I think some survivorship bias factors in. From what I hear, restaurants are enormously expensive to get off the ground and have a very high early failure rate as businesses but once they have survived for 3 or so years, management gets much easier and profit margins are able to grow.

Consequently, in my experience, successful restaurants are indeed run by local rich kulak assholes with McMansions and luxury cars who fuck off around the world for weeks at a time when they aren’t back at the store berating their workers.