08-19-2016, 07:44 AM
When we lived in Alaska the Taco Bell closed. At the time it was the largest Taco Bell in the country and most of the business was drive-through. It went under because the rent was too damn high for a huge mostly empty dining room.
The next restaurant that opened in that location was a BBQ Smokehouse place. The food was good initially but bad management caused quality and service problems and it went out of business in a few months.
The restaurant after that tried to do a sushi and Benihana style venue- imagine the dining guests sitting around the huge griddle thing while the well paid chef entertainer cooked the food right in front of you while tossing things up in the air and catching it with his hat etc. With the same show happening at all the other tables. It was an instant success but it was a small town. Anybody who has lived in a city with a Benihana's knows that if you go once, you're good for a few years. They are expensive and once you've seen the chef catch an egg in his hat, you've seen a chef catch an egg in his hat. You're good. So after the initial success the business started circling the drain.
Despite the high startup costs they ripped out all those dining room cooking stations and reinvented themselves as a sushi / Asian place with the kitchen in the back and good taste and quality. The show was over but the business lived on. As far as I know its still there probably 10 years later. I think the huge pile of stainless steel from the show cooking stations and their vent systems still sits behind their restaurant, sort of like a visual reminder to build a restaurant people will come back to.
The Genki Buffet could learn from this lesson, though I would suggest a name change to go along with the exit from the overcrowded "Bland Asian Food" market. Their landlords might not be interested, however when we ran a store in a mall we were able to renegotiate the terms/payments of our lease- maybe they can too.
The next restaurant that opened in that location was a BBQ Smokehouse place. The food was good initially but bad management caused quality and service problems and it went out of business in a few months.
The restaurant after that tried to do a sushi and Benihana style venue- imagine the dining guests sitting around the huge griddle thing while the well paid chef entertainer cooked the food right in front of you while tossing things up in the air and catching it with his hat etc. With the same show happening at all the other tables. It was an instant success but it was a small town. Anybody who has lived in a city with a Benihana's knows that if you go once, you're good for a few years. They are expensive and once you've seen the chef catch an egg in his hat, you've seen a chef catch an egg in his hat. You're good. So after the initial success the business started circling the drain.
Despite the high startup costs they ripped out all those dining room cooking stations and reinvented themselves as a sushi / Asian place with the kitchen in the back and good taste and quality. The show was over but the business lived on. As far as I know its still there probably 10 years later. I think the huge pile of stainless steel from the show cooking stations and their vent systems still sits behind their restaurant, sort of like a visual reminder to build a restaurant people will come back to.
The Genki Buffet could learn from this lesson, though I would suggest a name change to go along with the exit from the overcrowded "Bland Asian Food" market. Their landlords might not be interested, however when we ran a store in a mall we were able to renegotiate the terms/payments of our lease- maybe they can too.