FSR magazine April 2018

REAL ESTATE
CEO Matt Shendell says three things
were important in the city selection: a
loyal sports fan base, an emerging food
and beverage scene, and a location
with plenty of New York transplants,
“because then you have brand recognition,”
he says. Once he decided to expand
out of the Big Apple, he made a list of all
the cities that touched all those points.
He then hired brokers who visited those
cities, and a team from the restaurant
group visited them based on the findings.
For real estate, Paige Hospitality
Group looked for nighttime traffic, Sunday
football traffic, and corporate happy
hour visitors. Shendell says he also looks
at whether there are other competing
businesses in the area and whether they
are doing well. Disposable income is also
a good indicator, he says, because the restaurant
needs to be near people who are
able to afford dining out. Plus, he shoots
for locations that have a good mix of residential
and commercial business, which
brings business at different times.
Howard Cannon is the president of
the consulting firm Restaurant Expert
Witness in Birmingham, Alabama. He
“You should never
compromise who
you are, what your
brand identity is, or
what your needs are.”
Billy Dec
CEO & fOunDEr,
rOCkit ranCh
says that when selecting a site, operators
need to check one of two boxes: either on
a busy street or far from it. And there’s
no middle ground between them, he says.
The former will have high rent, but also
a lot of traffic passing its doors; the latter
will have low rent but will require a
lot of marketing dollars to advertise its
presence. “You have to pick your poison,”
Cannon says.
The ideal building
Dec says he doesn’t really mind what
a building’s history is, since the world
moves at such a fast pace and circumstances
change. “Though in cases where
there has been a string of failures, I’d
watch out,” he says of leasing an existing
building.
Buffalo Wings & Rings opts for a mixture
of leased buildings and new builds
when opening a new location. “When
you build from scratch, there are no surprises,”
Schram says, “and when I do a
conversion, we often end up changing
80 percent or 90 percent of the restau-
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linden.cowper@jbssa.com | 970 506 7442
greatsouthernfarms.com.au
60 April 2018 FOODNEWSFEED.cOm