Cover Society: Guest Amenities

Greg Burns discusses what customers get out of the rebranded O’Charley’s and Ninety Nine concepts.

By Mary Boltz Chapman, Editor-in-Chief -- Chain Leader, 11/1/2007

There’s a transformation going on at O’Charley’s Inc., says CEO Greg Burns. At headquarters in Nashville, Tenn., that means a strengthened leadership team, new distribution system and enhanced technology to support operations. The O’Charley’s brand and sister concept Ninety Nine both have new prototypes, menus and service systems. Chain Leader spoke with Burns, who appeared on our cover in August 1999, about some of the prominent changes.

What does the customer see that’s different?

With Ninety Nine, it’s very significant changes. Ninety Nine quite frankly had kind of a tired, old look, a lot of artifacts and things on the walls. They would see a much more contemporary look in the restaurant: warmer, carpeting, different lamps.

Then what they’ll see is a hostess server that will look you in the eye. They’ll have a sharper uniform, more up-to-date uniform, cleaner look. They’ll welcome you and immediately engage you in conversation.

At O’Charley’s, it’s very similar. You would come in and see a more up-to-date looking O’Charley’s. You’ll notice O’Charley’s used to use a bus person. We don’t do that anymore. We don’t do tray service; servers carry those out to the table. I don’t like to use the word "upscale"—I would call it a more polished level of service at both concepts.

You’ve also been working on the menu. Could you tell me a little about that?

The menu used to be what is typical in casual dining, this fold-out menu that you take your arms and spread them out from end to end. We went to a book-type menu with pages. We did some different categories, and we did more work on [menu] descriptions.

From a quality side and from a product- selection side, we still have our standard items that you have seen at O’Charley’s and Ninety Nine. But we’ve also done variations on some products. We really highlight the menu a lot through limited-time offers. That’s where you’ll see quite a few changes in terms of offerings of different items that you wouldn’t see in the past.

We don’t want the menu to appear to be overly expensive, because it’s not. We maintain a broad selection of menu items so you can find pricing in the menu in the $9.99 area, $10.99, as well as up to $17, $18.99.

Your average check is about what, $12, $13 at O’Charley’s?

Yeah, Ninety Nine is higher, but primarily driven by a higher liquor mix. If you look at it from a straight food side, it is very similar in terms of pricing.

With that kind of average cost, it’s kind of a tricky time right now, with customers pulling back a little on their dining purchases.

Well, this is something we’ve talked a lot about. One of the big changes that we’re making at O’Charley’s is eliminating Kids Eat Free, a program we had for a long time. But we felt with changing demographics, an aging population, plus we want to deliver higher quality food and some broader offerings, that Kids Eat Free had run its course.

Quite frankly, that has taken guests away. It’s not that we don’t want families. But we want to transfer to guests that are willing and able to pay for a higher product. Having said that, what we’re finding is our core customer has come in, and they’re buying the products because they see more price-value. It’s not always about the lowest price.