Upstarts: Urban Artisan
Urban Flats jazzes up flatbreads with upscale ingredients in a modern setting.
By Maya Norris, Managing Editor -- Chain Leader, 7/1/2007
 The $11 Crab Cakes, baked in Urban Flats stone-hearth oven, is a top seller on the Small Plates section of the menu. Urban Flats recently added the $10 Spicy Tuna flatbread, with seared raw tuna, cucumber, red onion, tomato, sweet chili sauce, spinach and lime-ginger glaze. The popular Flat Dips appetizer features spreads such as hummus served with warm flatbread, which is baked daily. |
Flatbreads have been around for centuries, but they’ve only recently emerged as the latest must-have item on menus, popping up at chains from Dunkin’ Donuts to Seasons 52.
For Urban Flats, however, flatbreads are more than a trend—they are the focus of the six-unit concept’s menu. Founder and CEO Suzanne Bonham says her sophisticated interpretation of flatbreads will separate it from the pack as Urban Flats embarks on franchised expansion this year.
“I wanted to go where old meets new,” says Bonham, who founded the concept in 2004. “We’re a new niche in flatbreads with a modern, new environment with modern, new ingredients.”
Modern Sensibility
Urban Flats makes its flatbreads daily in a gas-fired stone-hearth oven and tops them with upscale ingredients. Best sellers include the Fig and Prosciutto, $9, with fig jam, shredded prosciutto and blue cheese; Steak and Portobello, $10, with fontina cheese; and Chicken Caesar, $10, barbecue chicken, romaine and Parmesan. The menu also offers appetizers, salads, wraps, small plates and desserts.
Everything is cooked in the oven except desserts, which a bakery provides. With only one major piece of cooking equipment, Urban Flats is easy to operate and duplicate and capitalizes on consumer demand for healthful, fresh fare, according to Bonham, a certified sommelier who worked at Walt Disney World for 10 years developing and rolling out restaurants including Jiko: The Cooking Place at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge and Ohana in the Polynesian Village.
The wine bar is also crucial to Urban Flats. It features about 55 varietals by the bottle and 30 by the glass in 6 ounce and 3 ounce pours. A wine-dispensing system keeps the opened bottles on tap while preserving them at their ideal tempera tures, preventing oxidation and spoilage.
The contemporary decor features exposed ducts, stained concrete floors, white walls and brown leather booths. Each unit has photography that showcases its city’s landmarks.
Urban Sprawl
With five company units in Florida, Urban Flats will expand through franchising in the Southeast over the next three years. Franchisees will open four units this year, 10 in 2008 and 30 in 2009.
The company is looking for experienced operators willing to open more than one unit. TL Cannon Companies, which franchises 61 Applebee’s, will open 10 units in North Florida in five years. It opened its first in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., in February. Atlanta Flatbread LLC, headed by former Waffle House executive Bob Rogers, will open five in Atlanta over three years; the first will open in August. Tony Euwonaitis, a former joint-venture partner of 15 Bonefish units in Florida, will open 15 in five years in West Florida, with the first slated for Sarasota in September.
It costs about $600,000 to $800,00 to open an Urban Flats, which averages 4,000 to 5,000 square feet. Urban Flats looks for endcaps in urban areas where the household income is at least $50,000.
“I want to make sure we’re growing this thing and it’s now growing us so that we stay on top of the growth and not grow too fast,” Bonham says. “We want to make sure we grow at a nice healthy rate and do it right because to me that’s more important than getting the concept out there.”
View All Blogs
