Ark plugs 'leak,' plots new ventures. 'We have not lost momentum,' successful Manhattan restaurateur Mike Weinstein insists after shakey ventures into New Jersey

Nation's Restaurant News, March 9, 1987 by Joe Edwards

In the quarter ended Dec. 27, however, Ark lost $78,718 on a 7.4-percent rise in net sales, to $8.5 million. The loss was connected with the closings of the New Jersey restaurants. The company expects to return to profitability before the end of the June quarter, Weinstein said.

Meeting for control

Bogen, a 55-year-old restaurateur who founded Ark with Weinstein, meets weekly with his managers to focus on cost controls and any operational problems. The partners share responsibilities, but, Bogen explained, Weinstein is more involved in anticipated operations, Bogen with ongoing ones.

Among the company's "anticipated operations" are plans to expand the Big Kahuna concept to Boston and Philadelphia if volumes continue strong in New York. Ark is negotiating the acquisition of two existing Manhattan restaurants and continues to discuss the possibility of opening a restaurant in Harlem. It recently signed a contract to manage Woody's, a struggling 90-seat restaurant on Seventh Avenue South formerly called Montana Eve.

Smart real estate

Wall Streeter Lipton said he remains very bullish on the company. The ill-fated excursion into the suburbs cost it time but very little money, he said, adding, "It's making money; it's in sound financial shape." He called Bogen and Weinstein "really smart real-estate people."

Indeed, Weinstein's uncanny ability to pick "emerging neighborhoods"--a euphemistic phrase for rundown areas of the city about to be discovered by upwardly mobile professionals--and open successful restaurants in them has been repeated several times since his first venture, Museum Cafe, opened on then-seedy Columbus Avenue in 1975. Columbus Avenue is now a major retailing area.

Ark also opened America on East 18th Street in 1984, when that neighborhood, known as the Flatiron District, was fairly deserted. Numerous other operators followed. And last fall Ark took another real-estate risk when it opened B. Smithhs on a forlorn street corner in Hell's Kitchen. Weinstein said he expects the restaurant to begin turning a profit in a few months.

Savoring success

"These are the successes you really savor because you've gone counter to conventional wisdom," Weinstein said of Museum Cafe, America, and B. Smith's.

Weinstein and Bogen, however, have come to the realization that they cannot "hit a home run every time." But Weinstein said he firmly believes that "restaurants will succeed if you give value and if you put them where there are people. You usually can't control whether you hit a single or a home run."

Even though New York City is "overcrowded with restaurants now," he said, "there are plenty of opportunities. We have a tremendous edge in terms of knowledge, experience, and creativity in house. We can grow by applying that to other people's problems. but before we do that, we should make sure our own house is in order."

A can't-miss but did

One very unorderly aspect of the Ark house was Betty Brown's Broadway Dining, which on first glance looked like a can't-miss concept in a burgeoning area north of Houston Street on lower Broadway. The area is crowded with East Village artists, New York University students, and young suburban shoppers drawn by Tower Records, Unique Clothing and other high-volume, one-of-a-kind retail outlets. Opening an old-fashioned diner-cum-malt shop with a $10 average check--a New York version of, say, Rich Melman's Ed Debevic's in Chicago--struck Ark as a sound idea.