Restaurant Rewind

The restaurant industry has seen a number of big-name chains reveal widespread closures within their ranks in recent weeks. Outback parent Bloomin’ Brand alerted Wall Street that it intends to close 41 stores, while adding another 45. Denny’s recently acknowledged that it had shut about 60 stores in 2023 because the units were no longer financially sustainable.

As dramatic as those closures might be, they may not have spun as many heads as the complete shutdown nearly 30 years ago of a 51-unit chain in a single day. What grabbed attention was the company pulling the plug: Darden Restaurants, better known as the Midas-like operation that ran Olive Garden and Red Lobster at the time.

The full-service operator had launched an Asian concept just five years earlier with hopes of duplicating what it had done with Olive Garden: offering consumers a safe, reasonable and dependable alternative to the thousands of mom-and-pop ethnic restaurants that dotted the landscape at the time. There was no leading Chinese brand, just as there hadn’t been a national Italian option until Olive Garden came along.

But China Coast proved it was no Olive Garden. After a mere five years, Darden decided it was losing too much money on the upstart, and snapped off the whole system’s lights on a Tuesday morning.

But Darden wasn’t finished with the Asian market, as you’ll learn from listening to this week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind, the podcast that travels into the industry’s past for more insights on what’s happening in the business today.

What did Darden hope would be a more viable Asian concept than China Coast? And what went wrong with China Coast in the first place?

Press Play to find out.

As any fan of "The Sopranos" knows, mobsters love good food almost as much as they relish ill-gotten money. No wonder organized crime is constantly rumored to be intertwined with the restaurant business.

For veterans of New York City, those insinuations are far from fanciful. Long-timers know the dining landmarks where Mafioso kingpins were whacked after a meal, and where you have to be careful not to kick fellow guests in the ankle lest you set off their back-up guns. A line of black limos outside means you don’t tell Italian jokes while waiting for a table, and the men’s dress code might include a pinky ring. 

If there were any doubts of a connection between cooks and capos, they were dashed a few years ago when once-celebrated chef David Ruggerio came clean on his involvement with the mob. While earning stellar reviews for his fare at New York’s La Caravelle, the second cousin to famed gangster Carlo Gambino pursued a second life as a goodfella, hijacking trucks, shaking down other crooks and dealing drugs.

He eventually left the business to avoid jail time, and decided to air his criminal past after several partners in crime were killed and he was disrespected by a godfather of sorts.

It’s an incredible story, and you can learn it by hitting Play on this week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind, the podcast that looks back at often-forgotten nuggets from the industry’s past.  Listen this week for a snapshot of how a real wise guy made it in the business.

Restaurants will be hearing the name again and again as one of the industry’s premier awards program draws closer to its early May conclusion for 2024. Yet few in the business may know who James Beard was, now that he’s been gone for nearly 40 years.

This week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind answers the question of why Beard should be remembered, particularly within fine dining. Even those familiar with the media star’s legacy may not be aware of his full contribution to the industry he loved, like proving that Americans would tune in their TVs to learn more about cooking and food. He was the first to try the airwaves, beginning in 1946.

Nor might they know that he was a founder of Citymeals on Wheels, or that he was a fan of barbecuing when that form of prep was still considered low-brow.

Learn more about a figure who deserves to be remembered as a god of the business. Hit Play to learn how Beard lived, and the contributions he’s left behind.

Tipping has been villainized by organized labor as a vestige of slavery, an assertion that strains credibility. What makes the assertion even more difficult to accept is the background of the restaurant company that’s likely more dependent on tipping than any other employer in the business.

Bill Darden is well-known to any student of the business as the founder of Darden Restaurants and Red Lobster, the brand that made the company a full-service powerhouse. Yet few are likely aware of the role he played in combating racism, going back as far as 1935.

Darden’s refusal to segregate his dining rooms put him and his business at considerable risk. Yet he made color-blindness a plank of the company’s culture.

Join us as we look back in this week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind at the stance Darden took and how sharply it contrasted with the industry’s attitude of even just a few decades ago.

Hit “Play” to learn how one strong adherent to tipping was all about treating people equally, regardless of their skin color.

Casual dining roared back as pandemic conditions lifted and dining rooms reopened, dispelling assertions the segment was cooked. But that doesn’t mean the full-service chain market has been on cruise control, as this week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind attests.

The retro-focused podcast looks back during the installment to what the casual market looked like 10 and 20 years ago, and how that compares with the state of play today. Among the brands that have clearly aged are TGI Fridays and Red Lobster, the brands that virtually midwifed the whole sector.

Join us as we look at how the market has changed, and what propelled those granddads of the segment to prominence in the first place.

It’s not unusual for a newly hired restaurant-chain executive to spend time in a unit as a line-level employee. Seeing an operation from the perspective of a customer or worker often provides insight and a reality check c-suiters might not get otherwise. In general, being in stores is a great thing for the CEO. 

Except, that is, when they don’t have a clue as to what’s really happening in their restaurants.

This week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind looks at how wrong things can go when an exec doesn’t have a firm grasp on operations, personnel or the conditions of a store. They’re nightmares that I’ve personally witnessed, from rodent sightings to having a renegade employee sounding off about what he or she doesn’t like.

Tune in for a sample of the train wrecks I’ve seen while in-unit with a leader who wants to be one of the team but doesn’t have a credible claim on being so.

About 84% of the United States’ adult population carry a credit card, or roughly 191 million American consumers, according to the research company Experion. That shouldn’t be a surprise to today’s restaurateurs, who’ve seen the use of cash be challenged pointedly in recent years by the surge in digital ordering.

No wonder the expense of accepting plastic has soared into one of operators’ biggest cost items, third only to labor and food.

How did the industry get here? When did the modern credit card find its way into the business, and how did playing with plastic become so prevalent?

This week’s edition of Restaurant Rewind, a podcast that looks back at the roots of today’s restaurant issues, aims to answer those questions. Let’s just say you can thank or blame a pair of 1940s men for sparking the industry’s dependence on credit and charge cards.

Join us as we trace the evolution of the co-dependency between restaurants and charge-card networks.

Restaurants have been pressed since at least the 1970s to provide menu options for customers looking to lose weight and eat more healthfully. That pressure might reach its peak every January, when patrons are hellbent on following a set diet in hopes of shedding a few pounds.

What diet might that be this year, given the weight-loss schemes currently in vogue? Chances are it won’t have as much of an influence on menus as the craze that swept up diners and restaurants more than two decades ago, prompting chain after chain to overhaul their bills of fare.

Join us on this week’s edition of Restaurant Rewind for a look at the profound influence that fad, the Atkins diet, temporarily had on the industry. It’s a cautionary tale of how short-lived any restrictive eating plan tends to be, regardless of how widely it might have been embraced.

Press play for a look at the influence popular diets have today, compared to the force at least one packed 25 years ago.

The restaurant industry seems as if it’s going backward in its efforts to promote diversity within its top executive ranks. If it goes all the way back to the mid-20th century, it’ll find that the role of women in particular was far more pronounced in those formative years.

Indeed, women played key roles in the development of the chain sector, in part because those early ventures were largely family affairs. Men might have grabbed the limelight, but women were often the key figures behind the scenes.

This week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind looks back at three of those female pioneers. Without them, we likely wouldn’t have the McDonald’s, In-N-Out and Marriott International we do today.

Join us as we celebrate women who are still role models all these decades later.  

McDonald’s created a stir last week with the opening of a second concept, a drive-thru drinks operation called CosMc’s. But it’s far from the first time the Golden Arches has tried to find gold from a second venture. It’s been tinkering with possible additions to its single-brand fold almost from the time Ray Kroc got involved with the chain.

The possibilities have included everything from a beer garden to an amusement park to a mixed-use complex that could have been a model for Mall of America. And those were all before its diversification binge of the late 1990s.

Yet not one of those notions worked for Big Mac. Today, McDonald’s Corp. is still synonymous with the McDonald’s chain.

Find out what happened from this week’s episode of Restaurant Rewind, a podcast that look back into the industry’s past for a better understanding of what’s happening today. You’ll find it wherever you get your podcasts.