Dining styles of the rich and famous

Nation's Business, May, 1997 by Roberta Maynard

Carving a niche and serving it; getting the word out; building team spirit by bringing in the family.

Attracting celebrities as regular customers can give a business, particularly a restaurant, a certain cachet With that in mind, Larry Work and Michael Sternberg opened Sam & Harry's in Washington, D.C., nearly seven years ago. It has become a haven for luminaries.

Before the partners opened their restaurant (which is named for their grandfathers), they developed a mailing list that included celebrities from Capitol Hill to Beverly Hills. The two sent 600 of those people a survey on dining preferences--whether smoking sections were preferred over nonsmoking, for instance, or booths over chairs. Respondents were promised they'd get a free bottle of champagne on their first visit.

As the partners hoped, the effort generated interest (525 surveys were returned) and, later. business.

Since then, the restaurant has attracted frequent travelers--some of them celebrities--through airline-magazine ads jointly sponsored by various Washington restaurants. Another magnet for celebrities has been a large charity event that the partners host each year.

Sternberg says that by developing good relationships with the concierges of fewer than a dozen select local hotels, the restaurant has been able to meet most well-heeled visitors' preferences and special requests.

Getting repeat business from such customers depends, of course, on offering superior food--Sam & Harry's has won many awards for its cuisine--and on a certain type of service. The cornerstone of that service, Sternberg has found, is discretion. "In Washington, our clientele want to know that they can have a business lunch or dinner and not have it in the papers the next day," he says. Discretion is addressed in the restaurant's training manual and during each employee's first week on the job.

The training also builds strong telephone skills. For example, when a hotel concierge called to say that actor Nicolas Cage was looking for a restaurant that served flank steak, the Sam & Harry's employee who answered the phone readily agreed to provide it even though flank steak was not on the menu. Cage dined at the restaurant that night and returned the following two nights, ordering flank steak each time.

Although some restaurants pick up the check for celebrities an enticement for them to visit, Sternberg long ago decided against doing that. The reason, he says, is that celebrities can afford to pay. And the policy doesn't appear to have hurt business.