Established concepts aim to invigorate images, sales: the climate for full-service chains is anything but casual as the segment's prolonged sales slump forces mature concepts to adapt to new competitors and customer preferences

Nation's Restaurant News,  Nov 5, 2007  by Carolyn Walkup

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A private-equity investment of more than $600 million into Lone Star Steakhouse of Wichita, Kan., and the hiring of Marc Buehler, formerly of Tony Roma's, as chief executive are spearheading big changes at the 182-unit Western-theme dinnerhouse chain.

Lone Star will implement the changes before embarking on a regrowth plan, Buehler says. The company has closed or sold some 40 percent of its units in the last nine years and may cut a few more.

"We will sell closed locations to help fund remodeling and expansion," Buehler says.

He has embarked on refreshing the menu with the help of outside consultants and creating a new prototype and designs for remodeling existing units.

Buehler estimates it will take up to six months to get through the concept evolution planning.

"We will roll it out in stages," he says. "We are evaluating everything. A lot has not changed for 15 years."

New owners and leaders are retooling Columbus, Ohio-based Damon's Grill. Alliance Development Holdings, a Charlotte, N.C.-based real estate firm, which acquired the sports-theme chain last year, has since closed about 20 units, reducing the number in operation to 75, and developed four variations of a new prototype, all of which concentrate the sports theme and technology in the bar instead of throughout the restaurant, as before.

"Our older restaurants were dark and not female- [or] family-friendly," said Damon's chief executive Carl Howard. "Plus the technology was not as unique as it was in 1987."

Many new sports-theme competitors have since come on the scene, as technology became easier to install, he says.

The new prototype designs will cost about $100,000 less to build, Howard says, and lose only about eight seats, although they are smaller. Average seating is 212.

While Damon's still has a sports theme, it's more subtle than in the past. Half of the items on the redeveloped menu are new, including domestic Angus-Kobe beef burgers; more entree salads, including a signature char-grilled Caesar; and some lighter entrees, such as Maui Salmon with Pineapple Salsa and Grilled Mediterranean Shrimp Skewers.

Check averages are up 2.7 percent since the latest menu revamp, for an all-day average of $17.80, Howard says. He is calling the upgrade of the menu, the building and other details a move up to "polished casual."

The 92-unit Houlihan's chain, which debuted back in 1972 on Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Mo., under Gilbert-Robinson, has drastically changed the look of its new restaurants and is upgrading all elements of its image.

The lighter, brighter restaurant continues to have a bar focus, with 22 percent of sales attributed to alcoholic beverages, but many of those drinks have been updated to appeal to a younger crowd later at night, says chief executive Bob Harnett. Likewise, new Houlihan's units have a customized music strategy in which select songs are highlighted monthly on the so-called "H-List," which is inserted in menus and promoted on the chain's website. The program is intended to appeal to those customers who download music on iTunes.