Since this summer, there have been 10 new restaurants in Ames that have already opened or are planning to open by the end of the month.

“It would seem Ames has hit some magic formula,” Rich Harder, executive director of the Ames Chamber of Commerce, said.

The new restaurants are Cocost Cuisine, Pita Pita, Diamond Dave’s, Pizza and Pasta, Jordan’s Chicago Style Hot Dogs, Pretzel Maker, Fazoli’s, Ken’s Grill, Gumby’s Pizza and A Taste of Asia.

Since July, Mr. Goodcents and The Market/Garden Cafe have been the only two restaurants to close, Kevin Anderson, of building permits, said.

With the 10 new restaurants, Harder said, there are about 60 restaurants in Ames.

Harder said many restaurants see Ames as a good growing community.

There are several factors restaurants use in determining whether or not a location is successful.

“Chains generally do better [because they have] farsighted standards,” Jim Huss, associate professor of hotel, restaurant and institutional management at Iowa State, said.

“If they can’t get enough people to justify the investment, they won’t come in [to the area],” he said.

Speciality restaurants such as sports bars and ethnic restaurants attract special groups of people and do well financially, Huss said.

Factors such as the perception that a city is underdeveloped in a certain area, the location, having a “hot” product, overhead and targeted customers are used to determine if a restaurant would be successful.

Huss said there are restaurants that use destination marketing, in which a customer will decide to eat at a certain place and drive there. And there are also spontaneous shops that just grab customers on the go.

An example of spontaneous marketing is the Pretzel Maker, which creates a niche in the market by causing a customer to want the product at that time.

“New restaurants do very well during the first four months, then fall off six to nine months, [and after] a year and a half it will build its long-term business,” Huss said.

“Independent [restaurants] struggle,” Huss said. “A half to two-thirds won’t make three years.” He said the first three years are critical for a restaurant.

After there are so many restaurants of the same kind, it’s hard to pick just one to go to. “At a point, there’s too many, [so there’s] fall out,” Harder said.

In college towns such as Ames, some restaurants target students as their main customers.

“Companies keep track of how students spend their money and what food service they would go to,” Huss said.

This helps determine if another restaurant would be profitable or not, he said.

In the summer with most of the students gone, the restaurants that depend on students’ business lose their main market and labor but still have operating expenses.

“The restaurant business is a tough business,” Harder said.