Article
Fast casuals answer call of the wild
Operators combat cabin fever with outdoor-dining options.
April 14, 2008
After a record-setting winter of sub-zero temperatures and daily snowfall, the people of Chicago are crossing off the days on their calendars until the arrival of spring. And when their thermostats rise above 70 degrees, hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans will flood the city streets, and fast casual restaurants with al fresco dining will reap the financial windfall.
"Particularly in areas with four seasons, people are so happy to be outside when it gets to be springtime," said Ed Frechette, senior vice president of marketing for Au Bon Pain. "In the regions where we are — New York, Chicago and Boston — people are thrilled to be able to go outside again and enjoy the fresh air, and that means dining outside."
Au Bon Pain currently has outdoor dining at 50 of its 120 locations and if it were possible they would have it at all of their locations, Frechette said.
Al fresco seating provides fast casuals with an inexpensive way to seat more people, attract attention and increase their bottom lines.
"The casual segment of the industry is really hurting so fast casual is trying to offer that casual-dining experience but with the service and speed of a QSR," said Michelle Bushey, partner and design director of Dallas-based Vision 360 Design. "And in trying to offer that casual-dining experience they want to offer outdoor dining. Dallas is a ‘see and be seen' town. Everyone likes to sit outside on a beautiful day so patio dining has become very important as an amenity to offer your customers."
The real beauty of outdoor dining is that typically restaurants don't have to pay rent on the space so they can add 1,000 square feet for free, Bushey said.
"I can't tell you when I've had a client pay rent for non-air conditioned space," she said. "You have the initial investment into furniture, but other than that the offset in the turns and revenue you can generate more than pays for itself. You can pay for it in one season."
It typically costs between $80 and $200 per square-foot to build a fast-casual restaurant, but the only costs involved with adding a patio area is the furniture, umbrellas, awning and climate-control devices, said Aaron Allen, founder and CEO of Quantified Marketing.
"It increases the amount of capacity they can handle without substantially increasing the cost of the physical facility," Allen said. "And it's a good fit for fast casual because it's defined as counter service as opposed to full wait service. It's advantageous because you don't have to worry about servers going in and out of the restaurant."
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Tony Palombino, founder and CEO of BoomBozz Famous Gourmet Pizza in Louisville, Ky., has one location with an al fresco area that sits 12 people. It is by far their most popular dining section, so when they began construction on a new location they decided to add a full-size patio.
"When you find a setting where you can utilize outdoor space you do it," Palombino said. "People love eating outdoors."
BoomBozz's new outdoor patio is cut out of a section of the building with large wood-frame doors that open, creating the patio, and that can be closed during the winter so the outdoor seating is not lost. The total cost of the patio project including the furniture was $6,000.
"We're making this area our four seasons section," Palombino said. "We can have it enclosed for the winter and open during summer and spring. We'll never lose sales so it's good throughout the year."
Being unable to operate patio seating year-round has always been one of the major drawbacks but that problem can easily be fixed with technology, Allen said.
Cold weather can be combated with electric or gas heaters and warm weather can be neutralized with misters or by pumping hydrogen gas into the section. "This opens it up for greater distribution around the country," he said.
Al fresco dining can be found in all corners of the United States and in all sections of the restaurant industry, said Tom Miner, a principal with Technomic Inc.
"You see it from picnic tables in front of a hamburger stand up to white table cloths in front of the $100 check-average place," Miner said. "This is not new. I suspect people were eating outside of restaurants before they started eating inside. But the real contribution of an outdoor café is that it's a real attention getter. It's advertising. When people see that outdoor café with people in it they're saying, ‘There's really something going on there.'"
* Find more articles at FastCasual.com/operations
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