Toque of the Town: Building on Olga's Tradition

Doug Hetherington puts a contemporary spin on Olga’s Kitchen's culinary heritage.

By Monica Rogers, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 5/1/2006

Go out for a gyro sandwich and you expect counter service from guys in white aprons, meat on a rotating spit, and maybe a blue and white awning stamped with psuedo-Hellenic lettering. Unless you head to Olga’s Kitchen, a 26-unit chain where Mediterranean influences are downplayed in favor of sandwiches, soups and sides that “you aren’t going to find someplace else,” says Doug Hetherington, director of quality assurance and menu committee lead for the Troy, Mich.-based concept.

Yes, there’s spinach pie and a salad with feta, olive and red onion, but most everything else studiously sidesteps stereotype. The White Bean Chicken Chili, $3.49 a cup, and fried bread wedges with Swiss-almond cheese outsell the spinach pie. Even the gyro sandwich isn’t called a gyro. It’s an Original Olga, $5.79, seasoned beef and lamb broiled and served with onions, tomatoes and yogurt sauce on lightly sweetened flatbread that’s griddled to order.

“Our strategy has always been to serve distinctive foods only available at Olga’s,” Hetherington says.

Original with a Difference
Hetherington shows off dishes like the best-selling Peasant Soup, $2.89 a cup, with veggies, ground beef and lamb in rich tomato broth. Olga Snackers, $4.79, deep-fried wedges of seasoned Olga bread, started out as complimentary dippers served with soups and salads. But they proved so popular that the chain now also sells them as an appetizer. And there’s more than 20 iterations of the Olga Sandwich—from the Salmon, Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato with dill mayonnaise, $7.49, to the Thai Chicken, $6.69, with rice, julienne veggies, napa cabbage and spicy peanut sauce.

Most of these dishes partially rely on original recipes for gyro meat, bread dough and sauces from founder Olga Loizon, who sold the original 1970 restaurant to its current owners in 1976 but remains ambassador for the chain. But embellished with new ingredients and cooking techniques, original recipes continue to evolve and take on new life.

Other dishes are completely original. The whimsical French Toasted Cheesecake, $4.29, looks like a little tumbleweed. The shredded-phyllo-covered cheesecake is deep-fried, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, and served with strawberries and whipped cream. Launched in summer 2004 as part of the company’s most recent menu overhaul, the cheesecake is now the top-selling dessert.

Hetherington also launched the White Bean Chicken Chili in summer 2004, after someone submitted a recipe from a newspaper. “We tried it all sorts of ways, finally adding Jack cheese into the mix, before coming up with a final recipe,” he says. Mildly spicy, with chicken and white beans, the light-colored chili has a creamy consistency thanks to the cheese.

Olga’s Kitchen’s strategic mix of cherished traditions with new ideas has proven a successful formula. Its average check increased 3.3 percent from 2004 to 2005 and jumped 2.1 percent from 2005 to 2006, to the current $9.87. Systemwide sales increased 6.6 percent and 4.3 percent, respectively, in those periods.

New Look, New Demographic
With the increase in sales, Olga’s Kitchen is ready to grow the concept through joint ventures and with a new upmarket freestanding prototype. The first joint venture with Southfield, Mich.-based TEAM Schostak Family Restaurants meant one unit in 2005, two in 2006, two more yet to open this summer and firm plans for another 10 before 2010. Hetherington expects similar multiunit deals to come.

According to foodservice and hospitality consultant Jerry McVety, president of Farmington Hills, Mich.-based McVety & Associates, the time is right. “It’s a mature, proven concept,” he says. “There’s nothing like this in the market. And the new model they have should do well for both regional and national growth.”

While McVety points out that new menu ideas aren’t necessary to help Olga’s Kitchen move into markets, the company says it needed to evolve to meet a changing demographic. “The freestanding unit makes Olga’s Kitchen much more of a destination- dining occasion,” Hetherington explains. “We used to be primarily in regional malls, which meant our guests were mostly women shopping during mall hours.”

The three new units have seen takeout orders increase from 5 percent to 10 percent of daily orders to as much as 40 percent as well as more businessmen at lunch.

Accommodating male appetites, the company bolstered its bill of fare in July 2005 with hearty items such as the Roast Beef and Burnt Onion Olga, $6.69; the Roast Beef and Swiss Cheese Olga, $6.35; and a 7-ounce version of the 5-ounce burger, plank-shaped to fit the bread, $5.89.

Roast beef also figures in the new $7.79 Club Salad, topped with turkey, roast beef, bacon, Swiss cheese, red onion and hard-boiled egg.

Teamwork Approach
Shaping such new items is a task never far from Hetherington’s mind. He got his start in foodservice working at the commissary at Detroit’s Tiger Stadium before joining Olga’s Kitchen 30 years ago, during his college days at Eastern Michigan University. “I first met Olga in 1976, as a cook during summer break at the second Olga’s Kitchen to open,” Hetherington says. “It never crossed my mind that I might one day be responsible for expanding Olga’s menu.”

After graduating with a degree in fine arts, Hetherington went right into management training at Olga’s, working as assistant manager and then general manager for five years. He then joined the corporate staff as director of quality assurance. As such, Hetherington manages and implements internal inspection programs at all restaurants and the central kitchen and assists with training programs. He’s been leading the menu committee for four years.

Hetherington says menu development is very much a team endeavor that includes regular input from Director of Purchasing Clyde Manion, Food Production Manager Mark Elsholz and President Michael A. Jordan.

“Once we have developed a product that meets all of our criteria, we present the idea to Mike,” Hetherington says. “If we all agree that it’s an item that will work in our system, we test it at one of our neighborhood restaurants and then move it to select mall locations, before making the decision on whether to take it systemwide.”

Ideas come from all directions. Customers’ call for vegetarian options, for example, resulted in the Roasted Veggie Pesto sandwich, $5.29, launched last July. The sandwich features oven-roasted vegetables griddled to order and combined with pesto, tomato and Jack cheese.

The Orange Cream Cooler, a blend of Olga’s frozen yogurt with orange soda, “was something the unit staff were constantly mixing up and drinking on their own,” Hetherington says.

Try and Fry Again
Although the summer 2004 menu included more than a half-dozen new items, plus new graphics to match the prototype, Olga’s usually only introduces one or two new items a year. The development process for new items ordinarily runs just under a year, but some new dishes may be in development for five or more years.

For example, Olga’s soon-to-launch zucchini fries took seven years to develop. “We worked long and hard first to get a laterally sliced zucchini plank to market,” he says. “We had that on the menu for a year and guests liked it, but it was operationally challenging.” So the team began working on the fry: “We think this will be the right one. It’s like a matchstick fry, with a very light, tempura-like batter,” Hetherington says.

With checks averaging less than $10, Hetherington says part of his challenge is keeping quality while staying within the 24 percent to 25 percent food-cost and 26 percent to 28 percent labor range. “Margins are extremely important,” he says. “We’re careful to avoid inventory widows, cross-utilizing ingredients as much as possible.”

Helping speed operations and improve consistency, Olga’s installed steam-jacketed kettles in 2004 to streamline and speed soup production.

And capitalizing on the West Coast smoothie craze, Olga’s Kitchen launched a new concept, Suncoast Smoothies, in summer 2004 that operates from a separate counter within units. “The only equipment this required us to bring in was some blenders, juicers, an ice chipper and an ice-cream cabinet,” Hetherington concludes. “It’s new, it’s fresh, it’s family—just the right fit for Olga’s Kitchen.”