Link This | Email this | Blog This | Comments (0)

Bennigan’s Jumps into Fast Casual

July 19, 2007

The fireplace at Bennigan’s Quick Grille encourages customers to kick back and relax. Green accents in the new concept suggest its roots remain Irish.

Two weeks ago I had dinner at Bennigan’s Grill & Tavern with two Metromedia Restaurant Group executives in Cleveland to visit the handful of restaurants the Dallas-based company operates in Northeast Ohio. They said Northeast Ohio is a decent market, particularly North Olmstead, where we were dining on a busy weekday night.

“We’ve got a good regional director in this market and operations have gotten a lot better,” said CEO Vince Runco, explaining why the restaurant was almost full. “Management turnover in this area is at its lowest.”

My dish, a new salad with lots of grilled chicken on it, was tasty enough. A basket of boneless wings was pretty good, too, after a thick application of a Guinness-flavored sauce. Our server, though, perhaps unaware of whom she was waiting on (or perhaps keenly aware!), kept barging in with little regard for our conversation.

“Isn’t that sauce AWESOME on those wings,” she declared on one visit.

“Don’t you LOVE that salad?” she blurted on another.

Meanwhile Chief Development Officer Clay Dover was telling me that MRG is jumping into the fast-casual game with Bennigan’s Quick Grille, a slick looking, 2,600-sqaure-foot restaurant featuring field stone, dark woods and fireplace. MRG will launch it, likely on an endcap, in Dallas next year. Check average: $10 to $12.

No surprise there. The fast-casual segment, which Technomic estimates rang up $15 billion last year, is growing much faster than restaurant chains overall, 14 percent vs. 6 percent in ’06. Panera dominates the segment with nearly $2 billion in sales last year, followed by Panda Express, Chipotle, Boston Market and El Pollo Loco.

Who wouldn’t leap into the market given the wherewithal? One might imagine closely held MRG has plenty. If it’s a bust, at least you tried.

One reason such chains have been proved popular is their trappings, typically in the form of comfortable booths and chairs, calming decors and (increasingly) free Internet connections, or WiFi.

Dover and Runco get the picture if these renderings of the Quick Grille are any indication.

Note: This spring, MRG opened a sports-bar concept called Bennigan’s Sport. You can read about it in the August issue of Chain Leader.

Posted by David Farkas on July 19, 2007 | Comments (0)