Lane Cardwell

TV Dinners

I spent the last couple of days going in and out of a lot of restaurants in Dallas. Dining by immersion. It is interesting what you notice when you visit a large number of restaurants in a short period of time. One of the things that I have noticed over the past several years, but it became glaringly apparent during the past two days, was how the designer of choice for many casual dining restaurants has become Sony and Panasonic. Television sets are taking over in many concepts. It was always common to see TVs in the bar. Now it has become increasingly common to see them in the dining rooms as well.

Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? As President Reagan said when asked whether he wore boxers or briefs, "Depends."

The NRA, in a 2007 study, found that 70 percent of casual dining restaurants and 50% of fine dining restaurants used TVs for customer entertainment. The study didn't differentiate between dining room and bar but I would imagine that the majority of these were located in the bar. These numbers are probably up today, with a larger percentage moving out into the dining room.

In concepts with a sports theme or a higher alcohol mix it makes sense to have TVs throughout the restaurant. Buffalo Wild Wings makes a big statement with the number and size of its TVs located throughout the restaurant. BJ's has TVs scattered throughout the restaurant, but 4-6 large TVs over the bar in a cluster make their presence known.

One of the drawbacks to watching TV in a restaurant is that the sound is almost always turned down. With music going in the background and multiple TVs tuned to multiple stations, having the sound up isn't an option in most restaurants.  If you are lucky you get a closed-caption version on the screen, with sometimes comical results.

One exception is the Smokey Bones concept. I have not been in any of their newly rebranded Smokey Bones Bar and Fire Grill units, but the originals have a box on each table in the dining room that lets you select a TV (which are all numbered) and play the sound from that TV at your table. A clever idea. I wonder how much a consultant was paid to come up with the "Bar and Fire Grill" part of the new name? Rolls right off your tongue.

Randy DeWitt, of Rockfish Grill fame, has a new concept called Twin Peaks. I visited a newly opened one on my recent tour. This location was just filmed by ABC for a feature on Nightline about how the concept is thriving and growing in a down economy. I counted 20 TVs. I am sure that this in large part accounts for their popularity. Followed closely by their Twin Peaks server staff.

One of my favorite casual South Miami Beach restaurants is Big Pink. They have a lot of TVs, but they also have a daily TV dinner special. It is six different comfort foods served in a six compartment stainless steel tray for $14.95. It tends to feature the kind of foods that Swanson's would serve in their TV dinners, but better. If you work for Swanson's please take this as the humor it was intended to be. But they are better.

Not to be outdone, the Loews Regency Hotel in New York added a $30 TV dinner last year in its dining room. How do you justify $30 for a TV dinner? The partitioned trays are made of porcelain. The fried chicken is free range. The cheese in the macaroni and cheese is cheddar asiago with a Parmesan crust and the pot roast is braised in a pinot noir sauce. The only problem is there are no TVs in the dining room.

But I digress. This was supposed to be about TVs, not TV dinners. Another thing which was very apparent on my tour was that if you are still using non-flat screen TV's, even mixed in among plasmas and LCD's, your restaurant looks very dated. It looks as dated as having a window air conditioner sticking out of the dining room window. The more that your concept is dependent on TV for entertainment, the more out of date your old TVs look. Break down and spend the money.   

There is a very vocal divide among customers on whether TVs in the dining room are a good thing or a bad thing. There doesn't seem to be a lot of dispute about the logic of having TVs in the bar, but having them appear in greater and greater numbers in the dining room gets some people stirred up.

From what I can tell, they had better get over it. They are spreading and they are spreading fast. Many families have thrown away the "no TV while we eat" rule. It looks like many restaurants have as well.

Posted by Lane Cardwell on February 26, 2009 | Comments (4)