Cover Society: Michael Kaufman on All the Essentials

Michael Kaufman brings his chain experience to a small Washington D.C. operation.

By David Farkas, Senior Editor -- Chain Leader, 7/1/2006

Michael Kaufman appeared on the cover of Chain Leader in ovember 2000, when he was president of Metromedia Restaurant Group, helping to breathe new life into its aging brands: Ponderosa, Bonanza, Bennigan’s, and Steak and Ale. Today, Kaufman is using his chain experience to help develop Harry’s Tap Room and its spinoff, Harry’s Essential Grille, into viable chains. He spoke with Chain Leader about the new concept at the National Restaurant Association show in May.

Can you talk about the differences between Harry’s Tap Room and Harry’s Essential Grille?

Michael Sternberg and our other partner, Tom Greene, had created a restaurant in Arlington, Va., called Harry’s Tap Room, and it is a very successful restaurant. As we looked at it and thought about how we would grow that brand, we thought it might be better to think about a name change. We called it Harry’s Essential Grille because we wanted to emphasize what Tap Room was delivering, but you wouldn’t know it from the name. Tap Room says, “Hey, let’s go and have a beer,” and what the menu shows is a fresh, organic and natural product. So the food side of it was really strong. We felt Essential Grille would allow us to talk about that.

Talk a little bit about the food side.

Its menu is contemporary American, but what we really place a strong emphasis on is the ingredients themselves. Kind of like Whole Foods, we can say to our guests, “This particular carrot came from this particular farm in Pennsylvania.” We are very intent on where we source product, and we’re very clear about the fact that it’s an organic, natural product. We say it’s real food naturally. But we’re keeping our price points at a pretty moderate range.

What prompted you to move toward organic, to develop a menu that is healthful?

I think what we saw in our family, friends, neighbors and the success of companies like Whole Foods is that people don’t necessarily say, “I want to become a vegetarian.” People are concerned about what’s in their food to the extent that one can bring in food that is without trans fats, growth hormones and other chemical additives, but it’s still the foods that you like. It’s not that it’s any less fattening to eat a souffle that is natural and organic versus one that is not, but you know what you’re getting and your decision about calories is your own decision.

Is it up to your servers to impart that information to the guests?

We have a story on our menu where we describe what we do, and certainly it is up to our servers to communicate what it is that we do as well. We sent out a photographer to go to the farms that supply us, and there are huge blown-up photographs of the vegetables that we are featuring on the walls. I think as you sit there, you kind of sense that we’re about freshness and we’re about authenticity.

By the end of 2007, how many Harry’s Essential Grilles do you expect to have open?

Let’s step back for a second. We had these two restaurants, Harry’s Tap Room and Harry’s Essential Grille. The airport authority for Dulles Airport came to us and said, “We want to put a Harry’s Tap Room in Dulles Airport.” We said, “We don’t know how to do airports.” So they said, “Let’s link you up with some folks who do know how to do that.” Within the last two weeks, we’ve opened two locations with an operating partner at Dulles of Harry’s Tap Room.

We’re thinking our strategy at this point is that Harry’s Tap Room might be more logical in airports and those sorts of formats and that Harry’s Essential Grille might be the way to go in freestanding. We didn’t expect this to happen. So now we are looking to see, do we ride both horses or do we pick one of the two horses?

Download the complete transcript of the Michael Kaufman interview.