Restaurant Rewind

Plenty of restaurant upstarts pin their hopes on building a better mousetrap. They’re not so much bringing something new to the market as promising an improvement over what consumers already know and love. Look at the better-burger pack, or the now-wheezing fast-casual pizza market. 

TGI Fridays took a sledgehammer to that approach. It owed its initial success to mating rituals and sheer irreverence. No entrepreneur had dared mine that potential before. Young consumers had never seen anything like it, and they embraced the rebellion with zeal.

Then the concept spent the next six decades trying to scrub its image and temper its points of difference for the sake of mainstream success and scalability.

This week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind provides a condensed version of the journey, starting with the now-forgotten days when Fridays raised parents’ eyebrows—along with young adults’ hopes for a hookup. 

It’s also a reminder of the challenges that face heavily themed restaurant operations as they age. 

So pull up a barstool, top off the Harvey Wallbanger and give a listen. 

More than three decades have passed since the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak, yet it’s still the yardstick used to gauge the impact of a food-safety crisis. Hours after McDonald’s revealed its problems with Quarter Pounders, commentators were already recalling the contamination in the Northwest that left four children dead, another 200 persons permanently impaired and nearly 750 sickened in total.

The numbers, though daunting, don’t capture the full import of the catastrophe. Indeed, more consumers were stricken in the series of food-safety calamities that badly tarnished Chipotle starting nine years ago. The Jack in the Box crisis was an industrywide wake-up call, the catalyst that elevated food safety from a mild concern to a top priority for the business. 

What exactly happened at the 73 Jack in the Box restaurants in the Pacific Northwest? This week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind looks back at what’s near-universally seen as a turning point for the industry. Give a listen for a deeper understanding about why the whole business gulped when a deadly bacteria made its return.

The widespread closings announced this week by family-dining chains underscore the transformation that’s underway in that venerable segment of the restaurant business.

Old-guard brands are hacking off the dead wood of their systems in hopes of clearing the way for fresh growth. They’re striving to recapture the momentum that kept them kings of the sector for decades. The greybeards are painfully aware of the challenge for market dominance that’s coming from a pack of bright, fresh upstarts that serve only breakfast, lunch and brunch.

The rise of those daytime dining concepts seems recent. But as this week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind reports, the notion of a restaurant ending its business day mid-afternoon has been with us at least since the 1970s and possibly from the '60s. The pioneer is still in operation today, with about four dozen restaurants open, yet few in the business are familiar with Le Peep or the historical role it played.  

Nor do they likely remember the character who briefly made the brand one of the industry’s hottest concepts. 

Press play to learn about Le Peep’s 14 minutes of fame and the man who turned the spotlight on it, Allen Bernstein. 

If the restaurant industry is such a horrible place to make a living, why do so many youngsters follow their parents into the business? 

It’s a question that blunts dismissal of the field as the career choice of last resort. The second generation knows exactly what the work entails, having witnessed it firsthand, drawbacks and all, in the people they love. 

Yet they plunge ahead, also appreciating the enormous positives that are seldom factored into the public’s perceptions of the trade. It’s why family trees with roots in the business often sport children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews who followed their elders into the field. Why, for instance, has the Brennan clan become synonymous with New Orleans’ celebrated restaurant business?

Sure, sometimes it’s a matter of the echo generations having a money machine handed to them. It’s easy to see why three generations of Snyders have stuck with In-N-Out, or why a Marriott is chairman of the lodging empire his grandfather founded. 

But Russ Bendel doesn’t own The Habit, and his son is following in the industry veteran’s footsteps. And there are enough similar examples to disprove the generalization that second-generation restaurateurs had their fates sealed by the success of their parents. As this week’s edition of Restaurant Rewind reports, youngsters following in the path of their elders often prove they’re the ones who turn a so-so operation into a success. 

The episode examines the phenomenon of multi-generational restaurant families and why the industry has fostered so many outright dynasties. The sheer number of examples—from the Grotes to the Ingrams to the Karchers to the Berkowitzes—shows there’s something about the business that often keeps it in the family. And it’s kryptonite to the widespread perception that the restaurant business is a career path of last resort. 

The devastating force of Hurricane Milton has drawn comparisons to the fury Hurricane Katrina unleashed on New Orleans and its famed restaurants nearly two decades ago. Indeed, the 2005 storm has become the benchwork against which all major hurricanes have been gauged in the years since. And there’s no doubt Milton was a major one.

Initial assessments say at least six people in Florida were killed in the storm, which struck the state's west coast Wednesday night. About 3 million homes lost electricity. Media coverage shows first responders wading through chest-high standing water to rescue stranded residents, and many residential areas look as if they were bulldozed. Veteran weather reporters are already predicting some parts of the state, the nation’s third largest restaurant market, will need weeks or months to recover a semblance of their pre-Milton conditions.

Early on-the-ground reports from government and safety officials suggest Milton was not as devastating as Katrina, which left about 1,400 dead in its wake, but a full assessment of the damage may not be completed for some time. Ditto for the impact on the restaurant trade in particular. 

The potential is addressed in this week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind, the podcast that delves into the industry’s past for more color on what’s happening today. Here’s a look at how restaurants fared in the Big Easy during what’s become the yardstick of how damaging a single weather event can be. 

It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s a testament to the industry’s resolution. New Orleans’ dining scene came back bigger and better than ever. Here’s to the same happening in Florida. 

Many of the recent hires for restaurant CEO positions share a common listing on their resumes: Somewhere along the way, they logged time at Yum Brands, parent of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC and The Habit. For reasons that go beyond the sheer size of the franchisor, it’s become a major prep school of sorts for a new generation of chain chiefs, from Brian Niccol at Starbucks to Rob Lynch at Shake Shack. 

The situation calls to mind a time when it seemed almost like a requirement for casual-dining CEOs to have worked under Norman Brinker at the parent of Steak and Ale or Chili’s (now led by a Yum alumnus, Kevin Hochman). The graduates of those real-world training centers eventually found themselves in demand to lead chains in every sector of the business, from family dining (Mike Jenkins at Bakers Square and Village Inn) to eatertainment (Dick Frank at Chuck E. Cheese). 

This week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind looks at the unique role those companies played in shaping the industry’s leadership ranks, as well as why Yum is filling a similar role today. 

Press Play to get the full story. 

The restaurant industry abounds in rags-to-riches stories, but few of the accounts illustrate the theme as vividly as the tale of Carl Karcher, the onetime feed store worker who founded Carl’s Jr. 

In the process, he pioneered practices and policies that are still being adopted 83 years later. Ever wonder who came up with the standard fast-casual model of running orders to a fast-food customer’s table, as designated by some sort of flag or table marker? Carl’s Jr. was doing it decades ago.

Indeed, Karcher’s brainchild was in many ways the precursor of fast casual, a chain that sought to differentiate itself as a notch above traditional fast-food joints. 

But that’s only a small part of the story. Karcher parlayed a $326 hot dog cart into a multi-billion-dollar empire, a history worth knowing, per se. But the twists to that account add plenty of drama and color.

This week’s edition of Restaurant Rewind traces Karcher’s rise to riches, along with the bad moves that sucked them away. It’s a cautionary tale for any business person, regardless of what trade they’re in.

Give a listen by pressing Play. 

The restaurant business has had its share of pitched political battles, but few were as intense as the industry’s futile effort to fend off smoking bans. The issue divided the trade and put many operators on the wrong side of a movement that was not to be stopped.

It may be difficult to imagine some 20 years later that the matter of lighting up—what the industry posed as a customer right—would be so controversial. Outrage triggered a wave of civil disobedience on the part of the business, which demonstrated remarkable creativity in getting around the laws.

In this week’s edition of Restaurant Rewind, we examine that fractious period and how health considerations ultimately prevailed, dragging the business into a smoke-free era that proved a surprising boon to business for some.

Hit Play to relive that combative time.

Anyone who’s ever taken a history class covering World War II (or watched more than hour of the History Channel) is likely aware of the crucial role Winston Churchill played in saving Great Britain. His leadership skills and mastery of the English language kept hope alive, even during what he termed the United Kingdom’s darkest hour.

Yet even many Brits don’t know the eloquent statesman also midwifed a 2,500-branch restaurant chain that was feeding 600,000 people a day during the height of the war and the years immediately afterward. The outlets literally helped to keep down-and-out civilians alive.

Churchill, whose enjoyment of food and drink were as celebrated as his oratorical skills, was such a champion of the venture that the public dubbed the outlets Churchill’s British Restaurants.

All new information to you? Then give the episode a listen to learn more.  

Ask any veteran of the casual-dining market to name the segment’s best-in-class operation and they’ll likely cycle through two or three dominant players before a dark horse comes to mind: How about Hillstone or its previous incarnation, Houston’s?

They know the restaurants as the standout delights in their rounds of visits to competitive concepts. They may even know the company was co-founded and run by a character named George Biel. But don’t ask them anything about the man or what makes him tick; he’s as reclusive of a leader as the industry sports. Little is known about his past other than he started in the business as a waiter at Steak and Ale.

This week’s edition of Restaurant Rewind adds some details to that tersest of bios, drawing on a rare personal interaction and conversations with Biel’s subordinates. It’s a rare glimpse of an industry giant who shuns the limelight despite his proven abilities as a brand leader.

Give a listen to learn about one of the industry’s little-known standouts.