New seafood restaurant: profit or no profit

question: A recent sales study indicates that consumption of seafood dishes in Bay City restaurants has increased by 30 percent during the past five years. Yet there are no currently operating city restaurants whose specialty is seafood. Moreover, the majority of families in Bay City are two-income families, and a nationwide study has shown that such families eat significantly fewer home-cooked meals than they did a decade ago but at the same time express more concern about healthful eating. Therefore, the new Captain Seafood restaurant that specializes in seafood should be quite popular and profitable.

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be addressed in order to decide whether the conclusion and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to the questions would help to evaluate the conclusion.

response: Stating the evidence that the consumption of seafood dishes have increased by 30 percent in the past 5 years and the two-income families eat significantly fewer homecooked meals, the author has concluded that the new restaurant specializing the seafood will be popular and profitable.The conclusion is flawed to some extent that it ignores some significant facts.

Firstly, the statistics indicate the consumption of seafood has increased by 30 percent. Though it is a considerable increase but it is not significant to guarantee the profits of the new restaurant, because there are already other restaurants that serve seafood. People are generally cautious about going to a new restaurant especially in the beginning which might prove to be deterrent in profits of the new restaurant.

Secondly, as the author states that nationwide study shows that two-income families have become more concerned about the healthful eating, this itself weakens the chances of the new restaurant becoming popular since the food prepared in restaurants is generally not considered as healthful.

The reason being there is lack of hygiene in some way or the other in restaurants. Even if the restaurant is all hygienic, there are many alternatives to sea food which are more nutritious and people would like to order that instead of sea food.

Thirdly, the author has applied the generalised study of the whole nation (regarding the two-income families) to the BayCity residents. There is a chance that people of Bay City might have less no of two-income families as compared to other places in the country or the taste and preferences of the inhabitants is different from the generalised study. This might decrease the popularity of the Seafood restaurant.

As the author has mentioned that till date, there is no specialized restaurant in seafood even though there is 30 percent rise in demand of sea food, this creates a doubt that there might be some other reasons which affects the popularity and profit of such restaurants and that's why people have not set up such restaurants. Had these two factors been the only contributing factor in the popularity and profit of the seafood restaurant, such restaurant would have come up by now.

Moreover, members of a family have a high chance of having varied tastes and preferences, so they would like to go to some place where they can order according to tastes of everyone and not just seafood. This might provide some hindrance in the popularity of the new restaurant.

Keeping all the above mentioned facts , it can be stated that the author's conclusion can be strengthened if he provides some strong evidence in support of it.

In the first body paragraph you can also mention that maybe the overall population has increased during mentioned 5 years and the increase of seafood consumption is based by this change in population. Thus comparing seafood consumption now and 5 years ago is not sufficient to draw a conclusion.


But argument also mentions that these families do not eat home-cooked meals, thus most probably they prefer go to some restaurants.


I think this is not strong assumption. If there is no precedent of seafood restaurant, this does not necessarily means that new opened restaurant will fail.

Also I think you have better to mention what particular questions should the argument answer, after all the task requires " response in which you discuss what questions would need to be addressed".

Overall your essay is quite good one, you mentioned important fallacies.

Thanks .. please grade me too.

Frankly I have not graded one earlier. In fact I'm preparing for GRE myself.
However I think your essays will get something between 3 and 4

ok thank you