The units badly needed help. “[Founder] Rocky Aoki didn't want duplicate restaurants, so there were no standard designs or operating procedures,” says restaurant analyst William Hamilton, who covers Benihana for SMH Capital Partners in New York. (Benihana officials did not reply to several requests for interviews.)

The company, which budgeted about $2 million per unit, sped up the revitalization in fiscal 2006 to get the jump on a burgeoning trend for Asian food. “We are committed to revitalizing our 40-plus-year-old Benihana teppanyaki concept for a new generation, while simultaneously generating a solid return on invested capital for our shareholders,” officials announced in a filing at the time.

According to Hamilton, the company expected remodeled restaurants to boost sales by 10 percent and gain a 15 percent return on invested capital. “Early on, they were hitting the numbers,” Hamilton says. But not for long, stymied by construction delays and a slowing economy. Guest traffic declined 6.3 percent in Benihana's most recent quarter, ended Oct. 12, 2008.

One costly issue involved the highly trained teppanyaki chefs, who had to be relocated to other restaurants while theirs were being gutted. In a November conference call, President and Chief Operating Officer Juan Garcia finally called it quits. “We have put that chapter behind us,” he said of the revitalization program. The company ended the program just two units short of the original 24.

Says Hamilton: “Overall, the program was a success, but it wasn't quite the success they had initially hoped for.”

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