As space, feasibility and brand consultants focusing on restaurant clients, our team is often asked by tenants and landlords alike to review site conditions, establish pre-lease financial and design packages, and provide the architectural conceptualization needed to create unique yet cost-effective restaurant plans. The result is the tenant or landlord/developer is able to make an informed decision about where to place a restaurant and how that space will successfully fit his or her business model.

In the development, retail and restaurant industries, there is often frustration in working together. However, the needs of landlords and tenants can be symbiotic. With a restaurant project, the landlord gains activity in a retail center because the restaurant attracts traffic during multiple times of the day. For the restaurant, if the food, drink and price points are attractive, word will spread and more customers will be attracted to the location.

When considering restaurant placement the landlord must take into account the practicality of tenant allowances, such as the amount he or she will contribute to construction build-out, free rent during a restaurant launch, and the added value a restaurant brings to a center. In general, restaurants, cafes and lounges attract traffic, providing more consumers for a retail space during less popular hours of the day, therefore upping space value for other tenants.

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Tiny, tasty and seductive, the gourmet cupcake is strengthening its hold over dessert lovers with specialty bakeries spreading over the region’s real estate — and waistlines.

Just Baked, a Livonia-based cupcake shop, is doubling its size, with two new locations joining stores in Novi and Ann Arbor. One store opens in Royal Oak on Wednesday, and another in Troy’s Somerset Collection opens next month.

Meanwhile, the Cupcake Station is feeding its expansion through franchising. Kerry Johnson, Michigan’s original cupcake king, is launching his franchise business across the Midwest in April.

Johnson believes the Birmingham cupcake shop could have as many as 10 franchisees by year’s end.

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Chef Todd Johnson, Patrick Stamper and Randy O’Dell opened Mezzanine Restaurant in September 2008 with the goal of using as many local and regional products as possible.

“We wanted to support our local economy and give back to the farmers,” Johnson said.

The concept appears to be working.

The owners of Mezzanine have been able to keep menu prices affordable and still be “profitable and productive,” Johnson said, though the three owners were skeptical at first about opening amid a recession.

“Over the nine months before we opened, the economy got worse and worse,” Stamper said. “We were terrified because eating out is one of the first things that people cut out of their budget. We have done well though. We consider ourselves fortunate.”

Their business model of serving mostly locally raised produce and locally produced wines and other ingredients earned them a Muse Award from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts last fall. The awards honor companies for exceptional creativity in business.

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Businesses built on strong financial footings survived the recession. Even little ones, for instance, the Vermilion restaurant in Chicago. Since its opening in 2003, the restaurant has grown robustly, right through the downturn.

The owner, India-born Rohini Dey, 41, academic and McKinsey & Co. consultant turned businesswoman, doesn’t disclose her recipes, but she does share her ingredients of running a successful business. “I believed in the niche. My prior background was unrelated to restaurants, it was in business consulting in the World Bank, but I strongly believed that there was an unmet niche in upscale Indian-influenced dining and I wanted to go entrepreneur,” Dey said.

She continued, “I did do my ground research for a couple of months, explored the financial and the concept viability before plunging in. I realized that restaurants have an extremely high failure rate, probably 90 percent. So it was a calculated risk.”

This risk has paid off. Dey now has two restaurants, one in Chicago’s River North and the other in Manhattan, that employ a total of 70. Each restaurant has revenue between $5 and $7 million.

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Stroll through many suburban downtowns and you’ll likely find empty retail space. Yet some of those same suburbs continue to boast a vibrant restaurant scene.

In west suburban La Grange, for example, there are 27 full-service restaurants in the eight-square-block village center alone, with two more under construction. Restaurant sales topped $19 million for the first three quarters of 2009, the latest figures available. Nearly all downtown restaurants are independently owned, and the clientele consists mainly of locals.

“People here like walking downtown and knowing their shop owners,” says Michael LaPidus, who opened Q BBQ on La Grange Road in October, selling hickory-smoked brisket, pulled-pork sandwiches and barbecued ribs.

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The sour economy is spoiling some people’s appetite for restaurant fare. Even so, restaurateurs are still launching new eateries in and around Chicago.

In fact, Chicago is seeing something of a food renaissance. Specialty groceries such as Pastoral, the French Market at Ogilvie Station and Green Grocer Chicago are providing organic and locally grown products to the city’s gourmet crowd. Local food-related Web sites such as Culinary Culture and Grub Street Chicago have become places to stay up-to-date on local restaurant news, trade recipes or chat about wine pairings.

Meanwhile, new eateries, from the Publican in West Town to Feast in the Gold Coast, keep springing up despite the worst economic downturn in decades.

The key to restaurant survival now, industry observers say, is delivering a well-prepared meal at the right price.

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Savas Bahtsevanos has owned restaurants since he was 24 years old. After an eight-year break, he decided he had one more restaurant left in him. He purchased Joe Kelly’s on Elm Street in Manchester and changed it to Tedy J’s M City Grille, and he brought on board his two sons, Ted (T.J.) and Alex, to make it a family operation.

“The price was right, and the restaurant was in the heart of downtown,” Bahtsevanos said. “It was an opportunity I couldn’t let it get away.”

Bahtsevanos’s beginning in the restaurant world is a common tale, starting as a dishwasher when he was 14 years old at the old Merrimack restaurant. His first place was Kirk’s Restaurant on Brown Ave. from the mid-1980s to the 1990s. He then owned Bahtsevanos Atlantic Steakhouse until 2002. After that he worked at various jobs while he focused on spending time with his family.

The restaurant urge hit Bahtsevanos again not long after Ted graduated from the University of New Hampshire’s Whittemore School of Business. It was a struggle for Ted to find work in the recession-driven economy, so he joined in on the new endeavor. And younger brother Alex is in his second year at UNH as a restaurant management major, so having him come on board part time completed the picture.

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Is it true that most restaurants fail within the first year in business?

Not if you talk to some of the area’s longtimers. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t hear those words of predicted failure.

“Every time I tried to get a loan from a bank, they’d tell me that; even though everybody has to eat,” said Fred Duerr, co-owner and executive chef of the Rising Sun Inn in Franconia Township, reflecting on when he made the big step from working as a cook to restaurant ownership.

Area restaurateurs are unanimous that the most critical elements of eatery operation are consistently good food and personalized service.

“The first thing is you have to pay attention to is your customers. Find out what they like, and serve them well,” said William Quigley, who has run the Washington House Restaurant in Sellersville in partnership with his wife, Elayne Brick, since 1985.

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As dozens of new licensed and unlicensed mobile vendors vie for spaces at San Francisco’s parks and sidewalks, and customers line up for their food, the city is coming to grips with the street food phenomenon.

Officials are concerned that unlicensed vendors are operating without health department inspections, and brick-and-mortar restaurants and shops complain that street merchants’ low costs give them an unfair advantage.

Yet the city doesn’t want to discourage mobile food vending, which can enliven neighborhoods and help entrepreneurs enter the marketplace more easily.

Bevan Dufty, a city supervisor whose district includes Dolores Park and the Castro, where street food sellers and restaurants have clashed, has organized a hearing for March 8. The city’s departments of planning, health, police and parks are all involved in enforcing rules on vending, and Mr. Dufty hopes to clarify and streamline the process.

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I didn’t have either the experience or the money to open a restaurant, but then I came up with a radical idea.

With the blessing of my wife Alison, I decided to turn our one-bedroom London flat into a restaurant, advertise it on the internet – and then see if anyone would turn up. And so the Savoy Truffle Supperclub was born.

The biggest challenge was coming up with the menu. I spent days thinking about what I would serve and testing out canapés in our tiny kitchen.

Anything that you find in a restaurant, we needed it. Alison spent the build-up to the big night begging furniture from friends, schlepping to shops in search of shot glasses in which to serve sorbet and buying napkins and glasses.

Transforming our flat into what passes for a restaurant is quite an upheaval. We have to lug our sofa into the bedroom, along with all of the other stuff that takes up space. The same goes for the kitchen. Bottles of vinegar, jars of marmalade and even the toaster are all stuffed into the boot of our old Vauxhall Astra.

As the first evening drew closer, I started to feel the pressure. It suddenly dawned on me that when you’re charging strangers for food, you really have to deliver. This is the big difference from cooking for mates. Strangers won’t feel obliged to be polite.

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The dining tables are set with linen tablecloths and fancy folded napkins, and an attentive waiter in a dress shirt and tie takes your order as the aromas of sizzling steak and seafood waft from the kitchen.

The elegant ambience says “fine-dining restaurant,” but this is actually a training lab for culinary students.

And for value-minded diners, it can be an enjoyable and relatively inexpensive meal — “five-star cuisine at two-star prices,” according to Frank Krause, academic director at the Art Institute of Salt Lake City’s International Culinary School in Draper.

The Art Institute’s student-run restaurant, The Savory Palate, offers a three-course lunch with beverage for $12.95 on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Since the school is currently focusing on international foods, lunch could be a taste of the Caribbean with black bean soup, jerk chicken with sweet potato cakes and bananas Foster for dessert — all prepared under the watchful eye of an instructor.

“We’re providing the students an opportunity to practice their craft and reinforce the techniques they would see in a restaurant,” said Krause. “And the customers get to see future culinarians being developed. Maybe one of these kids they’ve had a meal from might have a restaurant down the road someday.”

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How important are school projects? Ask Jeffrey Sloan, Sheila Laderberg or David McCabe, who together developed a restaurant concept for a graduate-level class at Cornell University. Today, they are partners in Punk’s Backyard Grill, a fast-casual concept the trio introduced to classmates in 2005.

With a year of business behind them, the trio is now seeking a second site. It will likely be outside of Annapolis, Md., where the first restaurant opened a year ago this month. Chain Leader recently grilled General Manager Laderberg, 29, who like her partners earned a master’s in management hospitality, about their first 12 months

First, how did you come up with the name?

Jeffrey has an uncle nicknamed Punk. Uncle Punk loves to cook out and entertain. We knew cooking out was an experience that everyone is familiar with, and Uncle Punk was representative of a welcoming grillmaster. We didn’t want to name the restaurant “Uncle Punk,” because it’s not about him but about inviting friends and neighbors over to your house and cooking.

Continue reading . . .

• 2010 RestaurantNews.com Franchise Guide
• How To Start A Restaurant Following A Profitable System
• Restaurant Franchising
• Quick Service Restaurants, Franchising, and Multi-Unit Chain Management
• Restaurant Planning, Design, and Construction: A Survival Manual for Owners, Operators, and Developers
• The Restaurant: From Concept to Operation
• The Restaurant Business Start-up Guide
• Design and Layout of Foodservice Facilities
• Design and Equipment for Restaurants and Foodservice: A Management View
• Successful Restaurant Design
• Contemporary Japanese Restaurant Design
• Restaurant Planning, Design, and Construction: A Survival Manual for Owners, Operators, and Developers
• Restaurants Clubs and Bars, Second Edition (Library of Planning & Design)
• The Restaurant Manager’s Handbook: How to Set Up, Operate, and Manage a Financially Successful Food Service Operation
• Running a Restaurant for Dummies
• Foodservice Organizations: A Managerial and Systems Approach
• How to Open a Financially Successful Pizza & Sub Restaurant
• Restaurant Financial Basics
• Opening a Restaurant or Other Food Business Starter Kit: How to Prepare a Restaurant Business Plan & Feasibility Study: With Companion CD-ROM
• The Encyclopedia of Restaurant Forms: A Complete Kit of Ready-to-Use Checklists, Worksheets and Training Aids for a Successful Food Service Operation: With Companion CD-ROM
• Start and Run Your Own Coffee Shop and Lunch Bar

Lung Shan is an unremarkable Chinese restaurant in the Mission District. But on Thursday and Saturday nights it’s rocked by an invasion of diners and chefs with much more than sweet and sour pork on their minds.

Each week, a different guest chef is pressed into service to feed the horde in the kitschily downscale dining room at Lung Shan.  On those nights, Lung Shan becomes Mission Street Food, one of a number of pop-up restaurants that have opened in the Bay Area over the last couple of years in spaces not normally used for fine dining.

By taking advantage of underused kitchens, pop-ups allow young chefs, many with experience in San Francisco’s most highly regarded restaurants, to experiment without the risk of bankruptcy. And unlike underground supper clubs, they’re completely legal.

Continue reading . . .

• 2010 RestaurantNews.com Franchise Guide
• How To Start A Restaurant Following A Profitable System
• Restaurant Franchising
• Quick Service Restaurants, Franchising, and Multi-Unit Chain Management
• Restaurant Planning, Design, and Construction: A Survival Manual for Owners, Operators, and Developers
• The Restaurant: From Concept to Operation
• The Restaurant Business Start-up Guide
• Design and Layout of Foodservice Facilities
• Design and Equipment for Restaurants and Foodservice: A Management View
• Successful Restaurant Design
• Contemporary Japanese Restaurant Design
• Restaurant Planning, Design, and Construction: A Survival Manual for Owners, Operators, and Developers
• Restaurants Clubs and Bars, Second Edition (Library of Planning & Design)
• The Restaurant Manager’s Handbook: How to Set Up, Operate, and Manage a Financially Successful Food Service Operation
• Running a Restaurant for Dummies
• Foodservice Organizations: A Managerial and Systems Approach
• How to Open a Financially Successful Pizza & Sub Restaurant
• Restaurant Financial Basics
• Opening a Restaurant or Other Food Business Starter Kit: How to Prepare a Restaurant Business Plan & Feasibility Study: With Companion CD-ROM
• The Encyclopedia of Restaurant Forms: A Complete Kit of Ready-to-Use Checklists, Worksheets and Training Aids for a Successful Food Service Operation: With Companion CD-ROM
• Start and Run Your Own Coffee Shop and Lunch Bar

Dallas Rose sits in a UK classroom 15 hours per week. He serves food at P.F. Chang’s 20 hours per week. And he spends 80 hours per week working as the co-owner and operator of Bunk’s Gourmet Burgers and Handcut Fries.

“Sleep is the cousin of death and being broke,” said Rose, a 23-year-old finance senior.

Rose partnered with Ryan Veith, former owner of Pita Pit and co-owner of Bunk’s, to open the restaurant in October 2009, specializing in the American classic: burgers and fries. The pair operates in the kitchen of Two Keys Tavern, but Rose hopes to expand with other Kentucky locations and start a nationwide franchise.

“I went into it thinking that I want to have 200-plus locations,” Rose said. “I don’t think Papa John started his (business) thinking he wanted to serve pizzas at his dad’s bar for the rest of his life.”

Continue reading . . .

• 2010 RestaurantNews.com Franchise Guide
• How To Start A Restaurant Following A Profitable System
• Restaurant Franchising
• Quick Service Restaurants, Franchising, and Multi-Unit Chain Management
• Restaurant Planning, Design, and Construction: A Survival Manual for Owners, Operators, and Developers
• The Restaurant: From Concept to Operation
• The Restaurant Business Start-up Guide
• Design and Layout of Foodservice Facilities
• Design and Equipment for Restaurants and Foodservice: A Management View
• Successful Restaurant Design
• Contemporary Japanese Restaurant Design
• Restaurant Planning, Design, and Construction: A Survival Manual for Owners, Operators, and Developers
• Restaurants Clubs and Bars, Second Edition (Library of Planning & Design)
• The Restaurant Manager’s Handbook: How to Set Up, Operate, and Manage a Financially Successful Food Service Operation
• Running a Restaurant for Dummies
• Foodservice Organizations: A Managerial and Systems Approach
• How to Open a Financially Successful Pizza & Sub Restaurant
• Restaurant Financial Basics
• Opening a Restaurant or Other Food Business Starter Kit: How to Prepare a Restaurant Business Plan & Feasibility Study: With Companion CD-ROM
• The Encyclopedia of Restaurant Forms: A Complete Kit of Ready-to-Use Checklists, Worksheets and Training Aids for a Successful Food Service Operation: With Companion CD-ROM
• Start and Run Your Own Coffee Shop and Lunch Bar

In 1994, Hicham Khodr and Gabriel Saliba opened a Lebanese restaurant on Metairie Road. They called it Byblos. Who could have predicted that it would launch a restaurant empire?

“Nobody had ever made it in that location. Nobody had heard of Lebanese or Mediterranean food back then, ” Saliba said. “The first few years were tough.”

It didn’t take long, though, before first-time customers became regulars and people began traveling from Uptown and even across the lake for kibbeh, labneb and baba ghanoush. The owners decided the city needed another Byblos. So, in 1999, they hired Tarek Tay, who had a hotel and restaurant management degree from Florida State University, dubbed themselves the 3 of a Kind restaurant group and made plans for another location.

Today, 3 of a Kind runs nine restaurants in two states, with two more restaurants expected to open by summer.

Continue reading . . .

• 2010 RestaurantNews.com Franchise Guide
• How To Start A Restaurant Following A Profitable System
• Restaurant Franchising
• Quick Service Restaurants, Franchising, and Multi-Unit Chain Management
• Restaurant Planning, Design, and Construction: A Survival Manual for Owners, Operators, and Developers
• The Restaurant: From Concept to Operation
• The Restaurant Business Start-up Guide
• Design and Layout of Foodservice Facilities
• Design and Equipment for Restaurants and Foodservice: A Management View
• Successful Restaurant Design

Bright as it began, the decade ended darkly for David Yeo. The high-flying finance lawyer who became a Hong Kong restaurant guru opened his first Aqua in 2000. It was smooth sailing, and Yeo proceeded to add more than a dozen stylish restaurants and pubs on both sides of the harbor. In 2006 he launched Aqua Luna, a custom-built replica of an old Chinese junk, outfitted as a sailing version of his trendy clubs.

Yeo’s flair for experimentation produced zesty forms of Japanese, Spanish and contemporary Chinese cuisine that wowed Hong Kong and international palates. Hutong, in Kowloon, earned a Michelin ( MGDDF.PK – news – people ) star in 2008 and kept it last year. But he also owns an unfailing design vision, so while the dishes were hits, it was more the inventive, elegant decor that gave Yeo’s restaurants their buzz. He admits to a gift: “I walk in a room and can see the restaurant.”

Then in 2008 he expanded abroad, opening the first of his Beijing bars and restaurants on Aug. 8, a most auspicious date. The Olympics opened on the same day–8-8-08–triple lucky to the Chinese. Last September he realized a big personal dream, opening two restaurants and a bar in London, where he began his career.

Continue reading . . .

• Restaurant Planning, Design, and Construction: A Survival Manual for Owners, Operators, and Developers
• The Restaurant: From Concept to Operation
• The Restaurant Business Start-up Guide
• Design and Layout of Foodservice Facilities
• Design and Equipment for Restaurants and Foodservice: A Management View
• Successful Restaurant Design

Hugh Fowler rolled out his first restaurant chain Café Pasta more than 20 years ago. Now, as managing director of CG Restaurants, he’s learning some new tricks as he masterminds the expansion of Fire & Stone.

On Fire & Stone’s exotic pizza menu and expansion plans:

“You go to all these gastropubs out in the country and they have everything on their menus, lots of Thai food, plenty of foreign dishes, and I think pizza with all sorts of different flavours is not such a hard thing to sell outside London. I don’t think it’s too challenging.”

“We’re hoping to do at least six [new Fire & Stone restaurants] in the next 18 months. If Portsmouth works well, then we’ll have the confidence to go further into the provinces.”

“I think it’s always been hard to find good sites. Every area is crowded with the key brands. You’ve got to be ready to move quickly when you find the right sites.”

Continue reading . . .

• 2010 RestaurantNews.com Franchise Guide
• How To Start A Restaurant Following A Profitable System
• Restaurant Franchising
• Quick Service Restaurants, Franchising, and Multi-Unit Chain Management
• Restaurant Planning, Design, and Construction: A Survival Manual for Owners, Operators, and Developers
• The Restaurant: From Concept to Operation
• The Restaurant Business Start-up Guide

The kitchen is bustling with activity. Busy hands are transporting hot plates and cool buckets of ice as quickly as possible. Voices are calling out across the room to communicate orders. Pots and pans are clanging. Fresh, steaming plates of food are placed on a shelf and almost immediately taken to hungry restaurant-goers.

This could be a typical kitchen at any restaurant, but today it is the scene at Lakewood High School’s new student-run restaurant, Ranger Café @ West Shore. The 50-seat restaurant had its grand opening last week.

“The whole idea is to make this just like the real world,” said chef Rob McGorray, head instructor of the West Shore Career-Technical District’s culinary arts program. “This is not your usual class. The students are wearing uniforms, working in the kitchen and waiting on the general public. It’s the real thing.”

Continue reading . . .

John Panos didn’t plan to go into the restaurant business.

Growing up, he’d seen the hard work and long hours his father, Art Panos, put into the Liberty Family Dining restaurant and decided it wasn’t for him.

He went to college, received a degree in finance and got a job in the financial industry. Then the industry tanked, and he found himself without a job.

Now Panos, 30, finds himself the owner of his father’s old restaurant, which reopened last summer under the same name.

“If someone would have told me that at 30 I would be owning this restaurant, I would have told them they were crazy,” Panos said.

Continue reading . . .

• 2010 RestaurantNews.com Franchise Guide
• How To Start A Restaurant Following A Profitable System
• Restaurant Franchising
• Quick Service Restaurants, Franchising, and Multi-Unit Chain Management
• Restaurant Planning, Design, and Construction: A Survival Manual for Owners, Operators, and Developers
• The Restaurant: From Concept to Operation
• The Restaurant Business Start-up Guide

Wednesday’s lunch menu for Estero High teachers featured gazpacho, a baked potato bar, chicken quesadillas, Spanish rice and flan, all made by the school’s culinary students.

By making and selling the meals three days a week, Culinary Operations 2 and 3 students fulfill the course’s entrepreneurship requirements and raise money for the program.

Estero and Riverdale High in east Fort Myers are the only traditional high schools in the Lee County district that offer a culinary curriculum.

On March 27, six Estero High students will be the first in the district to participate in the 10th annual ProStart Culinary Team Competitions at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando.

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The new restaurant in the East River shopping center is nothing like the fast-food takeouts that are the norm in Washington’s Ward 7. There will be seafood and steaks, all priced under $20, for Mom and Dad; fried chicken for the kids. The space, with its pressed-tin ceiling and shiny black granite bar, will also offer something else the neighborhood needs: jobs. Eventually, 45 people, mostly residents, will be trained as waiters, hosts and cooks. And, as at the owner’s other restaurants, the staff will be eligible for bonuses and will get health-care coverage and guaranteed hours.

The restaurant, slated to open by March 1, is Ray’s: The Steaks at East River. The vision — of a restaurant that serves as anchor and hub of a community — is that of its owner, Michael Landrum.

If you follow the Washington dining scene, you’ve probably heard a lot of other things about Landrum, and not much of it paints him as a pillar of the community. The 44-year-old is more famous for throwing diners out of his restaurants than welcoming them in. (The incomplete party that dares to complain about not being seated? They’re outta here!) He’s also notorious for refusing to cook certain cuts beyond medium, for his almost religious opposition to decor and for barring The Post’s Marc Fisher from his restaurants because he didn’t like a column Fisher wrote. As he prepares to open the new Ray’s: The Steaks and three other places, can diners reconcile the conventional wisdom about Landrum with the picture he’s trying to project?

Continue reading . . .

• How To Start A Restaurant Following A Profitable System
• Quick Service Restaurants, Franchising, and Multi-Unit Chain Management
• Restaurant Planning, Design, and Construction: A Survival Manual for Owners, Operators, and Developers
• The Restaurant: From Concept to Operation
• Design and Layout of Foodservice Facilities
• Design and Equipment for Restaurants and Foodservice: A Management View
• Successful Restaurant Design

It’s just below freezing on a weekday morning downtown, and Thomas Acito’s generator is giving him fits.

This is a problem. No generator means no exhaust fan and no lights for Café de Wheels, the mobile restaurant that Acito and chef Mike Katz launched last month.

The generator is on, but the lights are not. Katz pulls a big plug out of the truck’s interior wall. The prongs look good; nothing is bent. He plugs it in and urges Acito to try again. Seconds later, the lights come on as the generator hums to life. Café de Wheels is back in business.

“The first thing we do every day,” Acito said with a laugh, “is run around like a bunch of chickens.”

Continue reading . . .

For a lot of people, it’s been a miserable winter, with snow, subzero temperatures, and more snow.

For Mike Craighill, it has been good weather.

He and his wife, Antonia, run two Soup and Such restaurants, their newest one in downtown Billings.

“Winter is definitely our busiest time,” Craighill said. “Even though we have a salad bar with great summer fare, what do you think of on a cold day? Soup.”

With a popular restaurant in the Heights, the Craighills started looking for a second location on the West End. When they learned a prime downtown spot was available, they were at first a little leery. Lots of restaurants have come and gone downtown.

But, the new store, which opened October 2008 at 2716 Third Ave., has worked out beyond their expectations.

Continue reading . . .

• 2010 RestaurantNews.com Franchise Guide
• How To Start A Restaurant Following A Profitable System
• The Restaurant: From Concept to Operation
• Successful Restaurant Design
• Restaurant Financial Basics

While staff put finishing touches on his new restaurant, Cat City Grill, Vance Martin weighed the relative merits of opening 24 hours after Valentine’s Day.

In this grim economic climate, what’s remarkable is that Martin, owner-chef of Lili’s Bistro just down the street on Fort Worth’s Magnolia Avenue, is expanding his business horizons at all.

And he’s not alone.

Another Magnolia restaurant, Scampi’s, is enlarging its serving area and adding a bar. And new to the Tarrant market are the Cowtown Diner downtown and Wildwood Grill in Southlake, not to mention out-of-town ventures like Cooper’s barbecue, from Llano, opening in the Stockyards. From Austin comes Mandola’s, moving into Arlington, and El Arroyo, in southwest Fort Worth. Add to that Dallas concepts expanding to Fort Worth, like Tillman’s Roadhouse near West Seventh Street.

BJ’s, a California chain featuring beer from Houston’s Saint Arnold microbrewery, added area restaurants at North East Mall in November and yet another at Alliance Town Center.

Houlihan’s, a more refined version of the 1970s chain, is back with geographically wide-ranging dishes in a casual-dining restaurant at Arlington Highlands.

But for all the openings, the economy also claimed victims in Dallas-Fort Worth’s ever-more-competitive environment, which boasts a full-service restaurant for every 299 households.

Continue reading . . .

• 2010 RestaurantNews.com Franchise Guide
• How To Start A Restaurant Following A Profitable System
• Restaurant Franchising
• Quick Service Restaurants, Franchising, and Multi-Unit Chain Management
• The Restaurant: From Concept to Operation

Charles Phan had pretty much failed at every thing he’d tried.

So when he decided to build a world-class Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco at a time when ethnic-food places were confined to ramshackle neighborhood storefronts, and prepare all the dishes himself, few thought he’d succeed. In fact, it seemed downright presumptuous for a man whose sole restaurant experience until then was busing tables.

“The bank wouldn’t even give me a loan because they thought it was such a stupid idea,” Phan said.

It turned out the bank and other naysayers were wrong. The project, known as the Slanted Door, opened in 1995 and became a worldwide destination restaurant, the flagship of a multimillion-dollar enterprise.

Continue reading . . .

• Restaurant Planning, Design, and Construction: A Survival Manual for Owners, Operators, and Developers
• The Restaurant: From Concept to Operation
• The Restaurant Business Start-up Guide
• Design and Layout of Foodservice Facilities
• Design and Equipment for Restaurants and Foodservice: A Management View
• Successful Restaurant Design

Last Saturday afternoon at the Cooper Square Hotel on the Bowery, some 60 staffers sat down for a marathon tasting orchestrated by the chef Scott Conant, who will soon open a new restaurant called Faustina there. Amid the aroma of fresh paint, the whine of a circular saw, and the sight of artisans applying silver gilt to various surfaces, Faustina’s waiters and dishwashers sampled olive-oil-poached sardines, veal porterhouse steaks and tajarin pasta with tomato and sea urchin (which Mr. Conant described as “sex in a bowl”).

“I feel like I’m a contestant on my own Food Network show,” Mr. Conant said, referring to “24 Hour Restaurant Battle,” a new program he hosts that allots competitors precisely one day to whip up a new restaurant, from concept to menu to décor.

This is the era of high-velocity restaurant makeovers, where noteworthy establishments are born, or reborn, in the time it takes to make a batch of crostini. In September, Ed’s Chowder House rose from the ashes of a steakhouse, Center Cut, which had closed less than a month earlier. In San Francisco, the Australian chef Luke Mangan’s restaurant, South, closed shop on Dec. 19 and will reopen in February — minus Mr. Mangan — as Marlowe, a “friendly neighborhood” bistro. Meanwhile, a Guinness record nomination is in order for the Tasting Kitchen in Venice, Calif., which managed to open all of six days after taking over from the A. K. Restaurant Bar + Grill last summer.

Continue reading . . .

• Restaurants That Work: Case Studies of the Best in the Industry
• The Restaurant: From Concept to Operation
• Design and Layout of Foodservice Facilities