Art museums sculpt profits from new medium: foodservice

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan 8, 1996 by Carolyn Walkup

CHICAGO -- Art museum foodservice operators are finding that finearts patrons also enjoy fine food, an amenity that can supplement beleaguered museums' budgets.

Art museum foodservice increasingly is being viewed as a profit center, and catered special events and restaurants can provide the museums with revenue they can use to support and expand their collections. The Art Institute of Chicago, during its recently ended four-month showing of "Claude Monet: 1840-1926," attended by 965,000 viewers, took in $5 million in foodservice sales -- roughly $3 million more than volume for the same four months in 1994.

"There are a lot of museums that could do themselves a service by better educating the public that a museum has a lot more than of dogs and hamburgers," said Theodore Spiegel, executive director of special events and chief of protocol at the Art Institute. A couple million dollars in profit is nothing to laugh at."

In these days of federal budget cutting for the arts, museums are seeking alternative revenue sources. In 1995 arts funding from the National Endowment for the Arts' budget was cut 39 percent; The National Endowment for the Humanities, 37 percent; and the Institute of Museum Services, 27 percent.

Catered events typically are bigger money-makers than art museum restaurants and cafeterias. The Art Institute of Chicago is sought out for special-event catering by everyone from foreign dignitaries and royalty to local businesses and professional groups, Spiegel said.

"All of our special events have to have gallery viewing with them to expose our Art Institute to the world," Spiegel noted. He built special-events catering from scratch when he came to the museum in 1976 from the Smithsonian Institution.

In those days the Art Institute's restaurants were losing about $300,000 a year, he said. He projects that gross foodservice sales this fiscal year will be in the $8 million range, up from $5 million last year.

Spiegel's department operates three restaurants: Restaurant on the Park, a moderately priced white-tablecloth operation; the Garden Restaurant, a seasonal full-service outdoor cafe; and a quick-service contemporary cafeteria. To extend the garden's season during the Monet exhibit into November, it was tented and heated with portable heaters.

Several special menu items that were inspired by the "Cooking Journal of Claude Monet" were added in the restaurant. They included breast of free-range chicken with crayfish and mussels with bouillabaisse sauce and white-bean roasted pepper puree and another entree of tournedos of beef Monet on Roquefort croutons with haystack potatoes, glazed pearl onions and Bordelaise sauce.

Spiegel reported that during the Monet exhibit average cover counts were 1,100 in the cafeteria, compared with a normal average of 400; 900 a day in the garden, compared with 575; and 425 for lunch in the restaurant, compared with a 140 average. The special-events department catered 241 events, including seven for more than 1,000 people.

Other art museums from around the country also are banking on attracting attention for their catering and restaurant capabilities as well as for their collections. The Dallas Museum of Art's exclusive caterer, Dani Foods, has hired a top designer to redesign the restaurants and recently hired two well-known chefs, Kent Rathburn and George Brown, formerly of Dallas' Melrose Hotel.

Since taking over foodservice two years ago at New York's Museum of Modern Art, Sevico Co. has established its Sette MoMA restaurant as a restaurant destination. At least half of the customers are regulars who come in strictly for lunch or dinner, said Gian Franco, manager.

Before Sevico took over and boosted annual sales to $4 million, foodservice was limited to a cafeteria. The upscale regional Italian restaurant has check averages of $37 for dinner and $25 for lunch.

The Sheraton Hotel Towers in Seattle is the foodservice contractor for the Seattle Art Museum in the central downtown. The museum hosts all kinds of meetings and social events in addition to operating a cafe that caters to a regular clientele.

Catering clients pay room rental fees that go into the museum's coffers, said Steve Johanson, cafe and catering manager.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston expects to benefit from extra foodservice sales during its current special exhibit, "Impressions of France," said Tonie Hansen, manager for Daka Restaurants, the museum's contractor for almost 10 years. The restaurant menu changes periodically to reflect the themes of special exhibits.

Catering revenue has risen an average of 20 percent annually since the Boston museum opened special events to the public, instead of restricting them to members. The museum receives a percentage of catering and restaurant sales;

Special exhibits like the Monet in Chicago also can benefit surrounding restaurants. Out-of-towners who came to Chicago for the exhibit spent an estimated $22 million on restaurants outside of the museum.