Sit-down restaurants want more of the stand-up crowd.
Restaurants in Chicago are adding bakeries, cafes and markets to fill in the gaps between breakfast, lunch and dinner. The markets, which offer grab-and-go items like gourmet sandwiches, salads and baked goods, are usually housed near (or even in) the restaurant. The stand-up venues aim to tap into a fast-growing segment of the dining industry that is serving up higher-end convenience foods that can be eaten on the go or taken back home or to the office.
One of the newest examples in the city is Ema in River North, operated by Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises. The Mediterranean restaurant opened in late June to dine-in customers and operates a separate Rotisserie Ema, a grab-and-go counter serving chicken, salads and spreads. Having the pair under one roof serving two different types of customers maximizes sales and efficiency of the communal kitchen, said Lettuce Executive Vice President Marc Jacobs, who oversees Ema.
“Now we’re able to be busier and appeal to more guests,” Jacobs said of the two concepts, which use the same kitchen but have separate entrances and staffs.
The addition of counter service to a traditional dining room also blurs the line between peak lunch and dinner times, Jacobs said, because people tend to grab takeout at more irregular hours.
“As an entrepreneur, if you can get people in between lunch and dinner? Wow,” he said. “Your rent doesn’t change, your square footage doesn’t change, you’re just building your business.”
Lettuce, which operates about 60 restaurant brands from Wow Bao and M Burger to RPM Italian and Intro, has experimented with this dual role before. The second location of its Beatrix restaurant concept — in Streeterville, nestled in the Northwestern Memorial Hospital complex — has a market that offers soup and sandwiches and a coffee bar that sells pastries, cookies and specialty drinks.
If Rotisserie Ema is a success like Beatrix’s Streeterville incarnation, Jacobs said the company may choose to open takeout-oriented venues as stand-alone businesses.
“We always think about how we can duplicate a concept, and we’d love to get a concept that is so well-received that we could do that,” he said. “Really, what (the dual-restaurant model) is doing is allowing us to explore new and different real estate because there’s so much flexibility.”
In addition to boosting sales and offering more options to expand down the road, dipping into the grab-and-go food market also lets restaurants home in on a booming sector of the restaurant industry. Sales in the so-called fast-casual industry, which encompasses higher-end fast-food companies like Chipotle and Panera, are growing at double the rate of any other segment, according to research firm Technomic. Sales in that segment jumped 11.4 percent among the country’s top 500 chains last year.
Several chain restaurants have already experimented with the dual model, including Buffalo Wild Wings, Applebee’s and Denny’s. Buffalo Wild Wings has been one of the largest dual-restaurant operators, Technomic President Darren Tristano said, but Red Robin likely has been the most successful. Red Robin spun off its fast-casual concept, Red Robin Burger Works, in 2011.
Although chain restaurants have led the way in recent years, more independent brands are now adopting the dual-model approach as well, as a way of catering to young professionals who want healthy, local food they can grab in a hurry.
“You want that same quality but you want it at the speed that customers want it today,” said Andrew Feinberg, a principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP, specializing in the restaurant industry.
Fountainhead, a Ravenswood neighborhood bar and restaurant known for its whiskey and beer offerings, snagged the former art gallery space next door and opened Fountainhead Market last summer. It sells the unique drinks of its sister restaurant to take home or taste, but also sides and snacks to grab a la carte.
The market was borne in part out of necessity, owner Aaron Zacharias said. The restaurant needed a place to sell its single-cask whiskeys that were offered in the restaurant. Many customers requested them, Zacharias said, but it would have been illegal to sell them without a proper retail store.
The market has allowed the team at Fountainhead to start loyalty clubs for its whiskey and beer customers, Zacharias said, but it’s also “another creative outlet to do fun things we can’t do at the restaurant.”
“It’s going really well; we’re quite happy with it,” he said.
Fountainhead Market soon will rebrand the market slightly and begin to offer more food options meant for home entertaining, like salami, cheeses and hummus. Each new item also will come with pairing suggestions for its many alcoholic options.
Logan Square’s Fat Rice expanded its traditional restaurant model this month, opening a bakery that serves pastries and baked goods previously only offered on its dine-in menu. The bakery opened next door to the restaurant, and will serve as an overflow dining room for large parties during dinner service. And on the other side of its popular restaurant, Fat Rice also opened a separate cocktail bar called The Ladies’ Room.
Fat Rice co-owner Abraham Conlon said the openings were also spurred by necessity. The restaurant needed an outlet to sell baked goods that weren’t consumed in the restaurant, and it needed more space at night to serve groups of more than six people. But Conlon also saw a neighborhood need for a quick breakfast stop, especially for unique items like the Portuguese egg tart.
The bar also allows Fat Rice to get the most out of produce and other food it already was using in the restaurant. It originally was intended to be a retail store for Conlon’s other business, Mama’s Nuts, but evolved into a pseudo-waiting room for Fat Rice patrons. Now, it’s a dark, red-lit bar that offers a vastly different customer experience than the restaurant.
“At the end of the day it’s about sharing things you want to create for people in your own unique way,” Conlon said. “As long as you’re doing it well you’re going to continue to attract people.”
The bakery and bar are bringing in new and different customers. Conlon said he sees customers visit the bar and the bakery that haven’t been to Fat Rice, and the varied businesses also are bringing in customers from outside the neighborhood that otherwise may not have made the trek.
“It’s always a battle to make money in a restaurant,” Conlon said. “You may have a line out the door, but at the end of the day, we only have so many seats. So it benefits us to have these supplemental businesses, because every little bit counts.”
sbomkamp@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @SamWillTravel
