame, I get more followers, I get more people asking me where my restaurant is, or when I’m gonna open a restaurant or when they’re gonna eat my food,” says Vargas.
Vargas wrapped up his last Framebar residency on Cinco de Mayo. He tells Eater that he noticed the upfront percentage was higher than his previous experiences, but he says he wasn’t surprised, given the current climate with inflation.
Via email to Eater, Cari Vaughn shared examples of ventures and individuals — including how much each operator earned from their respective events — to illustrate how operators have benefited from Frame’s approach, noting that between 2022 and 2023, the chefs and pop-ups that did business with Frame earned more than $496,000 in 2022 and $442,000 in 2023. She confirmed with Eater that the numbers represent total profits after the split with Frame but do not account for any costs the pop-up incurred with respect to their own labor. Out of respect for the privacy of the pop-up operators, Eater is not publishing details about their earnings.
For Street Beet’s part, the founders tell Eater that they were aware that Framebar took 20 percent of pop-ups’ profits, but that it had gone up in increments over the past year or so. Since the pair spoke out about the Mixtape situation, they say they’ve heard from other unspecified parties who’ve shared similar concerns with how much they’ve been charged to work out of Framebar.
“Kind of unanimously, all of the people that we’ve spoken with, because people are coming out of the woodwork to share their stories with us, is that no one made money, everyone felt exploited, everyone felt like it wasn’t worth it,” Paletta says.
But Joe Vaughn tells Eater that in his experience as a photographer, he’s interacted with countless chefs who’ve had to pay out of pocket to gain exposure (such as at charity events where chefs are invited to cook, but are required to pay for their food costs and aren’t compensated for their labor). With Framebar, he wanted to remove that barrier to entry.
“Chefs should be paid. Like, why [do] the tickets cost $200, why are all the chefs not getting paid?” he says. “I didn’t want Frame to be about taking advantage, we should pay them.”
To be clear, Markel and Wilson agree that they made a lot of money in the month they popped up at Framebar, but say it came at a cost. Wilson says that Val’s did not get to practice the type of equitable business model that they aspired to one day be. The pair estimate they earned about $30,000. Figures shared by the Vaughns with Eater show Val’s brought in just over $33,000. Of that, Markel says, Val’s spent about $24,000 in labor costs.
“I feel like there is a bit of a power dynamic of like, ‘Oh, we have the space, you can be in this space and you can practice your concept, but you don’t actually get to practice your model, and have a concept that’s up to your ethical standards,’” says Wilson. “It’s like they have a cut and paste [approach], which is great in a lot of ways, but it doesn’t really honor the folks that you have coming in.”
Owning a restaurant in 2024 has its pitfalls. The margins are terrible, hours are long, it’s physically demanding, and income can be inconsistent. But as the Vaughns and others are finding with these incubator-type spaces that aspire to be platforms for innovation and experimentation, the results aren’t always even.
The Framebar situation seems to echo past agreements between food stall operators and the now-defunct Fort Street Galley food hall, which opened in downtown Detroit in 2018. Co-founders Benjamin Mantica and Tyler Benson modeled their halls after tech incubators. Instead of requiring its food vendors to sign a typical lease that includes down payments, security deposits, and rent, Galley touted a profit-sharing model where about 30 percent of each restaurant’s revenue was returned to the company. At the time, Eater Detroit reported that this model was to result in a relatively low cost of entry for the operator — around $7,500 for inventory and labor.
But Fort Street Galley food hall vendors said they struggled to turn a profit or save for their own space. Within months of opening, food stall operators like Mike Han, whose Korean seafood restaurant Pursue occupied the space, closed within months of Fort Street Galley’s launch, and described a business in disarray, with nearly every operator struggling to make ends meet. By February 2020, the entire operation was shuttered.
In a conversation with Eater, both Street Beet founders Shaw and Paletta say when they learned what the split would be for the Mixtape series, they and Khan reached out to Vaughn to ask for a breakdown of where the money was going to explain the percentage, saying the split was too high, that it was too much of a risk, and asking whether they would be willing to negotiate. In the years since its launch, Street Beet has taken several business approaches, including a years long residency sublease at 3rd Street Bar, and paying a flat fee of 10 percent for a pop-up held at MOCAD.
“Finally, Joe sent over this very, very detailed, like seven-paragraph email with all of their operating expenses, or the business as a whole, from their rent to their utilities, to their employees, liquor liability insurance,” says Paletta.
Paletta and Shaw found the exchange inappropriate and irrelevant to Street Beet’s business, and it left Paletta flabbergasted.
“The email they sent suggests to us that Frame isn’t able to cover their operating expenses without gouging hard-earned profits from pop-ups like ours,” she says.
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