the corner office

The little shopping complex around the corner from us has a Brazilian restaurant upstairs. After a name change and a few years of just plodding along, it's suddenly booming, and all the bootiful people seem to be descending upon it in herds.

The problem is that nowadays, it's almost impossible to find parking at the complex. The place has always been bustling in the afternoons and evenings, but the few shops usually have quite a steady turnover of people leaving and arriving, and even at its worst, you'd just drive around the lot once or twice and find a parking opening up. With a restaurant though, it's a different story, and each car is there for at least an hour or few. The result is that people drive around the near-gridlocked parking lot, and there's nothing opening up. I'm sure many of them leave in frustration, and stay away in the evenings in future. So while business is booming for this restaurant, it must have a pretty negative effect on evening business for the Woolies, the Clicks, the Nandos, the pizza joint and the DVD store.

I wonder if there's anything (legal) they can do about it? If the restaurant mysteriously goes up in flames one night, I'll know why.