Nicole Rucker can rattle off every obstacle she and her two partners faced at Fiona: a bad-luck location, a neighborhood that didn’t step up, confusion over whether Fiona was a bakery or a Vietnamese café, thanks to chef Shawn Pham’s menu. But the reason it failed, she said, is simple: “Not enough money. We were underfunded.”

Chefs clamoring for attention, diners on the prowl, and bottom-line investors who don’t appreciate the idiosyncrasies of the business: not a secure environment.

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Lemmings, those little rodents who travel in herds, do not regularly commit suicide by playing follow the leader off a cliff. They do practice their own form of population control, which can mean a watery grave, but not by choice. When a herd gets too big, a group of them sets off in search of a new home, and if they have to cross a body of water they jump in, because they know how to swim. Or at least some of them do. Some drown, and that, over time, has congealed into the suicide myth.

That mentality, translated to restaurants, means trends: a bunch of newbies see a promising food concept and follow that splinter group to what they hope will be a happy, profitable new home, having learned nothing about the dangers of too many lemmings in one place. They chase replication instead of innovation, figuring a proven concept is safer than a new one, until they find themselves at the edge of a lake some will not be able to cross.

“I see pockets of little bubbles,” said Peleg, who believes that too many of any specialized business guarantees attrition. “It seemed a couple of years ago that all of a sudden every block had a cupcake concept in New York City, the great craze. But how many cupcakes do you really need, popping up everywhere?”

Not as many as there were. “Now I don’t know if you can get a cupcake in New York City,” he said, exaggerating for effect, “and the ones that remain are the ones that were here before the bubble.” Magnolia Bakery, made famous by the television series “Sex and the City,” has expanded to Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.—and the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and more, and if there isn’t one on your corner you can order online.