Restauratour: Setting the Stage at Benihana

Benihana's prototype focuses on teppanyaki tables and show-off chefs.

By Lisa Bertagnoli, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 8/1/2006

Take an online tour of Benihana.

It’s 7 p.m. on Father’s Day, and the wait at the Benihana in Miramar, Fla., spans about an hour. There’s plenty of seating at the stylish, energetic sushi bar, but guests aren’t interested in sushi or the chefs that prepare it. They want a seat at one of the restaurant’s 18 teppanyaki tables, where they expect white-coated, red-toqued chefs to dazzle them with a show of chopping and sauteing.

The public’s love for Benihana’s brand of showy display cooking is the main reason the company has unveiled a contemporary new prototype, as far removed from its older, more sedate look as sushi is from fish sticks. Older Benihanas—the system’s average store age is 18—feature blond wood and minimal decor in a vast expanse of carpeted space. The new restaurants are broken up into several areas: a round sushi bar, semiprivate booths, plus a red “spirits” dining room and a blue “energy” room.

The space, with a 20-foot-high blacked-out ceiling, jutting wood beams and a stained concrete floor, recalls a stage—not surprising, seeing that Benihana was one of the country’s original “dinner as theater” concepts.

“Theater is the core of what they are and what they offer,” says Lee Peterson, executive director, design and branding at WD Partners, the Columbus, Ohio-based design firm that created the prototype. “The theatrical element…that’s what the customer’s journey is based on.”

Visiting the Multiplex
New York-based Benihana enlisted WD Partners in 2004 to update the concept and bring a uniform look to the chain. “We function and work very well, but each Benihana was different,” says Joel Schwartz, president and CEO of the 57-unit chain (the company also owns RA Sushi and Haru, a small New York sushi chain). The plan was “to look into a prototype and bring Benihana into the 2000s,” he says.

If the old Benihana was a theater, the new Benihana is a multiplex, with a large waiting area, two separate dining rooms equipped with teppanyaki tables (large tables inset with a gas-fired flat-top grill), several groupings of semi­private booths, and a large bar and sushi bar.

The point of several different dining areas is to drive frequency, Peterson says. “The average Benihana customer is there two times a year, for dinner,” he says. “To increase frequency even once is a 50 percent increase.”

The entryway, larger than in the previous design, offers glimpses into the dining area. Waiting customers can peer through a narrow glass window embedded into a stone wall to view the sushi bar or look through a bamboo screen to see the “earthen” dining room, the signature of which is a sky-blue wall and Japanese-style paned windows. To the right is the “spirit” dining room, decorated in deep red and festooned with bamboo graphics. In the center, the round sushi bar features a “wishing well” table of concrete and brushed stainless steel.

The prototypical exterior is equally dramatic, with large beams protruding from the building and panes of frosted glass. But because the Miramar location is in a planned development (a shopping center with Home Depot as the anchor), its exterior is somewhat tame. It features light stone and a neon sign but none of the beamwork of the prototype.

Same Size, Less Money
The first prototypes to open were renovations of restaurants in Short Hills, N.J., and Cleveland; the Miramar location is the first ground-up prototype.

Schwartz is happy with the prototypes’ performance so far. Older buildings cost $4 million to build; ground-up prototypes average $3.2 million to $3.4 million, and renovations average $2 million. The old and new restaurants are both approximately 7,500 square feet. Renovations are extensive and take between six and eight months to complete.

The prototypes need little tweaking. Benihana deleted several expensive touches from the design before construction. For instance, the wishing-well table in the sushi bar was meant to be lighted from below. However, the lighting proved an “operational nightmare,” Peterson says. Similarly, the video projection of bamboo stalks and leaves above the sushi bar was originally supposed to show the four seasons changing within a 45-minute time frame; that feature is still under discussion, Schwartz says.

Future changes will take place mostly in the kitchen. For instance Benihana plans to add more freezer and storage space, Schwartz says.

Changes won’t, however, affect what guests see, because so far, guests like the new Benihana experience. Sales at the Short Hills location are up 30 percent on average; one week that figure soared to 50 percent, according to Schwartz.

And Father’s Day at Miramar broke a sales record for the chain. The only customers who grumble, says Regional Manager Shuntaro Morishita, “are the ones we can’t accommodate.”

Menu Sampler

Meats
Hibachi Steak: teppanyaki-grilled with mushrooms and served with Japanese onion soup, Benihana salad, shrimp appetizer, hibachi vegetables, dipping sauces, rice and hot green tea, $20

Noodles
Benihana Yakisoba Dinner: sauteed noodles with chicken, vegetables and a special sauce, $16.25

Sushi
Shrimp Crunchy Roll: shrimp tempura, avocado, cucumber, crab sticks and tempura crumbs, $7.25

Sushi Combination: three served with miso soup and salad, $13.95

Specialties
Tofu Salad (pictured): tofu marinated in soy dressing, with cucumbers, tomatoes and sprouts, $5.50