Hot Concepts! winners share tips for marketing diverse brands

Nation's Restaurant News, Oct 13, 2003 by Milford Prewitt

In the years since the Multi-Unit Foodservice Operators conference started spotlighting up-and-coming brands dubbed "hot concepts," rarely has the spectrum of restaurants honored been as diversified as this year's crop of winners.

Consider Ted's Montana Grill, named after billionaire entrepreneur and CNN founder Ted Turner, who entered foodservice with a 12-unit casual-dinnerhouse chain that serves bison as its core protein. Then there's Grand Lux Care, an offshoot of its parent, "The Cheesecake Factory, which now has three units and a more upscale dining room atmosphere and higher price point than the company's flagship concept. And don't forget Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers, the 14-unit, primarily southern-Louisiana-based quick-serve brand with a secret sauce that keeps customers faithful and dependable.

Also consider Fogo de Chao, a four-unit Brazilian-style churrascaria based in Dallas, which intends to expand.

And rounding out the list is Smokey Bones BBQ, the newest full-service restaurant chain launched four years ago by Darden Restaurants, best known for its Olive Garden, Red Lobster and Bahama Breeze brands.

If this past summer's sales season was any harbinger of future success, the Hot Concepts! panelists were unanimous in boasting particularly strong same-store sales gains despite the continued soft economic recovery, high unemployment, bad weather, high gasoline prices and a historic blackout.

Turner, who gave a keynote speech the day after the Hot Concepts! panel, said developing Ted's Montana Grill into a national chain, possibly with as many as 500 units, through his Ted Turner Enterprises Inc., will be the driving ambition of his remaining working years.

Now 65, Turner, who at one time was the vice chairman of AOL Time Warner, said he created the restaurant in concert with George McKerrow Jr., president and chief executive of Ted's Montana Grill and founder of the Long-Horn Steakhouse chain.

"Fact of the manner is, I needed a job," Turner said, joking in his signature Georgian accent. "It's kind of hard getting a job when you are 65. Nobody wants to hire you."

Having long invested in bison herds in the West, Turner said he knew that he could harvest the animals to produce an alternative to steakhouses by serving a protein that was lower in fat with a richer flavor profile.

At the same time, Turner said the restaurant would do a good turn for the environment in that demand for bison meat will help propagate a species that not too long ago was nearly extinct. He owns 32,000 head of bison on 14 ranches.

On the panel McKerrow said the brand is attracting consumers without commercials but with bison meat--now accounting for 57 percent of sales--and the distinctive buildings that play into an outdoor, Western rodeo motif.

"The 800-pound gorilla for any growing brand is when to do a commercial," he said.

"We will open 20 to 24 stores next year. I think we have a unique product, the great American bison, an underutilized protein," he added.

But McKerrow admitted that with bison as the primary, protein on the menu, he knows Ted's Montana Grill may not attract some restaurantgoers.

"I guess the downside is that I don't want to see the veto vote, but then again I don't know if we have to be all things to all people," he said.

Todd Graves, whose business card lists him as "founder, chairman, CEO, president, fry cook and cashier" of Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers in Baton Rouge, La., said offering just one protein has not proved to be a burden for his quick-serve concept.

Having opened five of the chain's 14 units this year--all in southwestern Louisiana--Graves is looking to Arkansas and Texas next year and the possibility of franchising.

"I don't see having a single protein on the menu as a challenge," he said. "We are talking about chicken, a product that is universally accepted, and it's a quality product served at a fast-food pace. If we did burgers or something, then we are talking holding times and all of that."

Panel moderator Ellen Koteff, executive editor of Nation's Restaurant News, pressed Graves to explain what was in the sauce that gave the fingers their unique flavor, but Graves demurred.

"It's a secret," he said, "but I'm glad you enjoy them."

A single-item menu is hardly what gives Fogo De Chao any aggravation. The restaurant chain boasts dozens of items--not to mention a 30-plus-selection salad bar--served up in the traditional Brazilian, all-you-can-eat format that is called churrascaria. Pork, beef, lamb, chicken and even seafood are sliced from skewers onto a guest's plate for a check average of approximately $65.

Servers greet guests at the table donned in the costumes of gauchos, the traditional cowboys of Brazil's grazing lands.

Although owner Jorge Ongaratto, who also has three units in Brazil, said not coming to the United States years earlier was a major mistake, he intends to make up for lost time. "We took too long moving to the U.S.," Ongaratto said, drawing a few laughs from the audience.