Restauratour: Initial Offering M&S Grill

M&S Grill offers a broad menu and casual environment to McCormick & Schmick’s fans.

By Lisa Bertagnoli, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 7/1/2004

Take an online tour of M&S Grill Photography by Kenneth Wyner

The narrow streets of the tony Reston Town Center in Reston, Va., are lined with upscale shops and restaurants. On one of those streets is McCormick & Schmick’s, the casual-upscale seafood restaurant. On the other side of the same street, in a nicely visible corner space, is M&S Grill, McCormick & Schmick’s casual offshoot.

To some operators, that setup might scream “cannibalization.” But Doug Schmick, president of the Portland, Ore.-based restaurant company that bears his name, says it’s working well.

“We find that markets that have enjoyed McCormick & Schmick’s are markets that embrace M&S Grill as well,” says Schmick. And indeed, at 11:30 a.m. on a muggy Thursday in May, both restaurants had a 15-minute wait for a table.

The concepts differ, however subtly. McCormick & Schmick’s specializes in seafood; M&S Grill’s broader menu adds American classics such as pot roast and chicken pot pie and more beef and poultry selections to the mix.

Both concepts look vaguely retro, with lots of wood and traditional colors. But where the seafood concept evokes the early 1900s. M&S Grill “is a little more deco,” Schmick says. “It’s a little lighter in terms of paneling, and it’s brighter and upbeat in terms of overall decor, but not dramatically different,” he says.

Retro-Fitting
The Reston M&S Grill, the fourth in the chain, opened as an Angelo & Maxie’s steakhouse in 2000. (McCormick & Schmick’s bought three Angelo & Maxie’s and converted the remaining two to seafood restaurants.)

The challenge “was to take what was already a successful restaurant and transform it at a modest cost into more of a McCormick & Schmick’s feel and atmosphere,” says Richard Battaglia, associate in charge of the project at Boora Architects in Portland, Ore.

The $1 million transformation took a month and included a revamp of the kitchen. Battaglia removed Angelo & Maxie’s signature cow murals and painted the light-colored walls sage green, a tint Battaglia tried five times before he was happy.

Battaglia lowered what he calls “ostentatious” lighting levels, adding faux Tiffany-style fixtures and halogen spots. He replaced tin ceiling panels with wood and wood trim to warm up the room, and added wall mirrors to open up the small space, which he termed “claustrophobic.”

Battaglia kept a few design elements, including the large double-sided bar. Its presence was a stroke of good luck because McCormick & Schmick’s concepts do a brisk bar business. “We take our bar programs seriously,” says Schmick. At the Reston M&S Grill, alcohol accounts for about 30 percent of sales.

To make the bar area more conducive to congregating, Battaglia replaced three huge booths with smaller ones. “Big booths don’t allow mixing,” he says, and they’re not efficient, either: “Two people sit down and there you go, you’ve lost four people.”

Angelo & Maxie’s also had a cigar room outfitted with humidors. Battaglia kept the humidors and decorated the room to match the rest of the house. The room, which has a separate entrance, is now used for private parties.

Outside he added hunter-green awnings to previously bare windows. “It makes the restaurant more distinctive,” Battaglia says.

The designer added hunter-green awnings to cover the outside patio, which seats 80.

A Decade of Progress
M&S Grill originated as Jake’s Grill, a concept that McCormick & Schmick’s opened 10 years ago in Portland’s historic Governor Hotel. Subsequent M&S Grills, in Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Reston, have evolved to become lighter and more open, thanks to strategically placed beveled mirrors. “We really do like mirrors because they reinforce the sense of activity and bring more to a smaller space,” Schmick says.

In addition, traditional schoolhouse-style lighting fixtures have given way to stained- and mottled-glass fixtures.

The company will continue to expand M&S Grill slowly at a pace of one or two a year in markets that are home to successful McCormick & Schmick’s restaurants. The company doesn’t necessarily prefer new construction over remodels: “We’re not afraid of a renovation,” Schmick says.

McCormick & Schmick’s, which average 9,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet, gross about $5.2 million a year in sales. The grills, which average 8,000 square feet, gross around $4.5 million in sales, due in part to their smaller size and check average. Both concepts, even those located close to each other, as they are in Reston, have grown with positive comp-store sales, Schmick says.

“We’ve been so pleased,” he says of the concepts’ mutual success. “We’ve been around for 31 years; we don’t create things just to be creative.”