Western Restaurant Show heats up San Francisco

Nation's Restaurant News, Dec 9, 1996

SAN FRANCISCO - In numbers that haven't been seen since 1990, California operators scouted the recent Western Restaurant Show here for equipment, updates on legislative issues and tips on how to sell their establishments to the dining public more effectively.

Staged annually by the California Restaurant Association, which celebrates its 90th anniversary in 1996, the Western Restaurant show alternates annually between San Francisco and Los Angeles. It is the country's second-largest foodservice industry trade show, behind the National Restaurant Association's annual May convention in Chicago.

The CRA calculated attendance for the three-day show at 29,990, up from 26,349 in 1994, the last time the event was held in San Francisco. While down slightly from attendance of 30,105 in 1990 - the year that saw a statewide recession take hold and the start of a long string of natural and man-made disasters, including earthquakes, fires, floods and riots - this year's attendance figures moved "back to where we want them," a CRA source noted.

Referring to the educational seminars, panels and presentations at the 1996 show, one CRA official reported, "Anything that had to do with marketing was standing-room only."

In conjunction with the show, the CRA Educational Foundation held its annual Hall of Fame induction luncheon. Honored this year for their contributions to the foundation and education in general were San Francisco hotelier Paul R. Handlery, chairman and chief executive of Handlery Hotels; and S. J. "Bill" Monro, retired San Francisco Bay Area restaurateur, coffee-shop innovator and a limited partner in Stars restaurant in Palo Alto, Calif.

Handlery is on the advisory council for several California colleges and universities with hospitality management programs, including the McLaren School of Business at the University of San Francisco and Cal Poly Pomona in Southern California. He is the past president of several hotel industry organizations, including the American Hotel & Motel Association.

People who pull themselves up by the bootstraps are among his biggest inspirations to work on behalf of education, Handlery said. He told the tale of a restaurant server and single mother who successfully parlayed a management-school scholarship into a job that let her better care for her family.

"I think I'm a pretty tough guy, but when you hear stories like that it makes you want to do the best job you can to make these scholarships available," the hotelier remarked.

A 1943 graduate of the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University, Handlery became vice president of Handlery Hotels - a company founded by his father - after being honorably discharged from the Quartermaster Corps of the U.S. Army in 1946

Monro - a past president of the CRA and director of the National Restaurant Association, among other posts with industry trade groups - has owned numerous restaurants, coffee shops and quick-service restaurants in Northern and Southern California since shortly after World War II. Among them are Biff's in Oakland, Clementine's in Beverly Hills and Pam Pam East in San Francisco.

Pam Pam East, a "California style" 24-hour coffee shop that opened in 1969, featured oversized hanging ferns, decorative lighting, Parisian theater posters, a cocktail lounge with photos of theater stars on the walls and a musical backdrop of Broadway show tunes. The concept went over so well with diners that Pam Pam East was at one point the "highest-volume" coffee shop in Northern California," the restaurateur said.

"We've come a long way in the restaurant industry, now one of the nation's largest employers, particularly for minorities and women," Monro said. "I salute the excellent work of the foundation, which is responsible for awarding grants and scholarships to hospitality-industry students, educators and trade schools - the very individuals and institutions that will lead our economically vital industry through the challenging new century."

Continuing with a program that began in 1991 of recognizing outstanding hourly workers, the CRA named Fructuoso "Toto" Contreras front-of-the-house Foodservice Employee of the Year and Ramon Soria back-of-the-house Foodservice Employee of the Year. The two were chosen from a pool of nominees made by CRA member operations and were rated on a variety of criteria, including mastery of position, contribution to employee morale and contribution to the prestige and public image of foodservice.

Contreras, 45, a native of Chihuahua, Mexico, has worked in foodservice for 27 years and at Vanessi's for 23 years. Soria, 33, a native of Nayarit, Mexico, is a saute cook at Lawry's Five Crowns in Corona Del Mar, Calif., where he has worked since 1987.

CRA officials have described the awards as a symbolic acknowledgment of the contributions of California's legions of hourly employees - the heart of the state's foodservice work force of 788,000 people. The awards were given out during a CRA reception, at which attendees heard National Restaurant Association chairman W. W. "Biff" Naylor declare "war" on lawmakers, unions and other groups attempting to bully the industry.