Clark Wolf's Rants, Raves, Diatribes...and a few other Thoughts

What price pasta: Restaurant markups revealed

A bottle of Veuve Clicquot Champagne might set you back $40 at BevMo. But at a white-tablecloth restaurant, expect to pay more than double that amount.

It's no secret that restaurants boost their wine prices. But in an industry well known for its relatively low profit margins - typically 8 to 12 percent - some things have to pay the bills.

So what besides booze are the most marked-up items on the menu? Buyers for restaurants say that fancy bottle of water with a price tag of more than $3 costs the restaurant only between 40 and 90 cents. Soda from the fountain sells for 20 times the restaurant's cost, and eight times more when it's served in a can. Pasta, pizza, eggs and that little mixed green salad are all a license to make money.

But with rising costs, those margins are tightening.

"I would say that there are no big profit makers like there were in days of yore - rising transport costs affect every sector of the produce world, and while eggs are a more profitable vehicle than steak, they, along with butter, are by no means a great deal anymore," said Dennis Leary, owner of the San Francisco sandwich shops the Sentinel and Golden West, Canteen restaurant and House of Shields bar. "Coffee used to be a nice little markup, but I think prices have risen 300 percent or something."

Tea and booze

Restaurant owners can still rely on tea and booze to raise their numbers.

A cup of tea in a nice sit-down restaurant goes for $2.25 to $3.25, whereas the tea bag costs no more than 35 cents, said Frank Klein, a national restaurant consultant in Palo Alto.

The typical wine markup is two to three times the restaurant's cost, he said. Wine by the glass at a 300 to 400 percent markup is even more profitable than wine by the bottle. Beer costs are roughly 25 cents on the dollar.

"When it comes to spirits, for every dollar a restaurant sells, it doesn't want it to cost them more than 22 cents," Klein said, adding, "These are strict product markups that don't include the vast operating costs that restaurants incur."

But those prices are based solely on the wholesale cost of the item, without factoring in labor and overhead.

"You have to consider the price of insurance, the cost of a liquor license and the expense of broken glassware," said Clark Wolf, also a national restaurant consultant who works in Sonoma County and New York City. "Just to wash each glass costs $1."

Local Boy Makes Good … Dinner

 

Over the Beardfest Awards weekend I got to have a meal with a dear friend at a cozy hot spot and had some stellar food I’d been missing since chef  Eric Korsh de-camped from his sweet garden roadside resto just outside Sebastopol –  the late and greatly lamented Eloise.

 

Eric is the new (well, a quick year it seems) chef at The Waverly Inn, owned (and strategically seated each evening by remote control) in part by Vanity Fair master editor Graydon Carter.

What a good choice for everyone.

The Waverly has been around forever but got brilliantly refreshed, with a kitchen launched by John Delucie (he of black truffle topped mac and cheese fame) who has gone on to his own equity at The Lion nearby.

That’s why Korsh, who is a bit deeper, nuanced and more classical in his style, is so perfect.

Faith Stewart-Gordon, long time owner of the legendary Russian Tea Room, used to say “you have to make the restaurant the way folks remember it – not simply as it was …” Which means better and deeper every time. She added braids on waiters’ jackets, mirrors and molding, to name some of my favorite flourishes.

Eric adds butter.

Well, clearly, that’s not all. He’s a wonderful cook with a broad range and delicate hand. His rabbit with tagliatelle is tender, rich and sweet. The burnt caramel panna cotta is shockingly delicious.

He’s got his head down, working hard. He’s glad to be back in his home town, feeding Manhattan swells with the scratch to support this totally down-to-earth but completely-worldly effort. We miss him in California, but delight in having spoiled him in the Sonoma sunshine for a while, filling his mouth and memory with true, clean tastes to which he can add a little New England butter in New York…

Full article here

Tampa area McDonald's are a template for the nation

Time was, the unspoken rule for running a McDonald's restaurant was don't make anybody too comfortable.

Bring in the customers, then move them out. Hard benches and Spartan décor helped keep the place from developing into a leisurely hangout.

Now, that's exactly the kind of hangout McDonald's wants to cultivate.

The burger giant increasingly competes for customers with coffee giant Starbucks, Panera and even Dunkin' Donuts.

So along with more upscale coffee and salads, McDonald's is investing about $1 billion nationwide in a broad revamp.

Several locations in the Tampa Bay area are among those first to test a more modern and sleek design built to accommodate families, business meetings and students with homework. Group tables, cozy lounge areas and free Wi-Fi for everyone.

Last week, a group of Wall Street investment analysts traveled to Seffner for a private tour of a McDonald's that had been knocked down and rebuilt into a model that could be replicated across thousands of new McDonald's locations.

"We're still a food and beverage company," said Blake Casper, chairman of Caspers Company, which operates 50 McDonald's stores in Tampa.

McDonald's has evolved a long way from the days as a walk-up burger joint, he said. Now more customers are wireless workers on the go, time-pressed families and students – and stores need to serve them all.

"We've learned a lot from the other places where our customers are going," Casper said.

Individual McDonald's franchise owners have some flexibility with design, but more locations will move to a more modern design:

•An area with long, bench-seating for groups to sit together.

•Groups of low chairs with coffee tables for conversations.

•More stylish lighting.

•Flat-screen TVs showing a mix of ads for McDonald's and TV shows.

•Soundproofing between the dining area and kid's play areas.

•Dark tile flooring and modern glass dividers between eating areas.

Jimmy Williams Sr. has been coming to this Seffner restaurant nearly every breakfast for decades, he said. "I just walk up and they already know what I want," he said. "I like the look. It's more modern, updated. Now if they would just start making grits."

Last year, 16 restaurants in the greater Tampa Bay area underwent a redesign, and 35 are on track for redevelopment this year – five or more as complete tear-downs and rebuilds.

McDonald's has reason to watch chains like Panera. The so-called fast casual restaurant segment continues to outpace the industry as a whole, with the top 100 chains growing 6 percent to nearly $18.9 billion in sales, according to market tracker Technomic.

McDonald's this month posted better-than-expected 6-percent rise in sales at existing restaurants, partly as the company increased menu prices to offset higher commodity costs.

The most important part of this process may seem obvious, but too many restaurant companies overlook it, said Clark Wolf, a New York-based restaurant consultant.

"They are paying attention, putting their focus on the restaurants, not just looking at the bottom line," Wolf said. "They're going into the locations, seeing what works, what doesn't and what needs to be fixed, and 100 percent of the time, the result of that is improvement."

Restaurants like McDonald's have a long tradition of using Tampa as a test-bed for new ideas, Wolf said, as this market has a large segment that responds well to industrialized food making.

Full article here

The Food Show with Clark Wolf, Episode Six

 

  

New Room at the Holiday Inn

 

New Room at the Holiday Inn:  An insider's peek at the chain's new look 

 

 
Months ago, in a secluded warehouse outside of Boston, a crack team of designers from firms Continuum and ai3 assembled a top-secret prototype that would, according to internal data, change the Holiday Inn brand forever. It was an advanced, new kind of “environment”—one where guests could more easily connect. The consultants used 800 slabs of foam core to build it, then spent weeks analyzing foot-traffic patterns. What could this revolutionary, futuristic space possibly be?

It’s the lobby.

Actually, there’s a fancier name. Holiday Inn is calling it the “Social Hub.” When the new design replaces existing foyers starting

next month, it will concentrate every communal amenity—business center, TV lounge, bar, game room—into a continuous, L-shaped space. “Consumers use Facebook, but they still need human contact. They want to be on laptops, but out in the open,” says Eric Nicolas, Holiday Inn’s director of global brand management. “That’s what we’re trying to do here.”

Wait a minute. Haven’t hotel chains spent the past decade investing zillions in Web portals and Wi-Fi upstairs in the guest rooms? Indeed they have. But recent studies about millennial maladies like “Facebook fatigue” have suggested people are again longing for live interaction. “The pendulum is swinging back,” notes Patricia Wallace, a professor at Johns Hopkins who studies the Web’s social effects. “More people are seeking a hybrid lifestyle that combines the best features of the online world with more human contact.” Holiday Inn’s hoping that contact will happen in its Social Hub. “It’s funny,” says veteran hospitality consultant Clark Wolf. “We used to call this ‘meeting in the cocktail lounge.’”

No reservations at the Inn for next year? Chill. We’ll take you on a tour right now.

Full article here

Ubuntu: Devouring Veggie Benchmarks is better than Concept Dining

 

 

Wow, there really is a difference between eating a plate of ideas and enjoying a plate of actually delicious foods.  I’ve just gone to Ubuntu, that bastion of all things wholesome and vegetal, in the town of Napa, with a yoga studio upstairs, and I’m here to report that the new chef, Aaron London, who has actually been there in the kitchen – off and on – since the start, does indeed make some truly delicious and memorable foods that, while achieved with intention, are totally focused on making satisfying, nurturing and delightful plates of food I can’t wait to revisit.

I was at The Big U as I call it a while back with Marian Burros who was writing for the New York Times.  Needless to say, it was a no holds barred vegstravaganza.  The last time I’d had a meal that elaborate and protracted all vegetable focused was with this same Marian at the original (or first) Bouley where we had a fairly brilliant four hour meal of only veg foods that made me realize that Bouley wasn’t really good at meat.

That first U meal from aspiring celeb chef Jeremy Fox had some thrills and chills. When Fox and owner Sandy Laurence visited me in New York and talked about the possibility of opening a Manhattan outpost I tried to dissuade them, reminding that in the town of Napa, with Sandy’s own garden nearby, they had not only the brilliant ingredients critical to such a venture but the audience for the kinds of efforts that I felt where still in development.  A polite way of saying they’d flop here, for all the right and wrong reasons.

It didn’t surprise me when I read that Jeremy had moved on to the land of Tyler Florence  – now since departed that too. I wish him well but it’s nice to eat food that is the point, and not just a stepping stone to somewhere else.

And so back to Aaron.  The kid’s up for a James Beard Rising Star Chef Award even as I write this.  I’m guessing the Momofuku dessert person will win but this 28 year old with the hilarious haircut is happy and excited to be making some first rate offerings in concert with a charming, dedicated team and I not only salute him, I’m gonna go back and eat me more – once I’ve filled up on Black Pig Bacon at Zazu in Santa Rosa.

Oh, and Aaron’s personal pedigree? He’s from Graton, right outside of Sebastopol, so with all of that travel and stage time in Michelin starred European temples of gastronomy he also has the taste of real, peak Sonoma County grown food in his mouth and mind.  A winning combo if I ever heard one.

Full article here