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CASE STUDY :: MARKET RESEARCH
Idea sleuth
Finding bankable ideas is Parasole partner?s forte
by Carla Waldemar
PHIL ROBERTS, a founding partner of Parasole Restaurant Holdings Inc., has made a living by giving dining patrons what they needed before they knew they needed it.
?Out-of-the-box? thinking? Only on the surface. Behind his catalog of staid-to-outrageous concepts (among them are Manny?s, Oceanaire, Figlio, Chino Latino and the newest, Salut) is a brain tuned to market research for which no ?off? button exists.
According to restaurant designer Jim Smart of Smart and Associates, Minneapolis ? who has done no projects for Roberts (whose own son is his architect) but admires his acumen: ?Phil is wildly creative, with a wonderful sense of humor that pays for itself. He travels extensively, with a keen sense of trend-watching. He doesn?t invent things out of thin air.?
Says Roberts: ?I took 10 of my people to Paris last spring to look at the rock-star chefs? new, casual iterations.? Just before that, it was Hong Kong and London (?We have fun: Eat, drink and take pictures?) and before that, Shanghai ? where, he confesses, he had nary a Chinese meal.
Instead, this idea sleuth was engrossed in documenting the elements of yin and yang on every plate ? dark and light, high and low, soft and crunchy ? which will be coming soon to a restaurant near you.
?It doesn?t take a Harvard Business School graduate to pick up on these lessons,? the genial restaurateur says with a laugh. Nonetheless, idea sources are hard to quantify. ?A big part comes from traveling a lot to build a vast reservoir of knowledge.?
To research Oceanaire alone, he flew 40,000 miles. (Parasole spun off Oceanaire in 2001.) Recently Roberts transferred 35,000 photos he?s shot over the years to a computer base, cross-indexing them by design, ingredient, and who knows what else.
Another part of concept development, he says, is ?pure logic,? based on observation. For instance, Roberts noted that ?All those post-World-War-II mom-and-pop Italian places around the country ? like di Napoli here at home ? were closing. Their kids went into dot-coms, not the family business. What a gap!? he said.
Sure, all the execs in Armani suits had their fancy Italian places, ?but where could you roll up your sleeves and eat?? Welcome to Buca. Its saturation of haute kitsch and lowly peasant cuisine is a typical Roberts stroke of genius. The Buca chain is now a publicly held national chain, which Parasole spun off in 1999.
Oceanaire was born of the same kind of ?pure logic. Back then when we launched it, you had your choice of The Anchorage or Red Lobster; there was no ?power steakhouse? for seafood. We saw an opportunity to be the Ruth?s Chris for fish, at $60 a check.?
Armchair trawler
Roberts leads what he calls a ?pathetic nightlife? at home trawling through the nation?s city magazines, European journals and trend-spotters like the New York Times for ideas, which he then shares with management and chefs.
Salut, the most recent member of the Parasole family, was born of what he pinpointed as an untapped need nationwide. ?The French bistro/brasserie element was virtually missing in America,? he says. ?Many people hate the French but love their food. They?re put off by the haughtiness of patronizing waiters or a menu you can?t pronounce.?
He?s less than enamored with what he calls ?the Epcot version of the business,? slavishly imitating a Parisian bistro with their little tile floors, tall booths and brass trim.
Salut, in sharp contrast, he describes with no apologies as ?the P.F. Chang of French bistros? ? food that?s not necessarily authentic, but good.
He retained some bistro icons, such as water carafes on every table, baguettes in paper sacks and a zinc bar, but disregarded others. Yes, white butcher paper covers tables, but it?s not atop a white linen cloth (?too upscale?). Instead, it?s laid over black-and-white checked cloths. No flowers, no dim lights ? wrong image.
Instead, on every table there?s a bottle of ketchup ? ketchup! ? cheekily labeled ?Heinz Sauce Americain.?
Typical Roberts jokes like that abound ? and the kind that provoke telephone complaints, such as the motto stenciled on the wall, ?I like the French; they taste like chicken? and the menu?s sketch of a frog walking a poodle. (And you all remember those racy Chino billboards and custom-made cookie fortunes, including one that caused a furor from a Jewish customer: ?Have you accepted Christ as your personal savior??)
Back to Salut and its not-by-accident success, fueled in part by Ladies Who Lunch (kidded via billboards that promise ?Martinis for Edina?s Desperate Housewives?) and more than its share of those Tuesday-night diners most restaurants would kill for.
The secret (among many): ?A guy in an Armani walks in, looks around and says, ?Oh yeah?.? And so will the guy in blue jeans: ?My kind of place.? Bridging the gap is key,? Roberts says. ?It?s entertainment, like a Broadway show ? the total experience.?
Case in point: Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, Roberts headed to Manny?s. ?I wasn?t there for the steak or the wine. I wanted a red booth in the back where I felt safe among family, people I know.?
And he knew Edina needed a haven of its own, too ? a ?French? caf? that serves ? ahem ? 160 ?les burgers? a day and also highlights pizzas and crab cakes, along with French onion soup and croque monsieur. The idea is affordable and accessible food, offering ?safe adventure? to folks ? especially suburbanites ? whom he pegs as a little short on dining daring.
Whether you?re in restaurants, hardware or any other retail, Roberts says it?s all the same. ?People need to realize you can?t orchestrate from your point of view, but from theirs. It?s a safe harbor, where they can try shrimp carpaccio without betting the farm.?
He hires and trains his staff to reflect that credo, too. ?The front of the house gets that knowledge of who we are, what we stand for.” (It helps them withstand the customers? barrage, he adds). ?The whole idea is to have diners feel good about coming here.?
Bungee cord
To export a winning local concept, which he?s preparing to do, takes marketing ?lan as well. ?Minneapolis,? he says, ?is not a big-shoulder city ? not enough population to fly items beyond familiar food with a little of a ?soft adventure? edge: too much Lutheran DNA.?
So, looking to duplicate a Chino Latino or Salut, he pinpoints cities with similar make-up. ?These are concepts any NFL city can support,? is how he puts it. (Watch for the next Manny?s to launch in Miami.) Parasole posts annual revenue of $37 million.
Randy Stanley, divisional vice president, has worked for Parasole for 22 years and counting, prizing the ability to function as a ?free thinker.?
?They give you enough rope to hang yourself,? he says, ?but it?s a bungee cord. You?re not left to dangle. While other companies are defined in a box, here you figure it out yourself: You?ve got the ability to be an entrepreneur.
?At Salut, for example, we bend the rules. The key is giving guests the opportunity to decide how French they want to be ? to strike a balance.? He admires Roberts? ability to identify a location, assess a neighborhood and pinpoint a niche to explore ? the one they didn?t know they needed yet.
?Phil has a way of determining trends five years from now,? Stanley says.
Culinary Director Todd Bolton, an 18-year Parasole vet who traveled with the crew to Bangkok, Hong Kong and Mexico to develop Chino?s ?hot zones? menu, goes at his task from the same user-friendly perspective.
?I look at what?s authentic, then learn to find familiar elements in those items. For instance, everybody loves grilled meats and something crispy. Next, I start thinking of how to import such things to Minneapolis, maybe via small plates so people can stick their toes in the water.?
Says Roberts, in turn, about imbuing his people with his own customer-driven perspective, ?It?s only enlightened self-interest on my part. I?ve got to be sure people under me are being developed. If they?re not continually learning, they might as well be at Applebee?s.?
[contact] Todd Bolton, Parasole: 612.965.0839. Phil Roberts, Parasole Restaurant Holdings, Inc., 612.822.0016; pr******@******le.com; www.parasole.com. Jim Smart, Smart and Associates, 612.335.8797. Randy Stanley, Parsole: 612.280.9023
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